Rare '90s Nintendo 64 controller valued at £1,000

A rare Nintendo 64 controller as been valued at about £1,000 by an auction house.

The Foxdata Chrome Leopard controller (pictured above) was part of a '90s set of Foxdata controller designs that also included colour ranges such as Desert Storm, Red Rain and Purple Forest. A 39-year-old man in Manchester, called Liam Clousdale, recently unearthed the controller from his loft after receiving it as a gift on his 14th birthday. It had remained in storage for more than 20 years.

"The ads for it appeared in the official Nintendo magazine, the N64 Magazine as it was known back then," said Clousdale in an interview about the controller with the Manchester Evening News. "At that time you picked stuff out of the adverts in the back pages. All my friends used to go to each other's houses to play and, to avoid confusion, everyone liked to have their own unique pad."

Clousdale chose the Chrome Leopard controller in order to stand out, and added that he "loved having the craziest-looking pad". He decided to take it out of his loft and get a valuation from an auction house after a friend told him about another Foxdata controller being sold for a significant amount of money at auction.

David Wilson-Turner, from Hansons' Toys And Video Games Auction, said the Foxdata range had "become increasingly sought-after in the video game market".

He continued: "Though information is limited, it's believed Foxdata produced around 800 of these customised controllers across the four designs, meaning there could be less than 200 examples of Liam's controller in the world.

"This controller offers a chance for a Nintendo memorabilia collector to source a rare, hard-to-find item. Though the controller has been used and is in need of slight attention, that only adds to its charm."

Earlier this year, a YouTuber shared a recreation of Radiohead's classic album 'OK Computer', made using sounds from games that were released for the Nintendo 64 console.

In 2022, the app SynthNes was launched, which allowed users to turn a Nintendo console into a synth.