What was wrong with the Gamecube?

[BlastProcessing402]

I don't know how many people bought Gamecubes for RE4, but I bought mine for REmake.

Not that I wouldn't have eventually had to buy one anyway for Zelda, but at the time it was REmake I was most wanting.

[thegamezmaster]

Where I'm at, everyone wanted the PS2 because it played DVD's. But the people that bought Gamecubes still love them to this day, including me.

[Gameguy]

In late 2002, Radio Shack had progressive-scan DVD players stacked up in the middle of the store for $35 each. I bought one to use in the bedroom. I also bought a Polaroid DVD player around the same time for $50.

Two years prior in December 2000, I bought my JVC DVD player *on sale* for $200 (originally $300). So yeah, the price of DVD players fell dramatically during those 24 months.

Just post a scan of your receipt and we'll believe you. I can't imagine it would have been any good quality at that price.

[BydoEmpire]

I really liked the GameCube - it was a great console with tons of awesome games. I especially like the controllers, which are among the most comfortable ever. 3rd party support was actually pretty good - there were good versions of many big franchises. Lots of quirky and cool exclusives, though I think Nintendo's game quality started to decline a bit.

Two dings:
1) The first set of memory cards were really small - you didn't have enough space on a card to save a Madden franchise, for example, until larger cards came out later.
2) The smaller capacity discs meant games often had to cut corners (compress audio, etc).

Overall, though, I really liked the console.

[Robocop2]

I kind of regret not owning one back in the day. I almost bought one after pllaying Godzilla DAMM on my brother's. But then I found out the game was also on the Xbox with additional monsters and that along with the fact the Xbox had several other games I was really interested in really swung me over to Xbox land.

[RCM]

It has the second strongest lineup for a Nintendo console/handheld behind the GBA as far as my tastes go. There was nothing wrong with Gamecube, and it went on to receive much more success when it was re-branded as "Wii."

[WanganRunner]

I love my GCN, almost as much as the N64.

It was honestly a better console than the N64 was, with a considerably better library, but the N64 IMO had SM64 and OoT and so I have an emotional attachment.

The GCN was similar to the N64 in that it was really designed around Miyamoto's games with everything else as an afterthought (see: Controller). I like this, people who want to play tons of 3rd party stuff can buy a PS2 or an Xbox (I bought both). I feel like this makes the 1st party stuff better, as there's less compromise. When you play Super Mario Sunshine or Wind Waker, you can tell that the controller was *designed* for those titles, they weren't adapted to it.

It DID have decent 3rd party support but that is admittedly not why I bought one, and I've still yet to play RE4. I liked Viewtiful Joe and Eternal Darkness. I never played Tales of Symphonia, FF:CC, or Beyond Good and Evil (unfortunately, in all cases).

Pikmin was birthed on the GCN and, to date, has sort of died there (barring the Wii Compilation). This is a shame, being IMO the most underutilized Nintendo franchise and potentially it's most brilliant. There's huge potential with the concept and they've just sat on it. A big reason I bought a Wii was to play future Pikmin games, and they never materialized.

I'm also a huge sucker for Luigi's Mansion, having been wowed by the footage back before the console was released.



EDIT: I forgot to mention that from a hardware standpoint, the sheer geek factor on the GCN is enormous. The PS2/Xbox were big black boxes with generic black controllers. The GCN was DIFFERENT, i.e. the following:

- It comes in f**king ORANGE. Orange. Awesome. And it wasn't even called orange, it was called "Spice"! My console had a stripper name. I'm about that.

- There's a huge stretched keyboard controller (PSO). It looks absurd and so I love it. I also love the JogCon, so I'm just partial to bizarre shit.

- The Game Boy Player was a neato peripheral. As a kid of the 90's and the Genesis era, I'm a sucker for anything that combines with anything. It's like console Voltron.

- Tiny little discs. Little, Silver, Different. Like Nuprin only playable. The JPN game packaging was rad looking, so small with the cool cardboard sleeves.

- Panasonic Q. I never got around to buying one but how cool was it? Colder than a polar bear's toenails.

- GBA connection, i.e. Four Swords. Any excuse to buy more shit and connect it all together, right? I felt like Serial Experiments Lain with my GCN and four GBA's attached to it, wires everywhere.

- Wavebird. First it was called "Wavebird", I mean wtf right? Second, I had fun going across the street from my house and being able to control the game, with a friend on walkie talkie telling me when it finally stopped working as I walked farther.

- The dev gear looked cool. I geeked the first time I saw an NPDP. Not *quite* as monolithic and "2001 obelisk-like" as the PSTOOL, but still pretty sick.

[Aussie2B]

1) The first set of memory cards were really small - you didn't have enough space on a card to save a Madden franchise, for example, until larger cards came out later.

Was there a delay between the release of the system and the black memory card? I remember my fiance and I got our GameCube within a few months of launch, and we decided to skip straight to the larger capacity card. If there was a delay, it must've been pretty short.

[moycon]

I thought the game cube was kick ass. That said, I only played it for a few months. A few days after launch, I went into Kmart and the video game guy tried to talk me into buying a GC. I declined. I figured if they were trying to push them a few days after launch, the console must not be all that, plus I had bought a PS2 at launch. Needless to say, my first Gamecube was a used one purchased off eBay with like 24 games, for $250. (Yep it was well past it's prime) I had a lot of fun with it for months, but once the 360 launched, dropped it like a hot potato. Looking back, I never did play RE4, also, the controller didn't age well. (Not unlike the N64)