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Color Consoles

by Nathan Christianson - September 2, 2002, 1:29 pm EDT

5

Indigo and Jet Black not enough for you? Colorconsoles.com offers to change the look of your GameCube or Game Boy Advance for a price. Is it worth it?

With a multitude of Nintendo 64 colors, Nintendo fans may have been spoiled with having a choice in what color their system is. The Gamecube is also available in a few colors, but some people still want more.

Enter Colorconsoles.com. Offering twelve different colors, it seems like that would be enough to make anyone happy. Not only do they offer new colors, but you can pretty much mix and choose the parts to be colored, for a truly unique cube of your own. Not only that, but they will also change the color of the orange LED light to one of four other colors. Planning on importing that next great Japanese game? Colorconsoles.com also does region modifications. In addition to painting/modding the GameCube, they will also do some coloring for your Game Boy Advance as well.

I decided to send my GameCube, and my fiancée's Game Boy Advance in to them, to put the service to the test. I opted out of coloring my Gamecube a multitude of colors, and instead went for a solid emerald green. I also had them change my LED to a white LED, to match the face plate and white buttons on the GameCube. Then, since I figured I’d need it eventually, I asked for a region modification as well. For the Game Boy Advance, my fiancée decided to be a little creative and had the front painted Ruby Red, the back Ocean Teal, and the battery cage cover painted Ruby Red to match the front.

I sent my GameCube and Game Boy Advance off, ready for a quick turn around, and to get back into action playing my Gamecube. What happened in the months to come was not expected at all.

I can understand that having consoles colored is a demanding task, and when an idea as popular it comes along, people will be sending their consoles in droves to get it done. That being said, I expected my console to get there in three to four days, get colored in week or less, and then have it sent back to me in another three to four days after that. This is not what happened at all. It took about two weeks for the console to be colored, and mailed back to me. I’m ok with that, it’s possible that I underestimated how many people really got into this whole thing, and it took a little longer for them to send me my consoles back.

I got an email from Color Consoles that my items had been shipped back and waited. A week passed, and still no package. I e-mailed the owner, asking about them. He told me that they had been shipped, and to wait a little longer. I waited a week longer, and still no consoles. I e-mailed the owner again, and asked for a tracking number. He had sent the consoles regular USPS mail, with a tracking number that did little other then confirm delivery. When I entered the tracking number, it did just that. Confirmed it had been delivered. This was the cheapest form of tracking, so it didn’t track what address it had been delivered to, only the zip code. The wrong zip code was listed in the confirmation, off by two digits.

I e-mailed the owner again, asking if he had any documentation as to whether or not he mailed it to the correct address. He scanned in an image of the form he filled out for shipping, and sure enough, the tracking number on the receipt matched, and my address was filled out correctly. Why was it confirming delivery in the next city over? It was time to contact the post office to see if they know what’s going on.

I called my area post office, which couldn’t do much for me at all based on the tracking number. There was no address attached to the tracking number, so they couldn’t confirm that it was to be sent to my house in the first place. Also, there was no address of where the package was delivered to in the other zip code, so they had no idea where the package was, or if it was just sitting in the corner of the other zip code's post office. I had my suspicions that if it was delivered to my house, the mailman might have left it on my porch, and someone could have stolen it. I caught up with the mailman that next day, and asked him about any packages a few weeks before to my house. We’re pretty good friends with the guy, so he told us that if he had left anything there, he’d remember it, and he hadn’t delivered any packages to us in months. That ruled out theft. So where was it? The post office in both states didn’t know, and if it was truly lost in the mail, since there was no insurance whatsoever on the regular USPS delivery, I’d be out $280.

I wrote to the owner of Color Consoles again, asking what we could do to fix the situation. I wasn’t going to sit with losing out on my GameCube I bought at launch, and my fiancée really wanted the Game Boy Advance that I bought for her as a gift. We decided to wait a little bit longer, and if nothing came out of the post office, he offered to recolor his test GameCube that he used to practice out coloring techniques, and get me a used Game Boy Advance somewhere and recolor that for us as well. I wasn’t too pleased with the idea of having a colored, recolored, and recolored again GameCube, or a second-hand Game Boy Advance. I asked if I could get a brand new GameCube, as well as a Game Boy Advance, since he was partially at fault for not insuring the consoles through a better company such as UPS. Insurance for those two items would have only been a few dollars, and we wouldn’t have had to deal with him covering the cost of new consoles. He agreed, but told me it would take some time before I could get my new systems. I had to wait this long, so I might as well have to wait a little bit longer.

Two weeks or so before E3, he e-mailed me letting me know that it was a miracle! The package had been sent back to him by the post office. No explanation from them where it had been, it just showed up at his door. However, there was some water damage to the box, as well as the consoles. He was going to re-apply the clear coat, put a new screen on the Game Boy Advance, and spiff them up a little bit. After he was all done with that, he’d resend that back to me. I knew we were both going to be at E3, so I told him to just hold on to them, I’ll get them at E3. I didn’t want to risk them getting lost in the mail again.

E3 finally came, and so did my consoles. He arrived at my hotel, dropped them off and had to leave quickly, so we didn’t get to talk much beyond apologies for it taking so long for my stuff to get back. Overall, he was very nice throughout the whole ordeal. I took the consoles into my hotel room, ready to start playing once again.

At first glance, they both looked good. The paint on both of them has a bit of sparkle/glitter type of specks, which makes it shine nice in the sun. There are a few places however, where the paint job isn’t as good looking as I’d like it to be.

Starting with the GameCube, after only a few days the coating had peeled away in a few places, leaving a dull grayish-green underneath. I’m not one to mishandle my consoles, and I’m occasionally finding new spots where the paint has peeled off a little bit. Other then that, there’s a few spots where you can definitely tell that paint dripped down the sides where it dried, giving it a very unprofessional look. There are also a few small bumps in the paint cause by bubbles breaking, leaving a very rough surface in some areas.

The white LED in place of the orange LED looks pretty good combined with an all green cube and white face plate and buttons. The switch for the region mod, placed on the left side of the GameCube looks really nice as well. It’s not a cheap switch, but more of a professional rocker switch. To be honest, the LED and the switch are the two best things about the whole makeover.

The Game Boy Advance definitely got the bad end of the stick. Whereas the GameCube had a few small spots where the paint peeled, half of the back of the Game Boy Advance peeled completely away in less then a week, leaving an ugly grey-blue underneath. The labels on the back of the Game Boy Advance are rotting away, due to the water damage from the delivery. Granted that’s not his fault entirely, but it could have been prevented by better shipping methods. However, the worst thing of all on the Game Boy Advance is the speakers. The paint looks fine over them, but the sound is now very garbled and tinny sounding. When I asked the owner about this, as to whether it was the paint job's fault, he told me that it never does that, and could be at fault of the water damage again. He offered to put a new speaker in, but that would require us sending it back to him, which my fiancée declined flat-out. She told me that there was no way she was going to go through that whole ordeal again with shipping stuff out to him. He has told me that he’s changed shipping methods lately, but first impressions go a long way with a lot of people. I personally can’t blame her, but the headphone output works just fine, so when she wants to hear the games, she’ll use the headphones. It’s a not too big of a hassle, but it does make for more to carry around.

Would I recommend a friend use Colorconsoles.com? Probably not, but this is based on my experiences alone. The paint job looks nice enough on the GameCube, but once you actually look at the system, you see the glaring mistakes that make it that less worthwhile. There are a few other places out there that can paint/mod your system, so I recommend if you’re looking for a new paint job for your system, you shop around before you pick one. Although I’ve heard things are changing over at Color Consoles, I don’t think I’d use them again, just to be safe.

Pictures of the painted GameCube and Game Boy Advance can be viewed at the following link:

Color Consoles Image Gallery

Score

Appearance Comfort Quality Value Construction Final
6.5 0 5 7 4.5 5
Appearance
6.5

From a distance, it looks decent. However, up close, the paint job looks a bit bad, with peeling paint and speckles making a rough surface that’s not fun to hold, especially on the Game Boy Advance

Comfort
0

N/A

Quality
5

The rocker switch for the region mod and the LED light look great, but the name of the company is Color Consoles, not LED Consoles. Paint peeling, rough speckles, and dried dripped paint shouldn’t be visible on a professional paint job.

Value
7

Everything but the paint is put together well. The rocker switch looks like it comes standard on a GameCube, and the LED looks like it belongs there as well. The new screen on the Game Boy Advance looks great as well; you can’t even tell it was replaced. Screws were replaced like they should be, and parts were put back together nicely, from being separated to paint it.

Construction
4.5

24.99 for the GBA coloring. 34.99 for the GameCube coloring. 7.50 for a white LED. 10.00 for a region modification. Waiting 3 months to finally get back your console in less than expected shape: Not worth the cost and hassle.

Final
5

Had there been less of a hassle, without the paint mistakes, I might have rated the service a little bit higher. As it stands with me, I didn’t get to play my GameCube for 3 months, and I got back less than what I expected. Not enough to get me to recommend Color Consoles.

Summary

Pros
  • Color sparkle has a nice effect to it.
  • LED light looks good with the faceplate and buttons.
  • Rocker switch for region mod looks professionally installed.
Cons
  • Long return time. Too long.
  • Paint dried dripping down the sides.
  • Paint peeled fairly soon, despite clear coat.
  • Speaker damage on Game Boy Advance
Review Page 2: Conclusion

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Genre
Developer Color Consoles

Worldwide Releases

na: Color Consoles
Release Jan 01, 2002

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