I’m here to kill it.
I owned a Nintendo Gamecube, I played a lot of games and yet I can’t understand how its treated as THE gold standard for Nintendo. Its not. I can say this as someone who not only owned the system, but had friends who owned the system who had discontent with it, the incredible low sales in comparison to the GBA and a quick search through old message forums of “”Gamecube? More like GAYCUBE! Hur hur hur.”” The system was even 99 dollars at one point and couldn’t even sell!
I can tell you exactly why the system did poorly and why I don’t remember it fondly at all.
Late ports and drought game releases. Enjoy the launch? Good because that’s all you’ll be playing months on end. Gamecube was plagued with awful release times, none of the big third party games graced the console as the same time as XBOX or PS2 ports, even at all.
Twilight Princess? Enjoy a 4 year absence then pushed to another consoles launch. Live in Pal region here have smash bros months later (smae with the Wii release)
The “”Art student”” generation of games released by Nintendo. How did Mario sunshine ever make it out at all with that marketing? How did Zelda Wind Waker get even approved after the stone cold dead audience début? Kirby racer? Nobody wanted that. F-zero went from a simple to pick up and play to being flat out unfriendly to new players. Odama? Doshin the giant? Who thinks anyone wants these? Donkey Kong is a bongo game? Luigi the ghost hunter? That Wario game I can’t even remember? That sums it up really for the Gamecube exclusives a lot of forgettable software. Or crippled by forcing extra controllers gimmicks (4 gba’s to play final fantasy crystal chronicals with friends despite the system has 4 controller ports!) What about the Capcom five exclusives? That fell through hard.
Literally the most praised Gamecube games didn’t come with a stupid gimmick or were ported to other consoles. Resident evil series, Smash Bros, the Metroid Prime series, Soul Calibar 2, Phantasy star online (without online geeze) Skys of Arcadia, Tales of Sympthonia, Viewtiful Joe. See the pattern? Only two out the best I could think of were exclusive!
The only good thing I think is the GBA port on the bottom (which was limited and hard to find.) but hardly any other features of the Gamecube went unused, no Internet connection, The awfully expensive GBA connectivity. It was complete lack of dedication going ahead with any ideas during the Gamecube era.
Tha’ts the perfect summary of the Gamecube, complete disappointment. Even coming off the N64 there were games that were trend setters. Here, there was nothing. The most innovative were made by Retro or Capcom. Nintendo themselves just didn’t turn up to fight.
I couldn’t agree more. The hardcore though are re-writing history to say the Gamecube was the greatest console ever, Nintendo was awesome, and then…Dun, dun, dun!!!!!
The casuals came.
Yes, the casuals came and ‘screwed everything up’. “Nintendo should only make games for the hardcore, and no more games for casuals!” spits a hardcore gamer.
One thing I recall during the Gamecube Era was the blatant mockery of Nintendo fans. A generation later, these Nintendo fans are now embraced as ‘hardcore’ and the blatant mockery is directed at the ‘casuals’.
What is going on, I think, is other consoles’ marketing attacking and mocking the mover of the Nintendo platform. Traditionally, it was the Nintendo faithful fans. They stuck with the N64 and with the Gamecube. With the Wii, the mover of the Nintendo platform was ‘da casualz!’ so they become the object of scorn and mockery.
What astonishes me is how Nintendo keeps falling for it.
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