No love for the Gamecube?

[Tanooki]

I take it that was a general statement. The Gamecube was the last Nintendo dedicated console in my book that did everything right (mini-DVD aside) and it was the industry, primarily the media and their lapdog fanboys that helped cause a rift in the last couple years of the system to screw it over. Gamecube has a stunning line-up of games, even was handed by Sega quite a few of those nice Dreamcast games too, as did other people (Ikaruga, Chaos Field, Castle of Shikigami II, etc.) If I had the time and just say screw this system and that system, and future systems I'd rack up a good 100+ game library for it easily enough.

The system was a blast to use, built like a tank, had less asinine load times than all 3 systems due to crafty design on it, and as a bonus it had the GB Player which gave you 1000s of more choices on what to do too. Unlike my older systems pre-HDMI from Nintendo I have up for the R5, the GC stays plugged in along side the DC on the same shelf.

[jmbarnes101]

Yes, i think everyone should try it for themselves.

[marurun]

"The media" had nothing to do with it. There's a fantastic article out there on the development of the Gamecube and Nintendo was not doing their part to lure and keep third parties. Look at the review when Soul Calibur 2 came out. PS2 was declared the weakest version in most reviews, and the Gamecube version was praised for the inclusion of Link. Good third party games were a testament to the system, but not to Nintendo's interest in investing in third parties. The GC might have been easy to develop for, but Nintendo kept the hardware secret, even from developers, until very late in the game, and was also hurt by system finalization and release delays. Nintendo has just never stepped up to actively support and invest in 3rd party developers the way Sony and Microsoft do.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/dromble.wo ... ecube/amp/

[Tempest]

There's a pretty in-depth writeup about the Gamecube from a few years ago here that might be of interest.

Thanks. That's a really interesting read. After reading Console Wars recently, that and this article really emphasise the fact that Nintendo prefer to do things their own way. It's great to have a vision and maintain it. As a result we saw a lot of games on Nintendo systems, especially the Cube, that few other developers would even try to create, let alone conceive. The Cube is the era that shows this aspect of Nintendo the most; they don't care what the current trend is, they are happy to do their own thing.

However, from a business perspective, it's not a great move. It's why they lost 65% of the market to SEGA during the 16-bit era, even more to Sony during the fifth generation of consoles, and continued with even worse sales for the Cube, sadly. And it happened again with the Wii-U. And from what everyone is saying about the Switch, could happen again.

But this committment to their vision is admirable and what makes the company's games so good.

[marurun]

I think what a lot of people miss is that the Gamecube was something of a return to form in hardware as far as Nintendo goes. The N64 was a unique design hamstrung with some bizarre technical choices. People like to talk up it's theoretical power, but in practice it was not able to deliver on those promises. The Gamecube, however, was a powerful and practical system. Ars Technica did a 3-way analysis back in the day where they looked at the hardware design philosophy behind the PS2, the Gamecube, and the Xbox, because that was a generation with 3 competitors all pursuing very different hardware models. The Gamecube was the one that followed the most traditional console hardware model. It was a logical, perfect extension of the 16-bit to 32-bit to post-32-bit generation. Programming for the the Gamecube would have been a very natural thing for anyone comfortable with the PS1 or the Dreamcast.

Ars Technica's John Siracusa said of the Gamecube:

I believe to be the most perfectly designed piece of gaming hardware ever released. You can debate endlessly about which console was "more powerful," which had better games, and so on. But in terms of hardware elegance, the GameCube stands alone.

The Gamecube's core model was simple and powerful, a robust CPU (PowerPC 750-derived) paired with a graphics chip consisting of powerful geometry hardware (arguably more triangles than the PS2) and TL-style (texture & lighting) shaders. Audio was software-mixed by the CPU. Main system memory and VRAM were separate low-latency 1T-SRAM chips.

Compare this to the Xbox, which was essentially a mini-PC, consisting of expensive hardware probably sold at a loss over the entire sales history, and the PS2, which is insanely complex custom hardware which ultimately netted only modest performance improvements over the Dreamcast.

Effectively, the Gamecube's failure was not due in anyway to the hardware design. Nintendo designed the perfect console for that particular console generation and then failed to do the legwork and outreach to bring third-parties into the fold as equal partners. Nintendo's corporate culture is what hamstrung the Gamecube. Its engineering, however, was flawless.

[jdollatari]

tons of great memories with my GC and wii kinda looking at getting back into them both here soon but want to get current with wii u and switch first before I go backwards for nostalgic fun

[mas]

I like the GameCube but I hate the prices lol. It's a cute system and I did have every "only for GameCube" title there was out there for exclusive games.
I just got another system for free from my brother ray who also gave me Mario kart, resident evil and Mario party 5 so I'm good for a bit lol. But I recommend you look at the new thread I wrote for top ten games under ten bucks. The first system is GameCube

[Tanooki]

Good on you. You'd actually be surprised how much you can get for $10 or less on the GC still, complete in the box no less, that isn't garbage or shovelware. The flippers outside of certain stuff (mostly 1st party) have more or less left it alone for high tier abuse. Few games break their original retail prices so that I'd consider a good omen at this rate.

Also consider getting a version 1.06 FREELOADER if possible, then you can run almost all the PAL and JPN releases of which there are some stunning games. I've only bothered to grab 3 at this rate but when you have Doshin the Giant (PAL-ENGLISH), and 2 Hudson' Selects of Bonk's Adventure and Star Soldier you kind of have it made.

[jmbarnes101]

So I picked up the Intec portable screen new a couple of years ago and I now have a lead on the rechargeable battery pack that goes with it. They pop up on Ebay from time to time but usually for more then I am comfortable paying. This one will be around $30.

[fastbilly1]

Good on you jmbarnes. I always wanted the screens but never found one at a price I could afford.