Nintendo

Which Nintendo plays which cartridges and discs:

each machine has tended to play the one before it, which decides what a used library is worth. A Switch 2 runs most Switch cartridges, with a few exceptions. A 3DS or 2DS plays DS games, and an original DS or a DS Lite still takes Game Boy Advance cartridges in a second slot. The first Wii models have GameCube controller ports and read GameCube discs, which later versions dropped, and a Wii U reads Wii discs but not GameCube ones. Mario, Zelda, Pokémon and Animal Crossing exist only on Nintendo hardware, and they are the reason to own one; for EA Sports FC, Call of Duty and the big releases that come out everywhere, a PlayStation or an Xbox is the better machine.

A Switch Lite for one child, a docked Switch for the whole family:

the Lite is built for a single player. It cannot connect to a television, its controls are moulded into the body, and games played with the Joy-Con held apart, Ring Fit Adventure among them, need a pair bought separately. Those fixed sticks matter later too: a Joy-Con that starts to drift can be swapped for another, while a Lite with drift has to be opened up to fix. In exchange it is small and has nothing detachable to lose. The original Switch, the OLED and the Switch 2 all sit in a dock under the living-room TV and split into two controllers for a second player, and the Switch 2 is the pick if new releases matter, since more and more games come out for it alone.

The Switch 2 and the used Switch in quetzales:

a new Switch 2 is around Q6,000, and a first-generation Switch with its dock and both Joy-Con changes hands for around Q1,800 to Q2,400, the OLED at the top and a Lite well below the bottom. Within that band the Joy-Con do most of the deciding: a pair that holds still on the stick calibration screen and a screen without scratches keep a console near the top, while drift tells the buyer to budget for new controllers.

Where a Pokémon cartridge, a 3DS or a Wii U gives itself away:

the older the machine, the more the test comes down to the part that wears. Pokémon games for the Game Boy Advance and DS are a favourite of counterfeiters precisely because they hold their value. A reproduction shows itself in glossy or blurred label art, a light feel, on Game Boy cartridges a plain cross-head screw where Nintendo used a three-pointed one, and most reliably in a save that does not survive a restart: start a game, save, switch off and load it again before you pay. The original Game Boy and Game Boy Color Pokémon games keep their save on a small internal battery that has gone flat in many copies, so the same test applies to genuine ones. On a 3DS, open and close the hinge looking for cracks at its corners, and check the top screen for marks pressed in by the buttons below. A Wii U is only as useful as its GamePad, which most of its games rely on, so a console offered without one is a box of discs rather than a machine.

Nintendo consoles before Christmas, cartridges photographed front and back:

the calendar works for sellers. The school year in Guatemala ends in October and the year-end bonus lands in December, so a console listed in the weeks before Christmas meets the most parents looking for one. Photograph the console switched on, with both Joy-Con and the dock you are including. For loose cartridges, show the label and the back, since that is where a buyer judges a reproduction. Bring a working handheld to the meeting: anyone who has come in from Quetzaltenango or Escuintla for a Pokémon game will want to watch a save hold through a restart on the spot.