Remembering the strange tale of Queen Elizabeth II and the golden Nintendo Wii

The 70-year reign of Queen Elizabeth II, which ended yesterday with her death, will be remembered for the many historical events and world figures with which it intersected. Among fans of video game marginalia, it will also be remembered for a marketing stunt from a now-defunct video game publisher that sent a gold-plated Wii to Her Majesty. The story of the queen's connection to the Nintendo console begins in early 2008, when the UK tabloid Sunday People published a lightly sourced story alleging that "the gadget-loving Queen has become hooked on Prince William's new Nintendo Wii games console." An unnamed "palace source" supposedly told the paper that the queen "begged to join in" after seeing the then-25-year-old William play with his Christmas gift (from then-girlfriend Kate Middleton) at Sandringham House. The then-81-year-old monarch reportedly had "hand-eye coordination [that] was as good as somebody half her age" (we wonder what her Wii Fit age would have been) and "showed all the signs of becoming a Nintendo addict." Fast forward to 2009, when THQ launched Big Family Games (known in the US as Neighborhood Games) for the Wii. The badly reviewed Wii Sports knockoff focused on games like bocce, horseshoes, and "ladder golf" and would be little remembered today if not for a unique marketing campaign cooked up by THQ UK. To stress the "family" part of the title, THQ said it sent a copy of the game to the royal family, "arguably the most important family in the country," as THQ's Danielle Robinson put it in the accompanying press release. To give the story a bit of extra pizzazz, THQ commissioned a unique gold-plated Wii to send along with the game because "we thought that Her Majesty the Queen wouldn't want to play on any old console."

While it's fun to imagine an octogenarian monarch playing on a one-of-a-kind gold-plated console, it seems the queen never even received the special, shiny system. As the royal family's official contact page states plainly, "For security reasons, the Correspondence Team are unable to accept any unsolicited gifts which are sent to The Queen." Thus, the gold-plated Wii was quietly sent back to THQ, which failed to send out a second press release clarifying the initial stop-and-gawk coverage of "the queen's golden Wii." As far as anyone knew, Queen Elizabeth II was the lucky owner of one of the rarest and most blinged-out game consoles in the world.

The quest for gold

With THQ split up and sold for parts in 2013, that might have been the end of the saga of the golden Wii. But as People Make Games lays out in an excellent 2019 video, the one-of-a-kind system eventually ended up in the hands of a collector going by the handle Dan2K0, who reportedly acquired it from a contact at THQ. From there, the PR stunt was purchased in 2017 by Donny Fillerup, a Dutch collector and owner of Console Variations, a clearinghouse of information on gaming hardware variants. When People Make Games tracked him down in 2019, Fillerup had spent six years amassing a collection of 280 different consoles. That included the golden Wii, which he displayed in a corner cabinet in his Utrecht home, alongside a copy of Big Family Games and a gold-plated Wii Remote (though a golden Nunchuk controller that was pictured with the system in 2009 was now missing).

That's where the system remained until 2021, when Fillerup said in an interview that he was ready to "move on with life" and sell the crown jewel of his collection. "I started talking to people about moving forward, and they told me nothing lasts forever," he recalled at the time. "I’m the type who is attached to things in a way that I find it hard to let them go. So selling the Wii will also help me move forward in this respect." Fillerup initially listed the console on eBay for a "Buy it Now" price of $300,000 (which somehow didn't include shipping). In the listing, he noted that the system still worked, that it sported a "THQ" username in the console OS, and that "the Wii-mote has some wear on the bottom. My guess is that it was actually used at one point." While no one bit on the eBay listing, Fillerup would put the golden Wii up for sale again in 2022. This time, the system was listed with WATA Games subsidiary Goldin Auctions as "the ultimate Wii collectible," complete with a letter of provenance attaching it to its marketing history. That auction eventually attracted 44 unique bids and a final sales price of $36,000 (including Goldin's $6,000 buyer's premium). While the gold plating gives this console some inherent value, it's the story behind the unique rarity that has made it such a sought-after collectible. And with less-rare video game items fetching seven-figure sums at auction, we wouldn't be shocked if this golden Wii goes up in value as time goes on. That's especially true following the death of the long-serving monarch who inspired the console's creation in the first place.