Aside from the O B J E C T I V E L Y wrong opinions about Windwaker, this was interesting to read. Tbf console "power" wasn't a thing I started paying attention to until the PS3 came out and made a big deal of it, but I had no idea that the Gamecube was an underrated power house.
I got a GameCube when I was 14, and I personally actually really enjoyed Smash Bros Melee and Mario Sunshine. Also Mario Kart Double Dash is still my favorite entry to the series. It's just a shame that it would go on to develop a critical error that stopped it reading disks Orz
Also that's a fascinating tidbit that despite Halo having an ENORMOUS impact on pop culture, the Xbox itself saw lower adoption.
Anyways, good read! I wasn't expecting much when you started this series, but I'm starting to really enjoy it. Looking forward to the next one!
I knew this comment would come XD believe me, I wish I loved Wind Waker too but revisiting it as an adult? It just doesn't live up to my memories of it like Ocarina of Time does. The Gamecube is stifled by its discs (Nintendo making the same mistake twice) but yes, it is, in fact, a bit better than the PS2 and if you compare them side-by-side the video quality is a lot less blurry on the 'cube too.
To each their own. I do enjoy Smash but it's not a game I can paly for hours, neither would I buy one on launch, it's just one of those Nintendo IP's I'm happy to get at half-price a few years after launch.
I'm always surprised when I remind myself how little the original Xbox actually sold too: just 24 million units but in its defence, it was also on the market for only 4 years before being replaced and Halo 2 came out towards the end of the lifespan; Morrowind too was really the game that put TES on the map so it wasn't quite the system-seller that Oblivion or Skyrim were. A lot of the Xbox library was made up of sequels to Dreamcast games too, a console that similarly didn't do amazing.
I appreciate your honesty! I find it really hard to write reviews because deep down, I have this nagging feeling that I'm just repeating the same things everyone else has said a million times before or that nobody really cares what I think but given the growth of this Substack in the past month and the engagement down in the comments, it seems my gut feeling is wrong.
Plenty more to come so I'll see you in the next one too :)
It's appropriate that years later, Nintendo might be making hardware medium mistakes that might end up stifling their new console. I'm convinced that their sticking to the 64 GB Switch cards may be their undoing.
In all fairness, Smash was a much bigger hit with teenage me compared to where I'm at today. I still bought Ultimate and the DLC Season Pass, but I haven't touched it in probably a solid year now. I did, however, fire up Windwaker on Dolphin last year, and personally it holds up stronger than ever. It's also interesting seeing how many ideas Nintendo was playing with that later resurfaced in BotW. Tastes have a way of changing as you get deeper into adulthood.
Honestly, that same nagging feeling (among other issues) is the biggest thing that's kept me from starting my own blog for years now. The fact that you're here writing what you want to write is actually a really big deal at the end of the day
There's definitely potential for it to hamstring them. It's worked so far but the Switch 2 has the power to receive extensive 3rd party support in a way that the original console never truly did; the original Switch couldn't even run Resident Evil 7, a game older than the console itself. These modern AAA's will require more space.
They certainly do and maybe one day my video game tastebuds will realign more in-favour with Wind Waker? It's not an impossibility, I have changed my mind about a lot of games over the years both warming to and away from titles.
I really appreciate that and I'm glad that what I want to write actually has an audience. When I first started this blog I wondered if I would do better on YouTube and while I imagine the exposure and financial incentives would be better, I don't really want to be editing videos all the time, finding quiet time to record audio or trying to appease an algorithm that rewards a daily outflow of sewage.
I think one thing to keep in mind when it comes to that kind of hesitation is that people will still happily read [or watch, or listen to] something they've 'heard a million times before' if they think it comes from a place of sincerity, either well-thought through, personally relevant, or whatever. It's only when the reviews or retrospectives or lists come across as forced or artificial that people start going 'I've heard this all before' and tune out. So I think as long as you genuinely have something to say, even if other people have said the same before, it won't turn people off. And at least someplace like here, I don't think having a couple articles come out someone doesn't want to read will ruin anything for them the way more tightly algorithmically controlled platforms are.
The Gamecube is like the Dreamcast. Beloved by those who were there (well, most people, haha), looked upon as a curiosity by those who weren't.
After the lackluster Nintendo 64 library, I appreciate that Nintendo just refused to play it safe with almost all of their first party titles. Also, there are more games. Lots more. The Gamecube has the weirdest library and that's why I love it. Odama, Cubivore, Viewtiful Joe (originally an exclusive), Pikmin 1 and 2, Donkey Konga 1 and 2, man... I was never wanting for games on this thing.
I bought the Game Boy Player, which is the successor the Game Boy Advance and I loved it. I am not a handheld gamer so being able to play more Nintendo games without needing a handheld was great for me.
But of course, the Cube sold peanuts so Nintendo regressed hard with the Wii.
Really enjoyed this article, wasn't expecting you to come down so hard on the library, but that's ok!
It's weird because I wasn't there for the Dreamcast and yet I adore it but I am the prime, starry-eyed nostalgia-having target audience for anything Gamecube but I just find myself so indifferent to this console.
The Gamecube definitely has more to play than the N64, there's no denying that and I also feel they experimented more but for me? A lot of these experiments didn't land; I bought Pikmin a while ago and only managed about an hour of play but to be very honest, there are a lot of Gamecube classics I haven't played yet too.
I have heard bad things about the Gameboy Player's emulation quality but I can imagine the comfort of a full-TV more than makes up for it; I have been interested in owning one myself but the disc required to make it run is somewhere around the £150 mark today, if memory serves.
Ah the Wii, that's a console I have a lot of thoughts in, that one will be soon :)
I'm glad you enjoyed it! I have to say I'm surprised I don't like the Gamecube that much too, I just don't get that nostalgia for it despite the memories and when I play it, it's almost exclusively for my annual Resident Evil binge in October.
I loved the GameCube but I bought it as a complementary console to my Xbox. Had it been my only console I would have been very green-eyed about the libraries of the other systems.
I think that's a really fair assessment. I also had it as a second (eventually third) console and i have to say, I definitely played it the least. Until the Xbox One I was a massive Xbox guy, it even overtook my PS2 by the end of my time playing those consoles.
I'm generally not that big a GameCube fan either. I think it was the last console I bought close to launch; it was around this point that I became an 80-90% PC gamer. I also regretted buying it instead of the PS2. I think I enjoyed Final Fantasy X on my friend's borrowed PS2 more than any single game on GC, and there were a lot of titles on PS2 that I've missed out on to this day..
I agree with your criticisms on the core Nintendo properties, but I'll add to it: they were derivative. Mario Sunshine was a major disappointment, but it came as even MORE of a disappointment when the memory of Mario 64 blowing our minds was still pretty fresh.
The same applies somewhat to Wind Waker vs. OoT, though I actually like a lot of things about that game and don't consider it nearly as large a disappointment as Mario Sunshine. We can call it "safe" when we judge it next to Majora's Mask but it's not even remotely safe next to Twilight Princess. I mainly just think the game is uneven. In the end, mainly because of that unevenness, it's less fun than OoT.
I did enjoy Smash Bros. Melee and it's probably my most played GC game. But in the end my high school friends and I are in the rare group that still considers Smash 64 the best, for all its cheese. When we would get back together for years afterwards, it was always Smash 64 that came out and dominated the proceedings, even if we tried to start with Melee.
And I thought Metroid Prime 1 was alright (to this day never played 2 or 3). But even though I love Metroidvanias and have gotten a lot of enjoyment out of most of the 2D Metroids, I guess I just prefer the 2D heavily over 3D in this genre.
We pretty much have the same opinions except I'm not a big Smash fan; I'm more of a Tekken guy, or at least I am when I can stomach the vitriol of that community.
I adore the Prime games but I can definitely see why you prefer 2D; Metroid Prime 1 is also quite derivative of Super, which is one reason I prefer Metroid Prime 2.
The Gamecube was special for me, too, because it was my return to consoles after several years. I missed out on the fourth and fifth generations almost entirely [specifically SNES onwards] because we lost everything in a fire and made a family decision to dedicate what was left after rebuilding to getting a PC strong enough to run 3D games instead of getting consoles that I would probably be the only one playing. So it was almost a decade until I played, for example, Super Metroid or SM64, at least on my own time and not at a friend's house. [I still think we made the right call]
At some point in the PS2/Gamecube/Xbox era, me and another less than wealthy friend decided to pool our money and go halves on a Gamecube and timeshare it, specifically so he could play Windwaker and Sunshine and I could play Metroid Prime 1 and 2. And after we finished our obligations, I picked up a few more recommended games, and a lot of those have become some of my favorite console titles of all time: Chibi Robo, Paper Mario: Thousand Year Door, Killer7, Eternal Darkness. I even did a long-distance trade with someone online to borrow a copy of Cubivore, which was already too expensive to buy outright.
And, having revisited most of those games recently, I have to say they generally hold up better than most PC games of the era, and feel less compromised than the high water marks from the Gamecube's rivals that generation. Even when the games themselves have some problems, like with Windwaker, I think the focus of many Gamecube titles on strong, scalable art design and solid control fundamentals makes them age a lot better than any other subset of 3D games. And as a final note, the Wii being backward compatible with GC games meant that they stayed on my shelf long into the next generation - I probably wound up playing almost as many hours of GC games on my Wii as I did Wii games, and it took a while for Sony, for example, to even start offering the most unique and worthwhile PS2 era games for digital download on their consoles.
It's really shit that happened to you back then, I'm sorry about the fire but I'm glad you found a solution to keep enjoying video games that worked for you.
I've been meaning to play Eternal Darkness for years now, I think I'll finally pick it up this Halloween; I've said before that I value word of mouth above all else and if one of my readers is telling me it's great, then that just seals the deal. I also love Prime 1 and 2.
I do agree that they age well, I think it's a matter of personal taste but I will always respect games with a lot of ambition that don't quite hit the mark and the Gamecube has very few of these, mostly games that were rushed out the door, at least in my opinion.
I was expecting more controversial takes but you hit the nail right in the head. I remember loving the GameCube as a kid, but as an adult I can't name many first party games I enjoyed playing.
When it comes to first party games, I think the one I played the most was the Zelda Collector's Edition, which shouldn't count. Never had a soft spot for Kirby Air Ride, Luigi's Mansion, Double Dash, Melee or Metroid Prime. Never beat Sunshine until 3D All Stars on the Switch. Never played Paper Mario TTYD until the remake.
Did play a lot of Sonic games in it though. To me the Gamecube will always be a Chao Garden machine.
Aside from the O B J E C T I V E L Y wrong opinions about Windwaker, this was interesting to read. Tbf console "power" wasn't a thing I started paying attention to until the PS3 came out and made a big deal of it, but I had no idea that the Gamecube was an underrated power house.
I got a GameCube when I was 14, and I personally actually really enjoyed Smash Bros Melee and Mario Sunshine. Also Mario Kart Double Dash is still my favorite entry to the series. It's just a shame that it would go on to develop a critical error that stopped it reading disks Orz
Also that's a fascinating tidbit that despite Halo having an ENORMOUS impact on pop culture, the Xbox itself saw lower adoption.
Anyways, good read! I wasn't expecting much when you started this series, but I'm starting to really enjoy it. Looking forward to the next one!
I knew this comment would come XD believe me, I wish I loved Wind Waker too but revisiting it as an adult? It just doesn't live up to my memories of it like Ocarina of Time does. The Gamecube is stifled by its discs (Nintendo making the same mistake twice) but yes, it is, in fact, a bit better than the PS2 and if you compare them side-by-side the video quality is a lot less blurry on the 'cube too.
To each their own. I do enjoy Smash but it's not a game I can paly for hours, neither would I buy one on launch, it's just one of those Nintendo IP's I'm happy to get at half-price a few years after launch.
I'm always surprised when I remind myself how little the original Xbox actually sold too: just 24 million units but in its defence, it was also on the market for only 4 years before being replaced and Halo 2 came out towards the end of the lifespan; Morrowind too was really the game that put TES on the map so it wasn't quite the system-seller that Oblivion or Skyrim were. A lot of the Xbox library was made up of sequels to Dreamcast games too, a console that similarly didn't do amazing.
I appreciate your honesty! I find it really hard to write reviews because deep down, I have this nagging feeling that I'm just repeating the same things everyone else has said a million times before or that nobody really cares what I think but given the growth of this Substack in the past month and the engagement down in the comments, it seems my gut feeling is wrong.
Plenty more to come so I'll see you in the next one too :)
It's appropriate that years later, Nintendo might be making hardware medium mistakes that might end up stifling their new console. I'm convinced that their sticking to the 64 GB Switch cards may be their undoing.
In all fairness, Smash was a much bigger hit with teenage me compared to where I'm at today. I still bought Ultimate and the DLC Season Pass, but I haven't touched it in probably a solid year now. I did, however, fire up Windwaker on Dolphin last year, and personally it holds up stronger than ever. It's also interesting seeing how many ideas Nintendo was playing with that later resurfaced in BotW. Tastes have a way of changing as you get deeper into adulthood.
Honestly, that same nagging feeling (among other issues) is the biggest thing that's kept me from starting my own blog for years now. The fact that you're here writing what you want to write is actually a really big deal at the end of the day
There's definitely potential for it to hamstring them. It's worked so far but the Switch 2 has the power to receive extensive 3rd party support in a way that the original console never truly did; the original Switch couldn't even run Resident Evil 7, a game older than the console itself. These modern AAA's will require more space.
They certainly do and maybe one day my video game tastebuds will realign more in-favour with Wind Waker? It's not an impossibility, I have changed my mind about a lot of games over the years both warming to and away from titles.
I really appreciate that and I'm glad that what I want to write actually has an audience. When I first started this blog I wondered if I would do better on YouTube and while I imagine the exposure and financial incentives would be better, I don't really want to be editing videos all the time, finding quiet time to record audio or trying to appease an algorithm that rewards a daily outflow of sewage.
I think one thing to keep in mind when it comes to that kind of hesitation is that people will still happily read [or watch, or listen to] something they've 'heard a million times before' if they think it comes from a place of sincerity, either well-thought through, personally relevant, or whatever. It's only when the reviews or retrospectives or lists come across as forced or artificial that people start going 'I've heard this all before' and tune out. So I think as long as you genuinely have something to say, even if other people have said the same before, it won't turn people off. And at least someplace like here, I don't think having a couple articles come out someone doesn't want to read will ruin anything for them the way more tightly algorithmically controlled platforms are.
Hey, thanks for the shoutout!
The Gamecube is like the Dreamcast. Beloved by those who were there (well, most people, haha), looked upon as a curiosity by those who weren't.
After the lackluster Nintendo 64 library, I appreciate that Nintendo just refused to play it safe with almost all of their first party titles. Also, there are more games. Lots more. The Gamecube has the weirdest library and that's why I love it. Odama, Cubivore, Viewtiful Joe (originally an exclusive), Pikmin 1 and 2, Donkey Konga 1 and 2, man... I was never wanting for games on this thing.
I bought the Game Boy Player, which is the successor the Game Boy Advance and I loved it. I am not a handheld gamer so being able to play more Nintendo games without needing a handheld was great for me.
But of course, the Cube sold peanuts so Nintendo regressed hard with the Wii.
Really enjoyed this article, wasn't expecting you to come down so hard on the library, but that's ok!
It's weird because I wasn't there for the Dreamcast and yet I adore it but I am the prime, starry-eyed nostalgia-having target audience for anything Gamecube but I just find myself so indifferent to this console.
The Gamecube definitely has more to play than the N64, there's no denying that and I also feel they experimented more but for me? A lot of these experiments didn't land; I bought Pikmin a while ago and only managed about an hour of play but to be very honest, there are a lot of Gamecube classics I haven't played yet too.
I have heard bad things about the Gameboy Player's emulation quality but I can imagine the comfort of a full-TV more than makes up for it; I have been interested in owning one myself but the disc required to make it run is somewhere around the £150 mark today, if memory serves.
Ah the Wii, that's a console I have a lot of thoughts in, that one will be soon :)
I'm glad you enjoyed it! I have to say I'm surprised I don't like the Gamecube that much too, I just don't get that nostalgia for it despite the memories and when I play it, it's almost exclusively for my annual Resident Evil binge in October.
I loved the GameCube but I bought it as a complementary console to my Xbox. Had it been my only console I would have been very green-eyed about the libraries of the other systems.
I think that's a really fair assessment. I also had it as a second (eventually third) console and i have to say, I definitely played it the least. Until the Xbox One I was a massive Xbox guy, it even overtook my PS2 by the end of my time playing those consoles.
I'm generally not that big a GameCube fan either. I think it was the last console I bought close to launch; it was around this point that I became an 80-90% PC gamer. I also regretted buying it instead of the PS2. I think I enjoyed Final Fantasy X on my friend's borrowed PS2 more than any single game on GC, and there were a lot of titles on PS2 that I've missed out on to this day..
I agree with your criticisms on the core Nintendo properties, but I'll add to it: they were derivative. Mario Sunshine was a major disappointment, but it came as even MORE of a disappointment when the memory of Mario 64 blowing our minds was still pretty fresh.
The same applies somewhat to Wind Waker vs. OoT, though I actually like a lot of things about that game and don't consider it nearly as large a disappointment as Mario Sunshine. We can call it "safe" when we judge it next to Majora's Mask but it's not even remotely safe next to Twilight Princess. I mainly just think the game is uneven. In the end, mainly because of that unevenness, it's less fun than OoT.
I did enjoy Smash Bros. Melee and it's probably my most played GC game. But in the end my high school friends and I are in the rare group that still considers Smash 64 the best, for all its cheese. When we would get back together for years afterwards, it was always Smash 64 that came out and dominated the proceedings, even if we tried to start with Melee.
And I thought Metroid Prime 1 was alright (to this day never played 2 or 3). But even though I love Metroidvanias and have gotten a lot of enjoyment out of most of the 2D Metroids, I guess I just prefer the 2D heavily over 3D in this genre.
We pretty much have the same opinions except I'm not a big Smash fan; I'm more of a Tekken guy, or at least I am when I can stomach the vitriol of that community.
I adore the Prime games but I can definitely see why you prefer 2D; Metroid Prime 1 is also quite derivative of Super, which is one reason I prefer Metroid Prime 2.
Thanks for reading!
The Gamecube was special for me, too, because it was my return to consoles after several years. I missed out on the fourth and fifth generations almost entirely [specifically SNES onwards] because we lost everything in a fire and made a family decision to dedicate what was left after rebuilding to getting a PC strong enough to run 3D games instead of getting consoles that I would probably be the only one playing. So it was almost a decade until I played, for example, Super Metroid or SM64, at least on my own time and not at a friend's house. [I still think we made the right call]
At some point in the PS2/Gamecube/Xbox era, me and another less than wealthy friend decided to pool our money and go halves on a Gamecube and timeshare it, specifically so he could play Windwaker and Sunshine and I could play Metroid Prime 1 and 2. And after we finished our obligations, I picked up a few more recommended games, and a lot of those have become some of my favorite console titles of all time: Chibi Robo, Paper Mario: Thousand Year Door, Killer7, Eternal Darkness. I even did a long-distance trade with someone online to borrow a copy of Cubivore, which was already too expensive to buy outright.
And, having revisited most of those games recently, I have to say they generally hold up better than most PC games of the era, and feel less compromised than the high water marks from the Gamecube's rivals that generation. Even when the games themselves have some problems, like with Windwaker, I think the focus of many Gamecube titles on strong, scalable art design and solid control fundamentals makes them age a lot better than any other subset of 3D games. And as a final note, the Wii being backward compatible with GC games meant that they stayed on my shelf long into the next generation - I probably wound up playing almost as many hours of GC games on my Wii as I did Wii games, and it took a while for Sony, for example, to even start offering the most unique and worthwhile PS2 era games for digital download on their consoles.
It's really shit that happened to you back then, I'm sorry about the fire but I'm glad you found a solution to keep enjoying video games that worked for you.
I've been meaning to play Eternal Darkness for years now, I think I'll finally pick it up this Halloween; I've said before that I value word of mouth above all else and if one of my readers is telling me it's great, then that just seals the deal. I also love Prime 1 and 2.
I do agree that they age well, I think it's a matter of personal taste but I will always respect games with a lot of ambition that don't quite hit the mark and the Gamecube has very few of these, mostly games that were rushed out the door, at least in my opinion.
I was expecting more controversial takes but you hit the nail right in the head. I remember loving the GameCube as a kid, but as an adult I can't name many first party games I enjoyed playing.
When it comes to first party games, I think the one I played the most was the Zelda Collector's Edition, which shouldn't count. Never had a soft spot for Kirby Air Ride, Luigi's Mansion, Double Dash, Melee or Metroid Prime. Never beat Sunshine until 3D All Stars on the Switch. Never played Paper Mario TTYD until the remake.
Did play a lot of Sonic games in it though. To me the Gamecube will always be a Chao Garden machine.