> I had the (I think rarer) transparent one, but not the purple transparent

Mine was the purple transparent one.
Back then all I played on it were the mainline Pokemon games (all 7 of them, Red, Green, Blue, Yellow, Gold, Silver, and Crystal, and I still have all of them).
I might re-buy a GBC now that I'm playing SFC and N64 games again anyway.

> And from my perspective, N64 games weren't really harder, because I breezed through most of them

I meant compared to what we have in current year.