That's a very strange analogy. The Tingle Tuner would not have worked without a GBA at all. It depended on a second player having a second screen. A gameplay feature depending on an additional system is not comparable to an amiibo unlock at all; your comment makes it sound as if you've never used the Tingle Tuner at all. What's next? Complaining that you had to buy Wii Motion Plus to "unlock playability" in Wii Sports Resort?
Your reply does not consider the statements i was responding to, so "meaning" is lost. In short:
Person 1 claims this is a "New" Nintendo that locks content behind extra Nintendo merchandise like hardware and peripherals. Person 2 claims that the GC days where the "Good times" of Nintendo extra content.
Response to Person 1. Nintendo has been tying content to the possesion of extra stuff since decades ago. Examples: Oracle of Ages/Seasons (to some extent), Nintendo 64 Transfer Pack and GC-GBA Link Cable.
Response to Person 2.
During the GC days, there were all sort of different types of locked content dependant of GC/GBA interactivity very similar to the types of unlocks we have with Ammibo today: Cosmetic stuff, extra items, game modes, etc. Since a cosmetic content was already mentioned (the Fusion suit) i chose to mention the first thing that came to my head which was gameplay related: The Tingle Tunner.
In regards to the Tingle Tunner. It is quiet a leap on your part to assume im ignorant of what it does.
im familiar with it... enough to know that most of it's functionality could be replicated with a second controller plugged to the GC. A good chunk of the GBA 2.9'' screen was used by a wind compass and tingle's face HUD. Item selection could be emulated in the TV with a small HUD strip that would pop when player 2 is selecting an item. Bombs, tingle ballon, shield an potions where the main gameplay uses. The chart and Tingle messages were flavor stuff that could be fiited in to the botton left map HUD if necessary.
Tingle Tunner is not as dependent of the 2nd screen functionality as somethig made from the ground up with GBA in mind like Crystal Chronicles or Four Swords. Related to the discussion, 4 Swords was made to work with just the TV for 1 playe play. Adapting Tingle Tunner for TV use would have been a lot more easy if Nintendo wasn't pushing the GBA interactivity like is doing with Amiibo right now.
What's next? Complaining that you had to buy Wii Motion Plus to "unlock playability" in Wii Sports Resort?
That's a very strange analogy.
Since the Wii Motion + accesory was included with the game and it became part of every Wii Remote manufactured after september 2010. Leaving aside obvious things like the fact that M+ enhanced precision and was not some tacked on or extra feature like most of the locked stuff we talk about here.