Very Long But Detailed Read about the GCN

[Jamisonia]

http://www.dromble.com/2014/01/07/dolph ... -gamecube/

[AppleQueso]

"Very long" is an extremely accurate statement. It's like a giant super detailed retrospective on the entire history of the console.

Skimming though it a bit, it looks pretty awesome. I'm going to have to read the whole thing once I have more time.

[flojocabron]

I read it.

Its got lots of details on the ups and downs of the manufacturing process and many problems first through third parties had developing games for it.

Not to mention the struggles of being the competition to the ps2.

There's also some classic 'stubborn' Nintendo in there too. They may not have buckled to the popular trends of the time; but now, they probably wish they had.

Overall, I am pleased with my GameCube. I got it new retail, at $150. The few games that I bought for it, I really enjoyed them. We are gamers after all!

Now bring on the wii retrospective!

[oxymoron]

How long did it take you?

[flojocabron]

About 1 1/2 to 2 hours. Was doing other things and ate some dinner.

Theres a couple of grammar errors and a paragraph is pretty much posted twice. But overall quite informative.

I was surprised over how some companies change dramatically when you join or leave Nintendo!

[Jamisonia]

To sum up the article, Nintendo really thought the GCN was going to be the killer console. They took all the criticisms of the N64 and attempted to mitigate them with the GCN, in terms of system power, in terms of ease of development, the only thing they missed was beating the PS2 to market. The failure of it was totally unexpected and very puzzling to the company. However, the Wii wasn't totally a kneejerk response, as Nintendo was actually developing the Wii Remote as an add on for the GCN. There are some patents showing a Wii Remote interfacing with a Wavebird sensor.

One quote from Iwata that stood out to me, in reference to 3rd parties porting games to all 3 consoles:

Satoru Iwata said, “If that (keeps happening), the console business becomes a commodity business. There is no reason to choose one console over another, except price,” he said. “Then it doesn’t matter which machine you choose–they all play the same games.”

There also is a great section about how Yamauchi did not understand why Nintendo was seen as kiddy, and the article suggests that Nintendo never intended to cultivate that image, that they just wanted to make games that appealed to everyone. It goes on to say that they attempted several times to get mature games onto the GCN but that 3rd parties refused. It basically said that kiddy image was a self fulfilling prophecy. Nintendo's consoles got that image, so 3rd parties wouldn't publish mature games for it, further giving it the image of being only for kids, so when Nintendo asked them to do so they refused citing it was too kiddy, furthering the idea the console was only for kids. This was basically the reason for Eternal Darkness.

I'd like to know now what Nintendo thinks of that image. If they are still puzzled by it, or if they just don't care, and feel like somebody has to target that market. There was actually sales data cited in there that said the PS2 sold much better with kids than the GCN, so the image isn't even accurate. The other thing was that Nintendo wanted games exclusive to Nintendo and American dev thought that meant kiddy games, when Nintendo just wanted experiences unique to Nintendo, i.e. exclusivity, but "hardcore" was fine.

Honestly reading that makes a ton of sense, and seeing Nintendo's decisions could totally be mistook for wanting a kiddy image, when really Nintendo just didn't want every game to be a photo-realistic FPS. They want variety, they want unique experiences, they want fun. Maybe this is my Nintendo fanboy seeping out, but in many ways I think this describes Nintendo today, and they company is unfairly pinned with this kiddy image, when in fact they're the only ones willing to try unique and different stuff. This article describes a lot of what us Nintendo fanboys have been trying to explain about how Nintendo isn't for kids, but isn't just okay with doing things the same as others.

...40 percent over the age of 18 for GameCube

The article also talks about Rare, and how Rare employees where excited to work for MS, until they actually started actually working for MS, and then the talent disappeared very quickly. Basically MS saw Rare as a developer of kiddy games, owing to their association with Nintendo. Rare was hoping to work on more gritty games with MS, but MS wouldn't allow them to, and basically stifled their creativity into the stuff you see today. Some Rare employees said that they though Nintendo was strict, until they saw MS, who were control freaks. Nintendo would suggest Rare do something a certain way, very highly recommend they do it this way, but not force them. MS would say its this way or you don't make the game period, and this killed the talent. It also mentions that Nintendo and MS did have serious talks about MS buying Nintendo prior to the Xbox.

Lastly the article spends quite a bit of time talking about online gameplay and Nintendo. Basically Nintendo kept going back and forth on this with the GCN. In the early stages they wanted online gameplay to be a core component, then later they decided it wasn't a viable market. In many ways they were correct at that early stage, online gaming wasn't making money. The problem is Nintendo didn't spend anytime building up the infrastructure for when online did become a big deal, like Sony and MS had. Obviously that is biting them in the ass now as this stuff doesn't appear overnight.

[ExedExes]

Good article, but for me, I feel that with my Nintendo lineage in choice of consoles over the years, getting the GC was a good decision. Interesting point on multi-port releases, but I'm both glad that many popular games and series did make it onto the GC but I also love the GC-exclusive games too.

[Violent By Design]

To many people, family friendly is considered kiddy.

I'm not sure if the PS2 being sold more to kids than GC point really makes sense, because the PS2 outsold the Gamecube so badly in general, that naturally more kids had PS2's than Gamecubes.

Nintendo's kid image I think just came from its earlier consoles. Nintendo was extremely popular during a time when video games were stereotyped as kids toys.

Around when GTA 3 came out is when Video Games started becoming a more acceptable hobby for an adult. Things like Mario are synonymous with childhood for a lot of people, and Mario is synonymous with Nintendo.


The start of the GC wasn't far removed from the sprite age, and the sprite age everything looked cartoony by nature. Even games that are graphic in nature don't have realistic feel despite being gritty, take Streets of Rage, a ton of violence, really raw stuff, but because of its aesthetic look it got away with it. The original Mortal Kombat really wasn't that violent, but it had guys who looked real as your characters, so it made a big difference in its presentation.

3D games is when characters started to look real to people, and worlds started to become more interactive. There was still a lot of novelty in 3D graphics, hence why no 2D games were made during the 6th Gen (which is why the 7th gen is underrated by people who said that gaming has went down hill, it's the first gen that has high priority in both 2D and 3D gaming). I'm not sure if I'd say Nintendo wasn't interested in photo realism (though I don't get why Jamisonia mentioned FPS, Nintendo made Metroid Prime which looked better than Halo for example), but they were not associated with it at all.


Then there was the backlash that came from Windwaker featuring kid Zelda and not adult Zelda. Really petty complaint, but it probably gave the impression to a lot of people that Nintendo made Link a kid again to try to get kids to buy the console (even though Link had always been a kid up to that point which many people chose to ignore at the time).

[marlowe221]

I have always been annoyed that "blood, guts, and curse words" = "mature" in the world of video games and that games that don't have stuff like that are "for kids." Maybe that kind of stuff seems cool and mature when you're 14 but at 31... well, a lot of it seems pretty juvenile now.

To me whether or not a game is "mature," if that term has any actual meaning at all, is a lot more complex a question than whether or not it would get an R rating if it were a movie.

Sorry about the mini-rant. I loved my GCN. Had a lot of good games for it and the graphics appealed to me more than anything I saw on PS2 or the original Xbox (which I also owned at the time).

[Retrogamer0001]

There was actually sales data cited in there that said the PS2 sold much better with kids than the GCN

There are a few reasons for this, though the main one is fairly simple to understand - when marketing to an older group of kids, a younger audience is automatically marketed to as well. When young kids see older ones buying something, it automatically becomes cool, and they immediately want to tag along to be like them. Considering how many PS2 consoles were sold and all the T and M-rated titles for the system, it's no surprise the dominos fell like that, though the fact that the Gamecube looked like a purple toy box certainly didn't help either.