With this week’s GOA Weekly Show talking about the GameCube and Pete showing off his still in the box GameCube (much jealously) Darren “Str8JaktJim” Macneall took a trip down memory lane with Nintendo’s criminally under-rated console.
There are two things I remember vividly around the launch of the GameCube.
The first is the demo disk that showed up in stores – the last one I can remember ever seeing. I think there were three games on it but I can only remember Luigi’s Mansion and Star Wars Rogue Squadron 2: Rogue Leader. If you were good enough you could finish the first boss in Luigi’s Mansion and finish the Death Star run in Rogue Leader. FYI, I was good enough.
The second thing I remember is being in Year 11 when it came out. Sadly, I didn’t get a GameCube on launch, but a friend was getting it and we spent all day teasing him that the GameCube had been out for X hours and he hadn’t played it yet! The next day he was relentless in his teasing of us for not having one yet.
Eventually I did get one and loved it. For a long time, it was Nintendo’s worst selling home console (thank you Wii U for taking that accolade) but I’ve always felt that its sales didn’t accurately reflect how amazing it was. It had some cracker games.
Rogue Leader is an amazing title. I still maintain it has the best version of The Battle Of Endor ever put into a video game and replaying levels to unlock bonus missions like attacking World Devastators on Mon Calamari from the Dark Empire series of comics was a blast. It was the game that inspired my Star Wars Play Time YouTube series.
While I admit I was one of the people that hated the look of The Legend Of Zelda: The Wind Waker when it was announced (mainly because of the amazing Spaceworld 2000 demo of a realistic Link and Gannon fighting), I was sold on the cel-shaded graphics the minute I faced off against the first dungeon boss.
My love of rhythm games like Rock Band was born on the GameCube with Donkey Konga and its adorable plastic bongo drums. My friends and I had many a good time laughing along to the songs on this wonderful peripheral.
Speaking of multiplayer mayhem, many hours were spent in Mario Kart: Double Dash working out the best combination of characters to get the best items and crush your opponent! And I just have to mention that Super Smash Bros: Melee is still played in competitive circles to this day.
Even back in the early 2000s Nintendo were thinking of a second screen via the Game Boy Advanced Link Cable which connected a Game Boy Advanced handheld console to the controller port of your GameCube. Multiplayer games of The Legend Of Zelda: Four Swords Adventure were epic with this feature!
Special shoutouts to titles with a special place in my heart like Pikmin, Viewtiful Joe, Eternal Darkness and Paper Mario: Thousand Year Door.
The Gamecube is an amazing little console with so many great titles. Do yourself a favour and add it to your retro collection if it’s not already.