marurun wrote:I was late to the GameCube party (surprise!!), but I do remember reading a lot about the hardware architecture and appreciating just how effectively Nintendo had balanced power and cost. It was more powerful than the PS2 and not too far behind the Xbox. The problem, however, was that it tended to get inferior ports, due to either the PS2 being the target platform (due to audience size) or the Xbox being the target platform (because it was the easiest to develop for using traditional pipelines and had the most power on tap). Original titles for the system were what showed off the system's power.
In my experience most mutliplatform games were better on Gamecube than PS2, but Xbox usually had the best version out of the three.
The only multiplat games I can think of that were better on the PS2 were XIII (which lost some visual effects on GC and just didn't look quite so good) and Def Jam Fight For NY (which looked muddier, darker, lack some lighting effects and lacked different voice options for your playable character in story mode).
There are a few ports that suffered due to the Gamecube controller having fewer buttons than PS2 and Xbox (SSX and Freedom Fighters come to mind), otherwise in nearly ever case I can think of, the Gamecube port is better than the PS2 version or at least on par.