I've talked previously about my experience with the GameCube in a past article and if you wanna check that out after reading this click here.
I love the GameCube. Everything about the console has so much charm and passion that it's hard to find outside of Nintendo nowadays. Anyways, after finally being reunited with my long lost GameCube, I needed to refill my library. However, there's one slight flaw in my quest to fill my library, the price. See, the Gamecube was a very niche console, it didn't get the praise it deserved in the mid-2000s, so a lot of the games that were made for the system are rare to find floating around. The price, the quantity, and the chance of someone wanting to sell something rare and valuable were all obstacles I have to face if I want to feel good about myself for owning a Gamecube. Luckily, I found the perfect deal.
Pokemon Colosseum, a side release to the main Pokemon franchise released in 2003 to surprising acclaim was the game I was after. I got lucky enough to wander onto a sale on Facebook marketplace for this game, which normally resells for $80 minimum being sold for a measly $30. "Jackpot," I thought, I just hit this person up, snag the game and bam! Easy 8-10 hours of enjoyment from my past. I do the casual "Is this available?" and slide into the DM's. The women selling this game, who we'll call "Carol" for the rest of the story, said yes. Perfect! I'll just make a time to pick the game up and Carol and I can both live the rest of our lives happy. However, Carol was up to something suspicious, and it wouldn't go unnoticed.
I had previously been conned out of another copy of pokemon colosseum from a seller on eBay prior to this exchange, so I didn't just need the disk of the game, I had to know the game worked. I wanted undeniable proof that this game was going to work. I send a polite message to Carol, asking if she could pop the game into a system and show me functioning gameplay just to see without a doubt that this game was going to run. I wait a couple of days, no reply. I wait a week, then a couple of weeks, soon it's damn near a month after I asked and I had no idea whether she was going to sell me the thing I asked for. The worst part of it all, she read both of my messages that I sent, both the one asking if it would run and one after that asking if she still had it available to try to at least get an answer. I almost didn't even care if Carol had the game anymore, but don't leave me in Facebook purgatory.
You'd think that that would be the end of the story. Boo-hoo, Alex didn't get a game for cheap that isn't really anything groundbreaking, but you'd be wrong. I received a notification almost a month after I initially requested the game, but it wasn't a text from Carol, but rather something ruder, more conspicuous, more menacing. Instead of actually replying to me and letting me buy a copy of Pokemon Colosseum, she ghosted me for almost a month, then changes the price. Normally this wouldn't be a big deal, people change prices all the time, but the act Carol just committed was worse. She raised the price from a reasonable $30 to a ridiculous $80. I was baffled, to say the least. To be ghosted from a product you wanted to suddenly see she had it all along and for $50 more no less was heartbreaking. Even Carol came to her senses eventually and lowered the price down to an overpriced but reasonable $60.
Did this affect me in any way physically? No, I went on the Gamestop website and they have it there for $35, my wallet will be fine. The emotional toll Carol bestowed upon me was what brought me down. I wasn't even mad at this point, I just wanted answers. Why did you ghost me? Why won't you let me buy your game? Why are you raising the price by $50 when nobody was buying it for the initial $30? So many questions that won't be answered, and it saddens me really. Nevertheless, I will be receiving my copy of Pokemon Colosseum on May 4th without the help of Carol. Whether she knew it or not Carol taught me something through that exchange of four total messages, and it's that some people just want to watch the world burn.
Messages with "Carol"Alex Wheeler
