It got a lot of third party support from what I remember.

The glaring omission was GTA and didn't R* say that was due to the kiddy image?

I do think it's design didn't help, especially the pad. I know it has its fans on here put it just looked an eyesore.

Don't forget a lack of piracy.
At that time piracy was fairly common place and resulted in hardware sales. Hardware sales figures third parties would look at as potential sales.

As someone who had a GC from launch, but who was never a huge Nintendo fan, my issues with the machine was the lack of games to play outside of a few corkers.

I loved Monkey Ball, and the Metroid Prime games remain some of my favourites ever, not to mention the fun I had with the likes of Donkey Kong: Jungle Beat, Rocky, Resident Evil (remake and Zero) and a few others.

But, the PS2 was the place to go for the sheer number of top quality games. Nintendo (wrongly or rightly) were perceived as having an off-gen: Mario Sunshine, Wind Waker and Mario Kart: Double Dash were all seen as poor sequels to part classics - so the GC really needed 3rd parties to knock it out if the park. I adored the GC and it was a powerful, fast little beast, but it had as many classics as the XBox and they were both pissed on, by a massive height, by the behemoth that was the PS2. That's my opinion, at least.

That's nit to say the GC was without merit - like I mentioned, it had some of my favourite games ever, but it also had some gaping holes in the game catalogue and ninty failed to do their part.

Never loved my PS2.
GC had the gems, Xbox did the multi plats better.

Depends what games you were into of course.

Also the PS2 always felt on the edge of falling apart or colossal failure. In comparison I'm pretty sure a GC or an Xbox could survive a nuclear blast, especially the xbox.

Childintime wrote:

retroking1981 wrote:

It got a lot of third party support from what I remember.

Not that I remember. In the beginning, yes, but that died off. GC got Burnout 2 and Hitman 2 and a fair amount of others in the beginning. By the end of the gen, though, those sequels weren't coming.

Oh yeah definitely. I just meant that people didn't buy what was at the begining at least, a powerful Nintendo console with ample 3rd party support.

Those 3rd parties chose to jump ship because of poor sales and Nintendo chose a different direction with their next console for the same reasons.

What blows my mind was how early the console was ready to release, 2000 I believe. Nintendo chose to continue support for the N64 with titles such as Zelda: MM, Perfect Dark and even 3rd parties with RE: Zero. I know the latter was moved over to GCN but I wonder how much time was wasted developing it for N64.

Basically they should have done what MS did with the OG Xbox, cut its life short and come out all guns blazing for the next gen.

Imagine if GCN has released simultaneously with PS2 with games like the 3 I mentioned as release titles? I'm not saying it would have outsold the PS2 but it would have done a damn sight better and probably not lost out to Xbox which didn't come out until 2001/2.

Liveinadive wrote:

The toy image was there before the GC was released, the differences between N64 and PS1 set the precedent.

Your right but its mad to think that was the case as it was probably the most 'mature' Nintendo ever got.

Big for FPS in Goldeneye, PD, Quake, Doom. Even first party support with games like 1080 and as silly as it might sound Kobe Bryant in NBA Courtside. Imagine Nintendo making a sports sim with an endorsement like that now? Nope, here's Mario 3 on 3 Basketball.

Its painful to think of the silly missteps they made with GCN. Rare making DK Racing and Mickey's Speedway instead of a Gran Turismo style game like MS did years later with Forza. So dumb.

I loved the design; still do.

GC is among my favourite consoles. Extremely well built (youtube destruction videos show that it is far more resilient than PS2 or Oldbox). I get the issues so-called grown-ups have with the kiddie look but don't really give a shit about that; the controller melted into your hand like no other because as much as we would like it not to be the case, we are not symmetric beings and we fit better with things that are slightly off kilter. A change in colour trim corrects much of the Fisher Price look anyhow. The controller did have an impact on FPS games and fighters though.

It had the  problem of providing followups to major new IPs (1080, Waverace, Smash Bros, Mario Tennis, Golf & Party) on the N64 as well as follow ups to Zelda, Metroid, Mario 64, Mario Kart and F-Zero which it did with a reasonable degree of success.

Spec-wise it was a powerful , safe pair of hands. I look at my fairly beefy collection and I see it had decent 3rd party support. SSX, Prince of Persia, Soul Calibur 2, Burnout 2, Need for Speed, Resident Evil are present and correct , and it got the occasional exclusive such as PN03 or Beach Spikers, but it required one to own either a PS2 or Oldbox to experience all genres (I went the Ps2 route for RType Final and Gradius V).

It was also a console that saw Nintendo experiment. New IP with Pikmin and Eternal Darkness. The GBA linkup facilitated a handful of very interesting games, not least of all Pacman Vs - echos of which carry on in Wii U. If you had the money, you could get BB adaptors for LAN games -sadly another experiment that Nintendo didn't stick with: Mario Kart DD , 1080 and an odd little Kirby game being the only three games that support it. (LAN F-Zero GX would have been aces and given the arcade version supported link up a baffling exclusion). There are also a handful of games that use a microphone or the bongo controllers.

It gave us the definitive version of the last perfect game I played - Super Monkey Ball, 2 Phantasy Star Online games (that were online), and one of the best four player games ever - Warioware Inc.

It also has the GBA Player to make it stand even taller, and it introduced me to wireless controllers. The Wavebird is, excuse me, fucking brilliant.

The Gamecube did alright.

Also the Capcom Five But Later Four was the kind of rad and magical exclusivity deal that made it worthwhile to own a GC, and all of the games looked better than their later PS2 ports. Fond memories of both consoles but the GameCube was just something totally of its own class, must have put thousands of hours into 4 player multiplayer over a variety of titles like Smash Bros, Mario Tennis and Timesplitters 2.

GameCube controller + Super Monkey Ball = perfection.

Never understood the love for the GC controller. Might have been fine for games that were specifically built around it, but as a generic pad it was fucking rotten.

did not like

g.man

g.man wrote:

Never understood the love for the GC controller. Might have been fine for games that were specifically built around it, but as a generic pad it was fucking rotten. did not like g.man

Yep, never liked that button layout at all.

Nintendo by that point had refined their game designs to perfection in the SNES years, then translated them brilliantly to 3D on the N64, then had nowhere else to go. Everyone else was catching them up and surpassing them around that time and they just couldn't move with the times. Metroid stood out only because it hadn't had its 3D update before. Ever since then it's been about new hardware gimmicks to wring something new out of those old designs, but that's only alienated the 3rd parties even more.

The fat Xbox pad was terrible - those buttons that hurt your thumb - but the smaller version was very nice.

Concur, controller s was excellent, best of the gen for me. I agree with g.man about the GC controller for multi plat games.
It was superb for exclusives but the layout didnt transition well.

punch