No shit. I mean what console has survived as long as those OG Gamecubes. I have had mine for 20 years and the first issue came up this year. Turns out it’s an easy fix I can do myself and nothing destroying the console itself I can still play while working on this fix.
Also the Gamecube had so many games that were moved from the N64 that and some of the rarest games exist on Gamecube. Sometimes I can’t believe it was ever a flop for them because it was a childhood favorite. I’m so glad I kept mine and tried to take good care of it even when it was in storage for so long.
I don’t think any console today or even back at the time in 99 or early 2000s would last 20 years with kids turning into adults and 5-6 moves without having a console breaking issue.
Ive had 2 PS2’s go down, a PS3 Gen1 break, 3 Xbox 360, and very sadly an OG Xbox that did last from 2005 to 2015, an N64, and my PS4 Slim is getting there for sure. All (except the 64) gotten years (some a decade) after this Gamecube I still have today.
Thank my lucky stars my sister gave it back to me because it is my rock of a console. It should have done so much better than what articles and money say. It’s a very sought after retro console and I’m glad I still have and take care of mine from 2003 when I was a youngin’
GameCube was good, but I say the SEGA Dreamcast definitely takes the Underrated and Underutilized Console award.
Wii U: Am I a joke to you?
Everyone: YES
To me, the WiiU is the modern Dreamcast. I miss it and it’s promises that we’re never kept :(
It’s a shame the Wii U never really saw the modding community the Vita had
It finally got there though at the end of it’s life. I have mine available still because it’s basically a modded Wii with the ability to also play WiiU Roms too.
Does it really compare to the Vita’s though? There’s a lot of source ports and homebrew for the Vita being made even now
The only thing wrong with the wiiu was the price of the games. People call it the “switch tax” but I had to pay $90 for pikmin 3 in 2013, when the idea of $70 games was still rocking the world of Sony and MS fans. If it wasn’t for a gift I never would have accepted that price.
I’m not a fan of the Dreamcast library at all. If you ask me, that’d be the Saturn, which has more interesting games by a wide margin, IMO. If anything, I feel the DC has been mythologized unfairly. It has good ports of a bunch of great ports of fighting games from the worst period for fighting games and a few 3D arcade ports from the worst period for 3D arcade games.
The Dreamcast library can feel underwhelming because of how shortlived the console was. Most Dreamcast games didn’t get to fully realize the console’s power because it didn’t last long enough for the potential to be fully realized. EA was afraid of piracy so didnt even try to develop for it, and the Dreamcast launched too close to the Saturn for most people. However, it was the fastest selling console in the US at the time. But then like, a year and a half later the PS2 launched and killed any chance the Dreamcast had.
Dreamcast had a lot of good games. Notably, Sonic Adventure, Soul Calibur, Shenmue, Grandia 2, and Record of Lodoss War. But what I think makes the library good is how experimental all the games on it were. Games like Illbleed. Its hard to find “duplicate” games on the Dreamcast, unless you look at like, the Resident Evil port and Dino Crisis port.
For a console that realistically only existed for about 18 months, it did quite well. Had the Dreamcast not launched so close to the Saturn, had SEGA supported the Saturn in the US more, had the PS2 not come along to kick it down, and had EA not dropped it instantly, then I definitely think the console would have done well.
It didn’t have a chance. Those are a lot of “ifs”. You’re basically saying if the other console manufacturers hadn’t manufactured consoles then the Dreamcast would have done great.
Look, from a design perspective, the DC was ahead of its time: cram a PC in a console shell, focus on sharp resolutions and online support. The template ended up becoming the Xbox and eventually after the 360 era it’s what all modern consoles are.
But in the context of them trying to bounce back from the Saturn’s very mishandled Western run, it was the absolute wrong console to make. All the arguments from Sega fans about how the games looked nicer than the PS2 and whatnot just didn’t hold up to scrutiny on the displays of the time. Was the resolution much higher? Yep. Did it matter when plugged in using component cables to a crummy consumer CRT? Absolutely not. It looked a whole generation behind.
And again, be careful about rating worldwide success from what happened in the US. The DC did surprisingly well there, like the N64 did, but much less elsewhere. The Gamecube outsold it 2:1, as did the original Xbox, and the PS2 ended up outselling both of those 10:1. The Dreamcast was in stores over here, for sure, but I have never met anybody who owned one.
It had Sonic Adventure which was and is a really great game. The chao garden made great use of the little screen thingy compared to other games.
Oh and Crazy Taxi was an arcade port but pretty dang decent despite that!
And uh… Sonic adventure 2?
OK maybe not a lot of greats but that’s part of the mythos of DC, it could’a been a contend’a but games didn’t make good use of its capabilities.
Shenmue!
Skies of Arcadia!
Grandia II!
Ikaruga!
MvC2!
Phantasy Star Online (WITH ONLINE PLAY?!)
DoA with age slider for boobies!
D2! (Criminally underrated)
Elemental Gimmick Gear!
Caution: Seaman!
ALL THE NES GAMES, SNES GAMES, GENESIS GAMES, MAME, GAMEBOY, you could just burn em on a regular CD and play them! In fact, NO COPY PROTECTION, just download whatever game you want and burn it, doesn’t even need to be a GD-ROM!
DVD playback was a big issue at the time. Buy a PS2 and you got a built in DVD player. Here’s the 2000 JCPenney Christmas catalog for DVD players:
https://christmas.musetechnical.com/ShowCatalogPage/2000-JCPenney-Christmas-Book/0689
Around $250-$350. The PS2 was introduced that year in North America for $300. So you could get one for about the price of a standalone DVD player. Why wouldn’t you? Nobody cares now, of course, but it was a big thing at the time.
Oh, and the PS2 played all the existing PS1 games. To this day, I still tell people that the PS2 is one of the best deals in retro gaming because of the wide range of titles it can play. Lots of hidden gems to find. Even better if you can score an early model PS3, but they’re harder to find and more expensive than a PS2.
A lot of people don’t realize this, but the same thing applied at an even greater scale with PS3’s Blu-Ray player.
At the time, Blu-Ray players cost $1000 while the PS3 launched at $500 or $600. Sony was legit doing everyone a solid, and they got shat on for it.
It’s so sad how the xbox 360 won that gen, considering it was the more expensive console when you factor in paying for 2nd internet. Then it ended up normalizing the trend of 2nd internet, lol.
Needless to say, I stopped buying consoles at the PS4 era. Thank god emulation is great, PC hardware is cheap, and many console exclusives are getting PC releases anyways.
I had one of those early model PS3s and I loved it. Eventually it died from overheating I think and I got a PS3 Slim to replace it only to discover my PS2 library was now unplayable…
PS2 was my first DVD player. First DVD was Braveheart!
I thought the Dreamcast earned this title
For sure. Lots of people knew how awesome game cube was and what it was capable of. Its lacking graphics with extremely well made games. The dreamcast was a powerhouse with VGA out. Barely anyone knew how amazing it was. It could have blown away Sony. Sega really dropped the ball. I wish I had known when it came out.
I thought it was more powerful than ps2
Both the Dreamcast and GameCube are.
The sad thing is I knew at the time, but lack of games and, most of all, the lack of my friends having it, made the dreamcast lose in favour of its contenders.
I’m on my 3rd dreamcast but it’s been fine for the last couple decades. My genesis, though, 1991 and still fine. Kicking myself actually, the cartridge port was feisty for EVER but i finally had the guts to really look in there and i tweezed out 30 years of fuzz that had felted down in it.
The dreamcast is still underrated it seems.
The GameCube was a flop mostly because of image and marketing, not because it wasn’t technically good.
I have one and I love it, but I only got it long, long after release.
What 12-year-old boy asking for a Christmas present is going to choose the cutesy purple brick that “only has kid games” over a sleek black PS2 that is seen as being adult, with action and fighting games? Not many, and so the GameCube flopped.
I think Nintendo were starting to see at that time that consoles weren’t just for boys. They were for girls too, and for the whole family, and the GameCube was a step towards that. But it didn’t go far enough. They ended up stopping short and falling smack in the middle where it didn’t appeal to the established ‘male gamer’ demographic, and still didn’t grab families either.
Then the Wii came along and went HARD on the family-friendly aspect, and just blasted off the shelves. Nintendo learned a lesson, but the GameCube was the price they had to pay for it.
Okay, here’s my obligatory reminder that it’s less of a flop than people, particularly in anglo territories, give it credit for. It sold just shy of the original Xbox and it outsold well liked stuff like the Dreamcast or the Vita about 2 to 1.
A few consoles at that time were very regional. The N64 was a rare sight where I’m from, I have seen an original Xbox in the wild exactly once, it was being used as a DVD player and the owner had no games for it. The Gamecube picked up a lot of steam over here once the price went down to 100 bucks and it got a reputation for having some of the best excluisves of that generation later in its lifespan.
The one thing I’d argue about its longevity as a retro console is that it’s almost entirely superseded by the Wii, which can play the entire library natively, has more functional output options and is super easy to find. The Cube is cuter, more iconic and built like a brick, though, so it’s a better thing to have on a shelf.
Here’s MY obligatory reminder that GameCube had little compartments on the bottom that you could hide yer drugs in!
And a handle. From that perspective it was a nice tiny lunchbox with a cool console attached to it.
And for the family friendly aspect nothing after the wii beat it.
The multiplayer games there are just better than something like the switch offers, and the controllers are a good size and weight for emulating whatever they are representing in games. Stuff like tennis with the tiny light switch controllers just feels wrong.
The market forces of today are also vastly different from when the GameCube or even the Wii launched. When the GameCube launched videogames were still largely considered something for children, game consoles were the primary platform for gaming, and the PC gaming market although it had been around for a while was still very much a hobbyist demographic. For context the GameCube was released in 2001 while Steam wouldn’t even be available till 2003 and wouldn’t have any 3rd party games until 2005. Today in contrast I think it’s very much accepted that people of all ages play videogames and the gaming market is pretty evenly divided up between PC and console gaming. Nintendo is quite happy with the niche they’ve carved out for themselves with their systems being largely a platform for their own extensive first party catalog plus any other 3rd party games people care to play on them. We live in an age where cross platform releases are the norm now, so platform is largely a question of preference outside of exclusive releases.
Family friendly at the time meant that your kids could play it on the living room TV and there wouldn’t be anything your average uptight conservative suburban mom would start writing angry letters about. Recalling my point about Nintendo’s family friendly rep having been established during the era of the NES and SNES it’s important to note that the ESRB didn’t exist for the entirety of the life of the NES and only showed up late into the life of the SNES. During that timeframe Nintendo very much wanted parents and grandparents to be comfortable purchasing any NES or SNES game for their children no matter their age, and so were very strict about what kinds of content they would or wouldn’t allow. The fact they let Mortal Kombat onto the SNES at all was something of a miracle even if they did insist on the most pointless censorship ever.
What you’re referring to as family friendly I would say is more accurately described as social gaming or couch co-op. The physical aspect of multiplayer gaming on the Wii certainly added something unique to local multiplayer on the console, an experience wholly unlike a group of players sitting on a couch holding more traditional controllers.
What you’re referring to as family friendly I would say is more accurately described as social gaming or couch co-op. The physical aspect of multiplayer gaming on the Wii certainly added something unique to local multiplayer on the console, an experience wholly unlike a group of players sitting on a couch holding more traditional controllers.
Pretty much everybody copied it afterwards - Microsoft has Kinect, Sony has some support to use their camera for that. Switch controls can be detached for that kind of play - but there never was the high amount of well done movement games available on any other platform afterwards, and never again the good haptics of the wii remote.
We have the wii and on of our switches hooked up to the TV - in that mode we pretty much exclusively use the wii. I recently downloaded pretty much all remaining sports and dance games to get some more variety. For the switch the cool stuff is the mario cart with physical carts, and the Labo.
Being able to use the wii controllers and the balance board on the switch would’ve been a great thing.
The GameCube had one key flaw and that is that nobody actually used it to it’s fullest potential.
Look at something like the Resident Evil Remake:
Just a great looking game, head and shoulders above what was happening on the PS2.
But most GameCube games, even the good ones, looked like garbage.
The key flaw was it using mini disks. Not only did this kneecap storage capacity for developers, but it also made it difficult to pirate games, which is ironically a big part of its failure.
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Eternal Darkness is an overrated game that looks pretty bad, I agree. It’s also early.
But no, what the hell are you talking about? Luigi’s Mansion, Mario Sunshine, Metroid Prime, Killer 7, RE4… so many GC games specifically still hold up today, especially when played on a CRT. Most multiplatform releases looked closer to the Xbox versions and better than the PS2, and GC exclusives were hands down some of the best looking games of the generation.
Like someone else said, the issue was them insisting on proprietary formats with low capacity, which led to some low-effort compromised ports sometimes. But otherwise it was easily the most comparatively performant and consistently visually impressive Nintendo console since what? The SNES? I guess it depends on whether you thought the vaseline-smear look of the N64 sucked, which I did.
GameCube was the Nokia of the gaming consoles. Actually, it probably still is.
I mean what console has survived as long as those OG Gamecubes.
I still have my OG SNES from when I was a kid and got one the year they came out as a Christmas gift. And Dreamcast. And PS2 (but the slim; I got rid of the fat boy as soon as the slim came out).
I got rid of the fat boy as soon as the slim came out
Right about now, the funk soul brother…
I miss my gamecube. That and the ps2 have to be the pinnacle of home console. After those two consoles PCs have reigned supreme.
It’s a good thing we can emulate them easily with Dolphin and PCSX2.
Ive had 2 PS2’s go down, a PS3 Gen1 break, 3 Xbox 360, and very sadly an OG Xbox that did last from 2005 to 2015, an N64, and my PS4 Slim is getting there for sure. All (except the 64) gotten years (some a decade) after this Gamecube I still have today.
What do you mean by PS2s going down? I feel like they’re the most robust console I’ve come across especially when the benefits of modding are taken into account
I had an issue with my launch day PS2 when it was still in circulation. Thankfully the fix was to open up the console and flip a toggle switch to allow it to read both both DVD and PS2 games again. Console is still going strong to this day for me.
I just grabbed a Wii U and modded it so I can play mostly Gamecube, but also some Wii and Wii U games. So much fun completing Timesplitters, and the occasional Mario Football
I like my hacked Wii u. Pretty versatile
I mean what console has survived as long as those OG Gamecubes
Uhhh the N64, SNES, PS1 to name a few
Yeah, I still have a NES and 2 SNES that work perfectly
My PS1 died before I got a PS2 :(
The games that used the game boy as a controller and second screen were interesting.
Anyone remember when GameStop was selling refurbished GameCubes for $30? I think I bought 2.
The GameCube controller was hot garbage. Weird unfriendly shape, buttons in the wrong spot, my thumbs and index fingers we’re not happy with it. The N64 controllers had durability issues but the layout was spot on.
I also have the same complaints about the switch controllers. The secondary thumb functions (left d pad and right joystick) and primary L/R buttons are not in a good ergonomic place and cause my hands to hurt after a bit of playing.
The gamecube’s durability was known during that era: https://youtu.be/ioWnoOjP9IA?si=zPRczUBOp4p4oYCZ
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Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
Thank you for this. I remember parts of this skit to this day.
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