I misspoke when saying N64 was less powerful than the PS1 - please excuse this error. I have now edited this out which is why there is an awkward cut around the 1 minute mark. Thanks for watching!
I kept saying to myself "LOL whut" when ypu kept reiterating this....but felt it was just a mistake, and not worth harrassing you about. Keep the good content comming Bruddah!!!
it felt that way thanks to the dumb cartridges, crash bandicoot 1,2,3 looked better than anything on the n64 apart from like rayman 2 and donald duck going quackers
Comparing the PS1 and N64 is a bit difficult. In terms of raw graphical power, yes the N64 was better but the hardware for each console was trying to achieve different things. For example, the N64 had anti aliasing but the PS1's chip could better handle transperency textures, the N64 had pretty much no load times on the cartridge while the PS1 could store 7 times more data, as for the negatives, there was the texture warping on the PS1 while the N64 had the forced bilinear smear. My point here is that since the hardware was so unique, both had their own perks to use for their advantages... like the PS2's Vector Units and EDRAM could make up for the weaker GPU when compared to the original Xbox and Gamecube when rendering some stuff or using physics (the infamous Silent Hill 2 fog that only worked correctly on PS2 despite being the "weaker" system on paper). Anyway, I think this generation - probably due to the introduction of 3D - all console makers were making things vastly different from each other to see what sticked and this makes them much harder to compare especially when you judge them the same way as a PS5 vs Xbox Series. Even the Saturn has its own advantages such as superior sprite rendering for 2D games.
Slight correction: the Xbox always had the capability to read DVDs technically, and it was an intended feature from day one. The reason you needed the seperate remote was so that they could save on media taxes by saying that the xbox wasn't "sold as a DVD player".
Slight correction to your correction: The Xbox did not have the capacity to play video DVDs built in; the software necessary to decode DVD video was actually contained in the remote accessory's dongle. That was the only way to avoid paying the licensing fee on every console sold.
@@thecianinator slight correction to your correction to the correction: a modded OG Xbox could use a homebrew app to play and control DVD videos with a standard controller/no dongle. The whole remote requirement shenanigan was clearly a licensing fee workaround either way from a commercial standpoint but just putting that out there.
I vividly remember this era. The same kids who grew up loving the N64 or Super Nintendo suddenly turned on Nintendo, saying things like, ‘Nintendo is just for kids, like Sega. Video games have matured past these childish brands. Sony and Microsoft are for adults and are the future of gaming.’ Many of those same kids celebrated Sega’s exit from the console market and actively hoped Nintendo would abandon gaming too. They saw Nintendo as outdated and out of touch, something to be left behind as gaming ‘grew up.’ Fast forward to today, and every single one of those people I know has come full circle. Th truth is gaming in the early 2000s was a lot like the gamers themselves-it was going through an awkward teenage phase. It was no longer ‘cool’ to like colorful, whimsical characters like Mario or Sonic. Instead, everything had to be edgy, dark, and gritty. Games like Halo and Grand Theft Auto became the gold standard, as if embracing mature themes made gaming itself more legitimate. It’s fascinating to see how much things have changed since then.
As a kid who grew up with the Gamecube, I was the only person I knew who owned one at my school. But *everyone* had a PS2 or Xbox. Like you said, it just seemed like they were everyday devices in people's living rooms.
Yea I only knew one person that had one growing up. I didn’t get one until I was an adult. Might be the most underrated console of all time. The only thing I don’t like is it’s kinda hard to build a collection for when literally every game is $80-$150 😂
A lot of people forget this but the Gcn outsold every single Xbox combined in Japan, yes really, the Gcn sold 4.04 million in Japan the Og Xbox sold 470.000 the 360 sold 1.6 million, The Xbox One sold 140.000 and the Series X/S sold 622.000. The Failed Dreamcast even outsold the OG Xbox in japan with 2.56 million units.
@theothenintendomaster3717 Sadly I wasn't in Japan at the time :') Would have been cool though! Probably would have been easier to meet people to link up GBAs with too lol
You left a hughe important factor: The existence of the Xbox with MS sinking billion of dollars. This is related to why the 2nd console option strategy didnt work as consumers attention was divided between to ps2 alternatives. Another thing that wasnt well received by developers was the GC controller lack of buttons compared to PS2. Devs often complained about having to modify their games to fit the controller.
@@hitkid2456 It was part of Sony's strategy after they cornered the market with PSX, until they stopped with PS4. Very exotic architectures, so devs had to lead with Playstation versions. This had a positive thaught. Having some devs squeezing every ounce of the hardware was a sight to behold. Cant believe some of the best games ever ran on 32 mb. One would expect having upto 18000 mb would make games 1000s of times more impressive.
@@theothenintendomaster3717 Sony got too comfortable getting away with it 2 straight generations. Also in the 7th one they were completly blind sided by MS putting opt efficient & more developer friendly hardware. MS got lucky in this hat nvidia failed to offer the expected gpu to sony, which gave them a slight grhical advantage that developers loved. Then Nintendo surprised everyone with revolutionary controller. Various important factors aligned against Sony. Including the BR player was the best move they made. Its the only positive they took out of the ps3 generation.
@@Refreshment01 At least Sony saved the ps3 following 2009 with MS focusing way to much from 2010 to 2013 on the Kinect a thing no one liked that made a lot of Xbox fans upset and was one of the things that killed the Xbox One reveal.
The N64 was not less powerful than the PS1. It had far less memory and that's what killed it but it's actual 3D capabilities were better than the PS1. Sticking with a cartridge format was disastrous for Nintendo. The goofy controller didn't help matters.
Pretty much this. The PS1 could do better FMV and CD audio, but paled in comparison with 3d environments (as evidenced by the fact it couldn't do floating point resulting in glitches and distortions). Its why we had wide open world games like SM64, OoT, Banjo Kazooie, and others. Where on PS1 most of their open world stuff was limited to overworld (Final Fantasy 7-9) with little gameplay or tunnel type stuff. PS1 was better for the jRPG genre, but not for pretty anything else. The PS1 was intended to be an addon to the SNES and unfortunately much of its restrictions came from that.
Indeed. It actually took Nintendo all the way to the Switch to learn a lot of lessons that included 1) Using formats that have good memory. (Learned by the Wii era) 2) Having strong launch titles and a top games coming out frequently 3) Not allowing long barren gaps between big releases to avoid players being bored and putting their Nintendo console away 4) Making 3rd party support easy 5) Having games which are attractive to players. 6) Not trying to compete in the tech arms war just to be different
@danielebowman I couldn't agree more. They almost had it with the Wii but they lost hardcore gamers due to how hard they leaned into the casual audience and motion controls.
Sonic was treated very kindly on Gamecube; every mainline Sonic before Sonic 06 was released for it. Sonic Adventure 2 Battle even became the best selling 3rd party game on the console, and anecdotally I can say that pretty much every Gamecube owner I knew back then was having more fun playing Sonic games than Mario games.
The N64 was very much meant to be the most powerful console on the market (I'm old enough to remember all the hype about the Silicon Graphics power of the ULTRA 64 bringing the special effects of Jurassic Park and Terminator 2 to our video games), and in many ways it was - while lacking in other areas. In terms of visuals, the N64 was very competitive with 3D-accelerated PC games of the time, which were running on massively more expensive hardware. Obviously, it was held back by critical weaknesses like the cartridge format, minuscule 4KB texture cache, and being tricky to develop for in general, but it was a powerful system for its day.
@@DMRetroLP Its biggest issue is not even the small texture cache, it is actually the data throughput. It's very slow and can't send too much at once. One could basically say "make sure the Ram bus is used well, because you only get one of them".
If the N64 had a better ram bus, texture cach, and used some sort of CD then we’d have a direct competitor to the Dreamcast, which is more like 6th gen in principle and specs alone
@@lpfan4491Kaze Emanuar has optimized Mario 64 to run at 60fps with more polygons and better textures and better lighting. He says the CPU is still idle half the time. So yes, the N64 CPU is more powerful than the Playstation. But the N64 CPU is more powerful than the N64. I guess you could try to design a game that uses a lot of CPU without using extra RAM bandwidth, but I don't think anyone has ever done that. So basically the N64 isn't able to use the potential of its CPU.
During that era gaming truly felt like it was growing up. The PS2 and Xbox (in particular Halo) felt like "adult" systems to own. I was a teenager during this time period and everyone wanted to play GTA3. Nobody really wanted the "kiddy" Nintendo platform. The purple color and goofy controller stood out negatively against the sleek looking PS2 with its high tech DVD player or the Xbox, which hit big with the college age kids using it for Halo LAN parties. And I know a lot of people got pissed that the RE Remake and RE4 was exclusive to the GameCube because fans wanted to play them but nobody wanted to buy a GameCube to do so. It was a tough time for Nintendo. People love the "Nintendo Nostalgia" these days and will buy the Switch simply for the 1st party games. That wasn't the case back then. For that brief period of time it wasn't really "cool" to want to play Mario anymore.
Nostalgia is a nice thing, it's also highly delusional. I remember "the old days" as some people would term it and people seem desperate to return to those times when they were just as bad as things are now. Just less amplified.
The Gcn being indigo was one of the worst marketing decisions ever, indigo at that time was associated with woman, trans people and children, which made the Gcn look like the joke console.
Yeah I remember being mad as well that I couldn't play RE4 and the remake on PS2. I was done with resident evil and moved on to the devil may cry games.
As a teenager who grew up with investing in the GameCube, I was the more- or less the only person who owned one at my school. Everyone had either a PS2 or Xbox. I got to learn some got a GC at its late stage, but mostly for a cheep deal and played just a few games like Mario Kart Double Dash. I was one of few defenders of the system where I got the most remarks of "Kid system, looks ugly, and can't play DVD movies", but when they said was "weaker", was the only argument they never could win. "Fewer games" was IMO the thoughest one as I often saw games released on the PS2 that easily also could been on the GameCube. BUT the system had its flaws.... 1. The mini discs was a HUGE mistake to not go with the DVD format as PS2 and Xbox. The amount of data limitation made GameCube lose a lot of possible games ported; Grand Theft Auto III, Vice City and San Andreas all never came over because Rockstars plain-out refused to port them on 2 discs each to fit all, and when the sales also was not what they wanted that also sunk that ship. Kingdom Hearts, Final Fantasy 8 & 9, Tekken, Metal Gear Solid etc. all lost because on mini-discs. 2. Can't play DVD movies. 3. License-fee. While Nintendo was not as greedy as in its NES and SNES days, its license fee was still higher then what Sony and Microsoft had, and those publishers that signed up at start of the Sony brand made deals of life-time cheaper licenses. 4. The Gamecube games of 3rd party titles was often more expensive then its PS2 or Xbox counterpart (?) making it so often finding a copy of a game cheaper on there systems, despite it was THE SAME GAME! 5. More stores sold PS2 games only = made Gamecube less accesible as this is still in the early internet era and not as well used in same extent as just a few years afterwards.
@@WarioSaysSo All the gen Z and Millenial Gcn nostalgia in the 2020"s caused a spike up in prices but that is normal for all consoles. Expect in 2027 190$ ps3 games sadly.
I remember listening to another video about the GameCube and at the end the narrator said that the console wasn't a failure because it helped foster a community that felt tighly knit because most of their friends moved on to PS2 and they continued to play with a Nintendo console. And all I could think was how by that logic, the Windows phone was a massive success because I get to pull it out of the drawer every now and again and show it to people who come over... Except for the ending, where Microsoft pulled out of the phone manufacturing market but Nintendo turned it around with the Wii, so I guess it's not a perfect analogy.
It was a financial success unlike the og Xbox, Microsoft lost 4.7 billion dollars on the og Xbox and only sold like 2,3 million more than the Gcn so yea in the 6th gen you were 90 percent likely to have the Ps2 as your only console.
That sounds like a lot of cope. They may have eked out a profit, but by almost any measure, it was a failure. But I think there are two versions of failed consoles: those that fail so hard that the people who buy it feel like they have useless hardware (Virtual Boy, Atari Jaguar), and those that fail in the market but do well enough that owners feel like they got a good library of games. At least the GC managed to get in that second category.
@@joelressler5619 Really everyone except Sony lost in the 6th gen because of the Ps2, As soon as the Ps2 was out it was over for Sega, and the Other 2 consoles never stood a change, even the Wii and Ds for as successfull as they were still, did not sell as much. The Switch might be the first console to outsell the Ps2.
@@joelressler5619 Then why is the og Xbox considered a success when they also sold bellow 30 million which makes that system also a failure.Both systems failed, the Ps2 might as well had won before all the other consoles even arrived.
@@theothenintendomaster3717 Here's why the OG Xbox was a "success" while the GC was a failure despite selling roughly the same. The GC continued to lose Nintendo ground against Sony. They were number one with the SNES, a healthy second place with the N64, and an unhealthy distant 3rd with the GC. Back to the Xbox, the reason I put "success" in quotations is that it lost money and in many ways was a failure, but... It was their first console and taking on the juggernaut Sony, survived, and got some franchises (mostly Halo) off the ground that built up interested that would help them going into the following generation. The original Xbox wasn't a success on its own, but it was successful in setting up the 360. There were a lot of PS2 owners who knew someone with and Xbox, saw Halo, Forza, etc, and once the 360 launched, they switched over. I don't think many of the people that bought a Wii did so because of anything they saw on GameCube.
Another unfortunate cause of the revision was the "hardcore" gamers resenting the Wii's success, especially with women and girls, I mean "casuals". In just a couple years I saw those who mocked the GC then insist they loved it and wanted Nintendo to return to that direction.
It doesn't help that people who were calling those "hardcore" gamers out back in the day either quit because it was like talking to a wall, or got so insane from repeating themselves they turned into conspiracy nuts.
I was born in ‘92 so my first ever consoles were the gameboy color and the N64, and so that just naturally led to me owning a GameCube without much thought, and since we moved overseas in 2000 I was greatly removed from a lot of the wider gaming culture of the US. So like you mentioned, as a kid I didn’t know anything about sales or performance, I didn’t know what an E3 was and that there were cool tech demos. How can I be disappointed by Wind Waker when the first Zelda game I owned was Oracle of Ages and Seasons? I can’t be mad at Mario Sunshine when I was only able to play Mario 64 at a friend’s house and my only other experience was Super Mario Advance? The biggest thing going on was that Smash got a sequel. And there’s this thing where my closest friend when I came back to the states had nearly all the consoles but was on the GameCube 90% of the time. I think your notion on revisionist history tying back to Smash has a lot to do with it, but I have another theory and it stems from the lack of third parties. If you grew up with the GameCube you weren’t exactly blessed with the same amount of options the PS2 had. But the PS2 had a bazillion options with a lack of manufacturer identity. With limited options, it means that if you owned a GameCube, odds are nearly everyone played the same games. Which builds stronger fanbase communities and a greater appreciation of the games there over time. The GameCube becomes beloved because of its small but strong set of exclusives, regardless of initial reception. So you have the most passionate fans as grown ups talking about it and its games a bunch. And I’m not even just talking about first party games, Tales of Symphonia is considered one of the greats not just of the console but of JRPGs at the time. And it’s where Dreamcast greats like Skies of Arcadia and the Sonic Adventure Games got to have second life after the Dreamcast became little more than a dream. I think being a poor seller and just having good games improved the GameCube’s long term reputation. In addition to everything else you said in the video.
The lack of full size disk play was the largest factor initially and then later in to the generation the lack of internet put the nail in the coffin. I sold my gamecube after a year and a half to get a PS2 so I could watch movies from blockbuster and play with friends.
The reception to Wind Waker is easy to understand when you look at the popular culture of that era. It was the age of Jackass, South Park and nu metal. With all that angst and edginess it's no coincidence that franchises such as Halo, Tony Hawk's Pro Skater and GTA rose to the top. So for Nintendo to release Wind Waker into that environment was just a huge miscalculation on their part, and in a way it symbolizes the entire Gamecube era. We got some high-quality games but they were too niche or too aesthetically different as a result of Nintendo being out of step with the cultural trends of the time. Personally, I ended up owning all three consoles in that generation, but the Gamecube was my first and by far my favorite. The exclusives were just on another level, with Metroid Prime 1 & 2, F-Zero GX, Paper Mario TTYD, Super Smash Bros. Melee, Star Fox Adventures and then they went out with a bang with Twilight Princess. Initially, third party support was pretty decent, and I remember playing games like Burnout, Need For Speed and FIFA on Gamecube. I was a young kid, so I didn't know anything about sales figures, but it was pretty well known that the PS2 was the most popular console by a mile. People who had an Xbox in those first few years seemed like unicorns, so I always assumed that was the least popular console. In any case, it's good that the Gamecube and its library are getting some love after all these years. It wasn't a perfect console, and I do think some of the criticisms of Wind Waker and Sunshine were warranted (I was a bit underwhelmed by Double Dash too), but if you look at the amount of Gamecube games that got remasters/re-releases on Wii U and Switch, it just goes to show that there was a lot of lasting quality there.
It's anecdotal, but in my neighbourhood so many of us had Gamecubes. It wasn't until later in life that I learned it was such a huge flop. My family got it within launch window with four games: Wave Race: Blue Storm (which I love and think is underrated), Sonic Adventure 2 Battle (which I also love), FIFA Soccer 2002, and NBA Courtside 2002. My older brother told me later that he was disappointed that my parents went with the Gamecube; he wanted a PS2. Great video.
That's how I felt, I only learned about a year ago that the GC didnt sell well originally. Then I remembered seeing the ads as a kid about the gamecube price geing slashed to $99 lol. But the few friends i had at the time had GC's, and since it had 4 controller slots natively, it was easier to play multiplayer with friends and family lol.
Failed consoles at the time they released don’t seem like a good choice but 10-20 years later you’re not worried about the “do I buy a ps2 or GameCube?” They are retro now and instead of looking at it from its time period we’re just looking at way to play games, the library is fantastic and the console is cool when your not worried about the competition and whatnot as that’s all long gone, thus why everyone loves the GameCube as a retro console but not during its actual time. It was hard to choose a GameCube over a PS2 or an Xbox as those systems dominated the era but now as a retro console the GameCube library has aged like fine wine and has captured the hearts of many who didn’t appreciate it back then
Revisionism on Sunshine doesn't really exist. A LOT of people still don't like that game from what I can find, as people find the level designs frustrating to this day when they decide to go back and play it. People tend to hate the controls and say the game is too harsh and not really friendly. In fact I think people treat the game much more harshly with the existence of Odyssey now. A game much easier and forgiving to players. I've seen more people say Sunshine is just straight up bad more than I've seen positive reception. Granted that's not to say NOBODY likes Sunshine now, but I feel like the game's reputation has overall gotten worse with ever changing standards.
Sunshine and Spm are like the most divise Mario Games literally any opinion on those games is valid, I think sunshine is a good game with many issues but TTYD is my Favourite Gcn Mario Game.
Remakes and remasters feel like they play a big part in it. Just the past few years we got rereleases of Super Mario Sunshine, Metroid Prime, Pikmin 1 & 2 and Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door. Also a large part of the online gaming community are younger millennials who have fond memories of the system. I remember a few years back when people couldn't stop talking about N64 games like Banjo-Kazooie or Goldeneye 007, making me mistakenly think that it was a big deal back in the day and not completely decimated by the PS1 in sales
I loved Nintendo games most and had friends who did too so I wasn't 100% alone in owning a GC, but it still was a really rough position to take (basically no one thought it was cool or good; Microsoft's Xbox was *way* cooler), and even as a fan all the games felt like letdowns. The graphics upgrade felt considerable and people wanted normal Mario, normal Zelda, etc. like SM64 or OOT but just new content and upgraded for GC hardware; instead we got Mario the power washer, Wind Waker had the really out-of-the-box art style that was honestly ugly to me at first and there were people in my life, let alone online, who hated it *far* more than me, etc. Every Nintendo sequel had some weird gimmick that made it feel way too different in the context of Nintendo at the time. Now that we've had a string of "normal" games since then, people can look back and see that the GC games are wonderful in their own right and a nice change of pace. But when your only Mario game in 10 kid years was Mario the power washer it felt a little like you got ripped off. It was still fun, but it wasn't the Mario you wanted. Wind Waker was still fun, but it wasn't the Zelda you wanted. Double Dash was still fun, but it wasn't the Mario Kart you wanted (and it came out really late). The video said about Wind Waker that it was "right game, wrong time" and I basically think that about the GC and its games in general. Incredible, but you felt very much like you were in the Nintendo doldrums at the time, and were going against societal trends to a point of risking being made fun of, even as a kid fan. Experiences that had fewer expectations around them were hits if you had the opportunity to try them though -- Super Monkey Ball, Melee, and Animal Crossing all come to mind. And Sonic Adventure 2 Battle was mindblowing both in that a Sonic game was on a Nintendo console, and that it was an absolute blast too. Outside of that, I remember a strong obsession with first person shooters in gaming culture / media, which the GC didn't have much of, contributing to the childish image. GC didn't have -any- online-enabled shooters either. It got to where Nintendo even used shooters in their marketing for DS and Wii, which had to have been a reaction from the GC's poor reception. I'm glad gaming has moved on from this phase to a larger variety of genres again.
I’m 40 and grew up with the NES. Until Wii U, GameCube was BY FAR the most depressing time to be a Nintendo fan. Luigi’s Mansion was seen as a big step down compared to previous Nintendo launch games. At the time games like Sunshine & Wind Waker were seen as unfinished and a huge step behind their predecessors. In particular, Wind Waker was mocked for its art style. It has aged well but at the time it felt like the wrong choice since society was desperately trying to be cool - which was what the PS2 was. Third party games were mostly worse than those found on PS2 & Xbox due to a lack of disk space and less buttons on the controller. The loss of Rare was massive with a huge hole in the library where games almost to a Nintendo standard had once been. The FPS genre mostly moved across to Xbox after the N64 had led in that area previously on console. It has been lost to time but a large % of the console’s sales, after the launch window, came after desperate price cuts which dropped the price to a ridiculously low level - Even then the console struggled to compete. Stores started to reduce hardware and software space after just 18-24 months. You’d walk into game stores with huge PS2 areas and then see a tiny little GameCube stand in the corner. A lot of the love today seems to come from gamers who had the GameCube as their first console or were just little kids at the time so have a wave of nostalgia for the system. There’s also people going back in time and enjoying the console compared to what systems offer today - no online updates etc.
I had a tremendous amount of fun with the GameCube. Luigi’s Mansion and Pikmin are my two FAVORITE games on the system. It’s such a shame that Nintendo didn’t include online play or the ability to use DVDs with the GameCube. I’m sure it would’ve done much better if that were the case. In a way the newfound love people have for the GameCube makes me think of how the PA Vita was largely viewed as a joke since Sony hung it out to dry. It only later got the recognition for the technology marvel it was after people went crazy modding the thing. I recently bought a modded one and it’s amazing. Such a shame the thing didn’t reach the heights of its predecessor the PSP.
I’ve been amused by the revisionism. The Game Cube was as fine, but the gaps between games were huge at a time the PS2 always had a bunch of interesting games out. Also it does have some fab games, but they were hardly the best in their own series. Mario Sunshine was the least good 3D Mario, the Wind Waker had long dull sailing sections its WiiU remake had to update. Mario kart double dash was good but hardly the best Mario kart. So I can see it looks strong in retro spec but at the time you had decent entries to each series and long barren periods of nothing to play.
This is the best message i see so far. Besides the continual droughts & degradation on game series quality as you pointed out. Other things to add is that Nintendo was seriously lacking in features compared to the competition, marketing was abysmal & Nintendo had to contend with wn extra rival that had better 3 rd party support.
you are really downplaying how good some of the GCN games were. Melee, F-Zero GX, Metroid Prime, Pikmin, Animal Crossing, Viewtiful Joe/RE4/Super Monkey Ball/Symphonia were originally GCN exclusives, etc.
Double Dash is sure as hell better than every game before it and Wii. Even 7 people consider to be forgettable. What other game in the series has tag-team racers and Special Items?
@@Enoby_Darkness But Pikmin was a niche game and to some degree still is, most gamers aren't into tough, complex, real time puzzle games. It's not a console seller. Nor was Metroid ever a console seller (as much as that perplexes it's fans). Melee was excellent, but that's one game and F-Zero isn't a big seller. Regardless, no one is saying the GC didn't have some very good games. But it had entries that were less desirable and inferior to prior ones and they were to few and far between. People love Mario, but no one wanted a Mario game whose fundamental core mechanic was to spray water over mud. It's not hard to see how Sunshine is the least attractive 3D Mario game. And that's the issue each GC entry for most franchises came to late, ended up being the least attractive and desirable and wasn't worth the months and months of having no reason to play your GC. It may be the hipsters revision to claim it was a great time, but it really wasn't and it's taken Nintendo up to the Switch to truly get to grips with why so many of their post SNES consoles struggled or under performed.
I grew up with a backwards compatible Wii as a kid and would visit a used game store with my brother every few weeks after school. Since Wii and DS games were full price at the time (this being 2008-2011) GameCube and GBA were for the most part incredibly inexpensive. Got bangers like Pokemon Colosseum and XD, Luigi’s mansion, Chibi Robo, Wind Waker, the GBA Pokemon games, Fire Emblem Sacred Stones and more all for pretty cheap (anywhere from $10-20 a piece) we usually got 1 or 2 Wii or DS games a year so whenever we got money for helping our grandparents or birthdays/holidays we would buy last gen games and then trade them back in when we were done. Didn’t get a gamecube console till I was in high school and started working but I grew up with the system thanks to the Wii’s backwards compatibility.
Easily Nintendo best console. Almost every series got a game. Zelda, Mario, F zero, Metroid, Kirby, smash, animal crossing (sorta), fire emblem, pokemon, warioware, starfox. The list goes on. And it’s third party and new games were also amazing Killer 7, Re4, Eternal darkness, skies of arcadia, tales of symphonia, pikmin, viewtiful joe, chibi robo, twin snakes. Gamecube was an amazing console
I know people who disliked the GameCube, but once the Wii launched they claimed to lament the fact that Nintendo had 'abandoned' the hardcore audience. It annoys me because, at the time, Nintendo was on such a downward trajectory in sales and shifting focus made absolute sense for the company. And maybe that wouldn't have been necessary had all these closet GameCube fans actually bought one when it was relevant.
Im totally with you there i was a gamecube fan back in the day still am to this day and funny enough my second favorite console other than the gamecube has the same issue alot of fan now but nobody bought it back when it released and of course im talking about the ps vita another device that didnt sell well and deserved better .
Looking back, I was eating *good* throughout the 6th and 7th generation of consoles because I have two older brothers who got a console each, plus my parents had a decent gaming PC on the side. One brother was the PlayStation kid, the other brother was the Xbox kid, and I was the Nintendo kid. So in addition to all the GameCube, Wii and GBA classics, I also got to sample many of the big games from the other platforms such as Halo, God of War, and Uncharted. That said, apologizing in advance if I seem selfish, I definitely felt the stigma against Nintendo at the time... to the point where I sometimes get a bit annoyed by some of the obsessive praise for the GameCube today. It doesn't sit well with me seeing people worship the system now when they weren't around to support it at the time when it desperately needed them the most. Whereas I was there when it went down & took the slings and arrows that came from supporting Nintendo at one of its low points.
Thats not selfish, what you describe is how humans behave, basically they dont appreciate what they have. Some of the same people thst praised the GC, were the ones angry at Nintendo in 2017 because they continued supporting the 3ds. It seems these guys get invaded with nostwlgia when scalpers start selling nintendo systems for double the price. Thats when their appreciation grows.
Wow, what a gem of a video. Such a great balance of accurate information and research as well as a side of personal opinions and perspectives where they fit and explained in a very professional yet digest able manner. Easy subbed. I hope to see more where this came from!
I was still a nintendo kid at this time. halo and grand theft auto just felt tacky compared to nintendo's great designs. but that was becoming kind of a hipster position as everyone was playing ps2
I must admit, having lived through this exact period of gaming and knowing how it all went down, I was expecting a much more negative take and was ready to dismiss it. I'm glad I didn't because you basically hit the nail perfectly on the head with this one. There's one detail you didn't include when it came to the system's perception and the time it released, though: First Person Shooters. While previous generations had dabbled in the genre, It was the GC/PS2Xbox gen that REALLY moved the genre from being almost exclusively a PC affair to consoles slowly becoming the primary platform of the genre. And while the GC had it's share of fps games, people never associated the system with them. The Xbox had Doom 3 and Halo 1 and 2, and the PS2 had Time Splitters as well as Killzone. The GameCube Had Metroid Prime 1 + 2, which even Nintendo tried to sell as a First Person Exploration, not a shooter, and the Geist, a game no one remembers. This had a lot to do with the "mature" perception the other systems were going for. And yeah, most 3rd party FPS games did come to the GC, but they tended to sell the worst, were usually missing features, and the marketing usually focused primarily on the PS2, with the Xbox selling itself as the "premium" version, leaving the GC no niche to it's own except for the very few people who had one exclusively. There was also a general feeling at the time that Nintendo was lagging behind and should go 3rd party as a result (which is funny in retrospect, considering what the other two companies are doing today), and the lack of an online strategy, and their focus on linking the GBA to the GameCube didn't help. And then there was the whole thing with the handle...
Looking back... I think I might heavily dislike Generation X gaming journalists and especially Generation X Nintendo fans during the early 2000's. Never forget how they also took Star Fox and F-Zero for granted and then those series became dormant.
I remember seeing the GameCube for £100 in my local store and knew it was cooked! It's a shame as well as it's the first console I saved up to buy day one and was so sad to see it slowly fade out.
I'm loving the revisionism on this due to the fact that some of my fav games released on that system are finally getting loved. But yeah, I do like pointing out to some that it wasn't all sunshine and rainbows 20+ years ago with the Gamecube.
Game cube was my first console and I didn’t really like it. Maybe it was the lack of quality games I had. I only had star fox as far as Nintendo games everything else being 3rd party games. It was a decent system I guess and as far as dvds go I had a dvd/vhs player for that and I didn’t get into music until I was older. The Wii was really neat but for me the PlayStation 3 was what made me a gamer. I mean I felt rich as heck being able to play blue rays on that thing…granted I only had two blue rays but I mean cmon man! I also really loved the Xbox 360 all my consoles lived at my dads or grandmas house so until I got an Xbox I didn’t have a home console I got to live with.
I think another deterrent for lack of third-party support, albeit a small one is the GameCube controller itself. It lacks clickable analog sticks like its competition and has less buttons. Making third-party devs/publishers hesitant to streamline the controls exclusively for a Cube' port.
NintenTubers did irrepreable damage to gaming analysis. The fact that zoomers think the GameCube came anywhere close to the PS2's level of critical and commercial success is shocking.
I'm yet to see a single person under that delusion. This revisionism of history is non-existent, nobody denies that GameCube sold poorly, it's just that nowadays more people find its library attractive compared to contemporaries. Sure, I've seen a fair share of fanboys huffing copium by claiming that N64 was a major success for Nintendo but nobody, I mean NOBODY, ever did this for GC.
@@Diwasho I never grew up with the Gcn instead buying that system in 2020, apreaciating and loving the Gcn but it was a failure nobody denies that, people don,t deny the Wii u, or Dreamcast,s failure the only console that is overhyped is the N64. Kurriochi a European gen Z youtuber that knows that the America centric perspective on Nintendo and Gaming in general, especially regarding the so ,,called crash of 1983,, is incorrect provides a less biased perspective on the N64 and global gaming markets.
I get soo many gamecube documentary videos in my recommendations and feedback. Kinda gotta bored of gamecube retrospectives and they all seems to feed some narrative that gamecube is some obscure console. It was never obscure back in the day, its just system that didn't vibe with people back in that era of gaming. The cartoony/anime games on ps2 sold pretty well but not as high as western adult high budget games released on the ps2. It's the og xbox and some of the Japanese 90s console (non big 3) that are actually obscure as hell.
Thank you for doing a retrospective on the Gamecube. Gamecube was my first home Nintendo console. My sister and I loved playing the GameCube in EBGames or GameStop. Lots of memorable games were introduced to us like Zelda Wind Waker, Super Mario Sunshine, Luigi's Mansion, and even Billy Hatcher and the Giant Egg were all bought because we played them on a Gamecube Demo Kiosk. Wind Waker is still a favorite to this day.
I was there, Game Cube was my first console. I love that box to death, so many memories of my friends and I playing Melee, Mario Party 5, Mario Strikers and Soul Calibur 2.
At least such a video does not have to be made for the WiiU because there really is not much of a revisionist history surrounding it. We fans generally agree that for how good of a console it actually is, to pretend it had much cultural impact or big relevance is just kinda incorrect. The media landscape forgot about it so hard that the Switch gets false credit for several things it carried over from the WiiU, or retro releases that were first made on it.(People are still quoting NSO for the official international release of Earthbound Beginnings and the US release of Kuru Kuru Kururin. Even tho WiiU VC did it.)
The Wii U revisionism is there just as much, it just took on a different form of "Nintendo used to be a lot less corporate" I miss Iwata too, still, some of the praise of him online feels slightly overblown to overplay his less business-savvy decisions such as Wii U.
@@SobmicSSBB The Creator's Program was corporatism to the max, and they were just as aggressive towards fan projects. Remember Pokémon Uranium and AM2R?
I got my Gamecube in 2002 and I loved it. I didn't play any Nintendo games, mainly Metroid Prime and Viewtiful Joe and those 2 games were worth owning the system. The decision to not use full size discs was just moronic, even at that time they were ripped for it's stupidity. I mean Microsoft are basically clueless old geezers and even they knew that their console needed full size discs. Also remember that at that time Nintendo was still pretty much hated by developers for their shady monopoly practices during the 90s, so many teams just wouldn't make games for Nintendo and were happy to see Sony trounce them.
You've made a lot of good points about the longevity of the Gamecube's popularity. I believe one of the biggest factors of this is that the audience that usually goes for the more realistic and visually impressive games will usually just go onto the next console for what they want. I may be incorrect, but my impression of people who play racing, sports and military FPS games (which all look their best on the PS2 rather than gamecube) will more typically move on to the bigger better games. If I want to have the best time playing Call of Duty, I'll probably pick the latest one. However, Nintendo games have a quality that makes them very easy to revisit. Simpler visuals don't feel as aged as more realistic ones do as time goes on. Pikmin could probably be released today and I don't think anyone would call it ugly. Metroid Prime still looks really good, and needed minimal input to make the remaster as good looking as it did. The Wind Waker remake felt kind of pointless to me as it still looks really good. There's also the fact that a lot of these Nintendo games are worth visiting because they still are pretty big today. If you like Zelda, you're probably going to pick up Wind Waker, which as I mentioned, has not really aged that much. In each series there's a continuity of games that do something different enough that they don't out-date the others. Despite people's frustration that there hasn't been a new F-Zero game, it's probably part of their approach to making sequels that they never want to make a game look or feel like 'the old one'. This is not to dunk on games that have tried to push the limits to present realism, as a lot of those games are still really fun regardless of the age, but Nintendo series Also this is the last of my multi-paragraph comments. I guess I just really like the gamecube.
the reason why the Gcn failed was because of Yamauchi and his decisions. I don,t hate the man as I respect his contributions to Nintendo but Yamauchi in his later administration (1991-2002) made some of the worst decisions in gaming history, first he agreed to the Sony deal even though Sony was effectivelly planing to turn their ,,partnership,, into a de facto Sony aquisition of Nintendo, he then exited the deal last minute and entered into another failed deal with Phillips which made Sony and especially Ken Kutaragi mad, this lead to the development of the Playstation, released in late 1994(their own worst enemy). Then the N64 was delayed from a 95 to 96 release and so to not make the customers wait for their 3d console and feel like they were behind the competition, they released the Virtual Boy in 1995, a failure far bigger than than the Wii u, that destroyed even more trust in Nintendo and was Gunpei Yokoi,s final console. For some baffling reason they decided to make the N64 a Cartridge based system (instead of a cheaper Cd based one) which made development on it for 3rd parties harder than the Saturn allowing the Ps1 to outsell it by 70 million. In the N64 era Nintendo was so completely sure that they were doing the right thing that they made the same mistakes in the next generation. With the Gcn they finally moved to Optical media but instead of normal Dvd,s they went with Mini dvd,s with once again less storage and higher cost compared to the competition(the ps2 being the cheapest Dvd player at the time did not help) and when the PS2, Xbox and even Dreamcast emphasized online play the Gcn having one online game(Phantasy star online, a Dreamcast port) made it look even more outdated.The Gcn also released 1 year after the Ps2 allowing them basically a free year to garner sales and an audience. The final nail in the coffin for the gcn in my opinion was the fact that Yamauchi emphasized and even said himself that the Gcn was a toy not to be taken seriously making the system,s basic color Indigo , despite the fact that Nintendo of America protested it all the way until launch, this made the system look like a game console for girls and Babies, the handle and especially Wind Waker,s reveal did not help to remove this kiddy image. The only good thing Yamauchi did after 1991 was to propose to Iwata to make the Ds and only once Iwata and Reggie took charge in 2002 and 2004 did the Gcn,s reputation and sales finally start to rise with mature and teen rated titles launching on the cube but it wasn,t enough to make it a succes or outsell the Og Xbox, and Nintendo will have to effectively enter a new casual market with the Wii and Ds, finally achieving success for the first time since the Snes. The gcn is my 2nd favourite console off all time and for anyone reading this essay of a comment, please don,t assume I hate Yamauchi, the N64, or Nintendo.I just tried too present the reasons for the fall of the Gamecube and why I feel so mad that they almost had success with the Gamecube but that Yamauchi killed it.
In a nutshell, Nintendo did all the things that were good for the evolution of gaming in the long run, but bad for their own business at the time. It's really odd to have it summarised like that. Maybe Yamauchi had some sort of future vision, lmao.
@@PrinceVegetaBrief Yes I am only talking about that period of Nintendo history, and Iwata becoming president was the catalyst for Niintendo,s revival, so I did forget one good decision.
@@theothenintendomaster3717 Personally I have a fair bit of disrespect for him. When he became president of the company, he fired every employee that was part of them previously, and he made fun of RPG fans, conveniently ignoring all of the RPGs that came out on SNES and some that would have come out on N64 if it used discs from the get-go.
I really hope Nintendo finally brings Gamecube games to Switch 2 Online. This is the system I had through my teenage years and is the Nintendo system I have the fondest memories of. It's the first system I bought with my own money and I invested a lot of my time playing it with my friends.
12:40 Third party games almost never were worse on GameCube. PS2 consistently had the worst versions of any multiplat release between it, GC and Xbox purely because it was underpowered compared to the competition and its architecture was difficult for developers to work with. Some games like Sonic Heroes were virtually unplayable on PS2 but ran just fine on GameCube and Xbox. Whatever minor compromises developers had to do for GameCube were nowhere near as bad compared to the extreme downgrades the PS2 versions were receiving.
Yep, fun fact katamary damacy was actually developed on gamecube because of the comparatively ease of programming vs the ps2. This was the initial reasoning of capcom for the ill fated capcom’s five.
Has public perception about the Wind Waker actually changed or have the haters just moved on creating an echo chamber within the Zelda community? Like I suspect that if the next Zelda game on Switch 2 is starring toon Link, it will suffer a massive decline in sales compared with Totk and Botw.
A few corrections: 2:06 - The N64 was the most powerful console on the market when it released. 3:38 - Nintendo had always been focused on power. The NES, SNES, and N64 were all specifically designed to outperform competing systems. This only changed with the Wii. 12:59 - Nintendo's "kiddie" reputation began with Sega's aggressive comparative marketing of the Genesis against the SNES, solidified with their removal of the blood from the SNES version of Mortal Kombat, and worsened during the N64 generation, when some games (like Tony Hawk and Cruisin') were censored on N64, and other more "mature" cross-platform releases (like Tomb Raider and Dead or Alive) never released on N64 at all. Other than these points, most of your analysis was spot-on. Good video!
As a second console the Xbox was infinitely more appealing than the Gamecube. PS2 covered everything the gamecube did except *the nintendo version* of those games. It had better platfomers (and significantly more of them,) better adventure games, better racing games, better open world games, better rhythm games, better horror games, and on and on. PS2 did have online from day 1 (shoutout to THPS3,) but it never had a strong online foundation. As cool as Socom was Xbox became the place for online play which was something genuinely new. What did the Gamecube offer? Did it have a vision for the future? 2003's release schedule for the Cube is anemic, by 2004 they had so little on the plate that it stopped hitting peoples radars. By 2005 anything that came out there was overshadowed by the upcoming Xbox 360. The internets fetishism with the Cube is weird, but mostly driven by emulation. They tend not to play many games so for the past 14 years since Dolphin's proliferation all you've heard from the dedicated gamecube emulation camp is the same 3 or so games. The critics at the time were right and anyone comparing the consoles today can see that. The Gamecube failed because it had none of the games people wanted, and the "nintendo version" wasn't very appealing.
This is for anyone who wasn’t there and doesn’t know. The idea that Nintendo abandoned hardcore gamers with the Wii overlooks an important detail: hardcore gamers abandoned Nintendo first, and it all began with the GameCube. Despite having an incredible library of games like Eternal Darkness, Resident Evil 4, and the remake of Metal Gear Solid, the GameCube couldn’t capture the attention of hardcore gamers. The console’s aesthetic design, with its small, colorful, toy-like appearance, turned many gamers off, even though the system had some of the best games of its generation. Hardcore gamers were drawn to the more mature designs of the PlayStation 2 and Xbox, and they overlooked the GameCube’s potential, choosing those systems instead. Nintendo tried to cater to hardcore gamers, but the market had already shifted. This led to a pivot toward the casual market, beginning with the Wii and its motion controls. The Wii’s success came from its accessibility to casual players, lapsed gamers, and families, and it worked in tandem with the DS, which also targeted casual and non-traditional gamers with its dual screens and touch interface. The Wii and DS together were Nintendo’s bold move into the casual market, after seeing that hardcore gamers weren’t supporting their more traditional consoles. With the Wii, Nintendo made a deliberate effort to move away from the battle for hardcore gamers and instead focused on accessibility. While it still delivered core games like The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess and Super Smash Bros. Brawl, the focus on motion controls and party games helped Nintendo dominate the casual market. This shift was necessary because hardcore gamers had already left after the GameCube era, unwilling to give Nintendo another chance despite its incredible game lineup. When Nintendo tried to recapture hardcore gamers with the Wii U, it was too little, too late. The system had the right games and the right features, but hardcore gamers had already moved on. The Wii U failed because it couldn’t bridge the gap between the casual market, which had moved on to other platforms, and the hardcore gamers who were no longer interested in Nintendo. In the end, the failure of the Wii U was the culmination of this toxic back-and-forth: hardcore gamers rejected Nintendo after the GameCube, Nintendo pivoted to the casual market with the Wii and DS, and when they tried to bring hardcore gamers back, they didn’t return. Nintendo wasn’t abandoning hardcore gamers-they were responding to the fact that those gamers had already abandoned them.
I got a Gamecube in 2001 at launch and by late 2002 I'd largely abandoned it in favor of the PS2 (which had gotten cheap enough that you could buy it secondhand for like $100 if you knew where to look). Being a GC owner was basically getting 1 or 2 really good first party games a year and nothing else - and if you weren't a fan of whatever thing Nintendo was releasing that year, you were SoL. Modern Nintendo fanboyism does a lot to launder the GC's reputation but I just remember it being the first console I owned that felt like it had nothing coming out. P.S. Nintendo always competed on hardware. The NES, SNES, and Nintendo 64 were all designed to be cutting-edge technologically. The first gen where they stopped doing so was with the Wii.
The more unpopular it was during its time it was actually trying to sell and make money, the more desirable it will become by hipster collectors. It's really sad. They won't give their money to Nintendo but to resellers. And Nintendo's stuff is almost always valued higher than something from another game-company, because Nintendo has the most history and love from gamers.
01:17 You drew the wrong conclusion. Nintendo wasnt more focused on power since the n64 was more graphically capable (just look at n64 most complex games) thsn the competition. With GC, their focus was efficiency & ease of development. i mewn you even n got Lincoln speech in your video. Hell Nintendo didnt even match storage capacity & shot themselves in the foot again with storage medium choice.
I had a gamecube on launch. I was 14 years old, which is why I think I started to drift towards the og xbox the next year. Just couldn't look away from halo. I regretted trading in my gamecube for an x box, but now I can go back and play all the gamecube games I missed.
I had no idea that the GameCube was disliked back in its heyday until very recently. All the kids on my block and all the kids at school absolutely loved that console. Back then I never heard anybody say a bad word about it.
This video is wrong. The N64 at the time of launch WAS the most powerful home console. What else was there? PS1, Saturn, 3DO, Jaguar? The N64's 3D capabilities blew them all out of the water. Even PCs were not that great - 3DFX accelerators were only just becoming a thing.
@@AkameGaKillfan777 False equivalence. The PS1 / Saturn / N64 constitute a specific generation. The Dreamcast belongs to the subsequent generation, alongside PS2, Xbox, and GameCube. You can't just shoehorn the Dreamcast into a discussion about the PS1's capabilities versus the N64.
@@Sketcz This is about the era they came out in. The Dreamcast beat them all by several years, and was VASTLY ahead of the PS1 and N64. If it released later close to the GameCube, PS2 and Xbox, then it would count towards that generation.
Yeah I felt the same way when the art style of Wind Waker released. I was so excited for “Ocarina of Time Link” with nex gen graphics but, I loved OoT and Majora’s Mask so much I was buying the new Zelda regardless. By the time I finished Wind Waker my opinion has completely 180’d and I loved the entire unique feel of the game. Literally just bought a Wii bc I never played Twilight Princess (which I just finished) and I never played the HD Wind Waker, meaning it’s been over 20yrs since I last played it. Which is absolutely wild to think about
I still remember my dad yelling at me for taking my gamecube with me to his house all the time so I could play it over there. His reason, he thought I was showing it off to everybody when I went outside with it, said "No one gives a tihs about your crap! Stop playing with this crap and taking it outside with you, nobody gives a tihs about your crap!" This happened back in 2021, my gamecube doesn't work anymore.
i was a kid in these years. We were a playstation family (my dad loves Grand Turismo). I only played a gamecube once (007) at a friends house. their family was known for being a bit eccentric and goofy.
I played the GameCube, but almost exclusively Phantasy Star Online Episode 1 & 2. I was really into that in the day. Honestly I missed many games of the day because I was so focused on PSO.
After the original console the hardware wasn’t that great until the wii. The snes has some of the greatest titles of all time but the later ones before 2006 are forgettable.
The reason GC has a revisionist history is because no one else except the hardcore fans actually cared about the thing. Mario, Zelda, Pokémon games and Mario Party were all clear steps down in quality from the previous generation, and for some reason all the single player games had to try to be weird or quirky in some way. Double Dash was a good improvement, but was surpassed by the Wii version in every single way just a couple of years later. The only reason I've ever seen people drag out their old GCs is to play Melee, which I will admit is a good time and the best Smash game they ever made.
GameCube without a doubt The saturn was crippled by sega of america if you take a glance at the japanese library for the console you can see how fast SOA gave up on the thing plus it had many games that were simply too ahead of their time like panzer dragoon saga a game with that level of fedility on that scale wasn't a thing in the 90s same goes for say powerslave a first person shooter with the structure of a metroidvania and just like every other Sega console the arcade ports were elite(i guess the gamecube had f zero gx super monkey ball and soul calibur 2)
The Gamecube by far. The Sega Saturn is far less memorable and has far less of a fanbase than the Gamecube does as the Saturn was quickly replaced by the Dreamcast and did not have as many games that would make it memorable like for example a memorable Sonic game. The Gamecube had far more games that people still remember fondly to this day like Smash Bros Melee , Mario Sunshine , Luigis Mansion , Wind Waker and many others. The Saturn has many people who like it but it does not have the same kind of fanbase around it that the Gamecube has.
I remember considering the GameCube at the time, but ultimately going with the PS2. I had an N64 and loved Zelda and SW Rogue Squadron on it so was considering getting the GC to play the newer games in those series, but also had discovered Final Fantasy PS1 games, so wanted a PS2 for them. The DVD was a huge bonus, but what made my mind up was seeing that the new Zelda was cartoony looking (when then everyone was wanting more realistic better graphics).
Gamecube was my 5th console and I always loved it. In my friend group Melee and Double Dash ruled but it was obvious PS2 and Xbox specifically Halo were more popular overall back then. It is funny to see the revisionist history with Gamecube but I’m glad WW, Luigi’s Mansion, Sunshine and other games are better regarded now.
The only experience i have with the Gamecube is renting Custom Robo for a day and beating it in one go while staying at a friends house. I only got to play Metroid Prime via the Wii collection on the Wii U.
Sony is also a movie studio, and they're in the DVD Consortium. So the PS2 helped sell Sony's movies, and Sony's DVD technology for other companies' movies. In return Sony's DVDs helped sell the PS2. Sony made the movie Reign Over Me, a 2-hour commercial for Sony products. Adam Sandler plays a Sony PS2 on his Sony TV, playing Shadow of the Colossus from Sony. Then he listens to Bruce Springsteen from Sony Music. Then they sold this movie on DVDs. It was even more of a factor with the PS3's release, since the $600 PS3 was the cheapest BluRay player.
One thing the gamecube did well was its controller. It had a better grib then that of the N64, build in rumble pack and the yoysticks were much more durable, even after years of constant usage.
Tbh the game cube was my most played console of that generation, as it gave me the Zoids vs. series and as a massive Zoids fan since i was kid in the mid 90s i must've spent thousands upon thousands of hours on Vs III and i have all four games, that's vs. I, Vs. II, vs. III and battle legends(english version of vs. II) in my physical collection. It's interesting that years later in 2021 i bought my switch and discovered two new Zoids fighting games, the second one they released, unfortunately was not localized, but had full costumization and a pretty cool roster, i loved that game, and just like vs. III my play time on that game is insane, and that alone made the Switch that extra special to me, always great to feel like coming home.
I was a PS1 kid. But I’m truly shocked N64 flopped. But yea the tiny disc and not have big titles is what killed the GC. GC was the console you had on the side. Was never a go to. VERY underrated controller tho. Very comfortable.
Just a small anecdote on my experience on the negativity of GC back in the day. To start with I loved my GC. It was at a time when I had to slow down my gaming because IRL got busy that I couldn't put in as much gaming as I did say with my PSX back in the day so I wasn't as fussed with the "lack of games" since I had a huge PSX library on the side along with the choice games I got on GC one of which was the legendary RE4 which was originally made ground up for GC and was pretty much the best way to experience the game before it got ported to the next generations more powerful consoles and current remasters not counting. The PS2 port was notorious for having to cut back a LOT of the stuff that made the atmosphere from GC (fog, enemy count, etc) and had to make up for it with the PS2 exclusive costumes and such. So as I was browsing the a shop back in the day and I saw the PS2 port and had a quick look. Person next to me said "oh that's a great game! you should try it out!" At this point it had been out for ages on GC and I enthusiastically went "Oh yeah it's an awesome game! Actually played it already. I have it on GC". The look on the guys face went from enthusiastic to that condescending "you poor clueless person" because I had admitted to playing it on the "inferior" console. The irony of course being RE4 on PS2 was the worst port at the time xD
I disagree that Nintendo's focus on power began with the Gamecube. Unless you count the NES (being one of the biggest gamechangers in video game history), it's been a pretty standard climb with not many gimmicks. Unless you're counting the N64's weird controller (which I have to love because it was my first game controller), I think Nintendo really only started gimmicks with the DS and the Wii. I was originally very scared of the Nintendo Switch, but I love it now. I do wish it was more powerful though. I shouldn't have to turn to emulating a console to get 60 FPS on a mario game.
Gamecube is my favorite console of all time amd it had so many great agmes and not to mention Sega Bringing Over Sonic The Hedgehog in which as a kid i grew up with a Sega genesis and Sonic has had such an impact on my life i cant really use words to explain but i will say The Sonic games of "Sonic Adventure DX" "Sonic Adventure 2 Battle" "Sonic Heroes" "Shadow The Hedgehog" "Sonic Riders" were huge parts of my Childhood! Thanks Sega for the support of the gamecube and nintendo even Allowed Sega to Develop one of their own 1st Party Games and that game is "Fzero GX" and that game is by far the best In the Fzero Series and its ashame that Nintendo has abandoned such a beloved franchise!
Gameboy Advance was not a negative at all for the GameCube. That was definitely a win it was just the reputation of being for kids that the GameCube alone held, I remember adults holding the GBA and having more hardcore experiences at least back then. Now knowing it's entire library the history has been revised, Smash Bros, Soul Calibur, Metroid Prime series, etc... made it grow up but in the beginning it was a lunch box for kids 😂😂
Yeah, this video's a nice little insight as to what went wrong with the GameCube. While a great little console with a slew of great first-party titles, people often forget why it couldn't make a dent in the Xbox, let alone the PlayStation 2, so this could be pretty helpful for that crowd of people!
I was in middle school when the Gamecube came out. My friends got it at launch and I got mine with Star Wars Rogue Leader a few weeks later. I loved it and the Gamecube had great games but eventually I sold it. PS2 and Xbox kind of took its place for me. PS2 had its sheer amount of games and Xbox had Xbox Live which online gaming was new to me. That said these days Gamecube games are some classics that I fondly remember and enjoy like Rogue Leader, Smash Bros Melee, Wind Waker and Metroid Prime.
The Mini -DVD's main issue was not small space. Remember, most PC -games were still on CD -ROM. Many games released on PS2 but not on NGC were actually less than 1,5GB. A lot were released even on blue disc CD -format for PS2. Mainly only FMV was compressed when converting full DVDs into NGC. Mini -DVD may have even speeded -up loading times. Nintendo's own games were still on small size. Luigi's Mansion for example, was less than 200MB. But, the lack of DVD -movie player was a big no go to customers. Success of DVD -Movie feature also created false imago to publishers that there were 150 -million gamers on PS2, when there actually only were as many as most successful games sold. Nintendo was still controlling manufacturing and raising high licence fees. This was s major reason to decline GameCube -versions or even completedly refuse to develop for it. But at the end of the say, yeah, it's incredible to think that system so powerful and great was sold as a new for $50-$99, during active lifespan.
I got the GameCube and several games as one of my first major Amazon purchases. I got it a few years into its life, so I was able to pick some of the better games that were already well loved. I definitely remember the frustration over Luigi's Mansion and Wind Waker. People really wanted a new Mario game, because that is pretty consistently among launch titles for new Nintendo systems. So it was bizarre to have Luigi's Mansion, which was a bizarre new form of game. That said, even though it may not have paid off at the time, people now love it and it's given way to the sequels which seem to have performed much better. A big problem with Wind Waker was the way it looked. Gameplay overall was actually pretty good, but people really wanted darker, grittier graphics. It just looked over the top cartooney. And sailing around the ocean took way too much time and was truly boring. The re-release revamped that system and made it much better. The biggest thing on GameCube though was Metroid Prime. Everyone hyped that game, everyone I knew loved that game. I literally went to a programming club meeting on campus soon after it launched, and the guy who was running the meeting was like, "Sorry guys, I don't really have anything prepared to talk about because I've just spent all my time playing Prime recently." Retro truly knocked that one out of the park. I remember absolutely loving Eternal Darkness. Just everything about it was incredible. That you had to play it through three different times to get the true ending, learning the magic, the overall concept of playing through different eras in the same set of environments. I can still hear "Charlemagne!" being said all creepy in my head. I truly loved Mario Sunshine. It was incredibly challenging, but that was so much fun. That sand bird level was the hardest thing I'd done in gaming up to that point.
I was a teenager during that generation, so I definitely remember the GCN being looked at as the "kiddie" console. I didn't realize at the time though, that it was the worst selling console of the generation. i was too busy enjoying the games on it. Metroid, Mario Sunshine, Chrystal Chronicles, all of the Zelda games, MK Double Dash, Tales of Symphonia, the Resident Evil games, Fire Emblem, PSO, Battalion Wars, the Gameboy Player for my GBA library. I'm sure I missed a few games but I'm just saying that to me personally, it didn't feel like a failure of a console. I do remember having issues with Wind Waker before I played it because of child link, but that was because it felt like it was being overdone at the time. People forget, the Zelda games around that time were Majora's Mask (child Link), ALTTP 4 swords (child link voices were added to that game), 4 Swords Adventures (child Link) and Minish Cap. That had a lot to do with the backlash for Wind Waker because it truly felt like Nintendo wanted the Zelda franchise to be just for the kids. That being said, I played ALL of these games around their releases, and enjoyed them, especially Wind Waker. This is also why Twilight Princess was such a big deal when it came out. It reminded us of OOT but also, it felt like it had been ages since the last time we were able to play as adult link. One thing I will say about that generation is that all three consoles (GC, PS2 and Xbox) were special in their own way. If you were lucky enough to have all three during those times, you know exactly what I'm talking about.
I misspoke when saying N64 was less powerful than the PS1 - please excuse this error. I have now edited this out which is why there is an awkward cut around the 1 minute mark. Thanks for watching!
I kept saying to myself "LOL whut" when ypu kept reiterating this....but felt it was just a mistake, and not worth harrassing you about. Keep the good content comming Bruddah!!!
it felt that way thanks to the dumb cartridges, crash bandicoot 1,2,3 looked better than anything on the n64 apart from like rayman 2 and donald duck going quackers
Comparing the PS1 and N64 is a bit difficult. In terms of raw graphical power, yes the N64 was better but the hardware for each console was trying to achieve different things.
For example, the N64 had anti aliasing but the PS1's chip could better handle transperency textures, the N64 had pretty much no load times on the cartridge while the PS1 could store 7 times more data, as for the negatives, there was the texture warping on the PS1 while the N64 had the forced bilinear smear. My point here is that since the hardware was so unique, both had their own perks to use for their advantages... like the PS2's Vector Units and EDRAM could make up for the weaker GPU when compared to the original Xbox and Gamecube when rendering some stuff or using physics (the infamous Silent Hill 2 fog that only worked correctly on PS2 despite being the "weaker" system on paper).
Anyway, I think this generation - probably due to the introduction of 3D - all console makers were making things vastly different from each other to see what sticked and this makes them much harder to compare especially when you judge them the same way as a PS5 vs Xbox Series. Even the Saturn has its own advantages such as superior sprite rendering for 2D games.
The mistake comes from being not yet born when the console came out, fam
I mean in some ways it was less powerful so you're not entirely wrong.
Slight correction: the Xbox always had the capability to read DVDs technically, and it was an intended feature from day one. The reason you needed the seperate remote was so that they could save on media taxes by saying that the xbox wasn't "sold as a DVD player".
Slight correction to your correction: The Xbox did not have the capacity to play video DVDs built in; the software necessary to decode DVD video was actually contained in the remote accessory's dongle. That was the only way to avoid paying the licensing fee on every console sold.
@@thecianinator slight correction to your correction to the correction: a modded OG Xbox could use a homebrew app to play and control DVD videos with a standard controller/no dongle. The whole remote requirement shenanigan was clearly a licensing fee workaround either way from a commercial standpoint but just putting that out there.
@@strykah92 slight correction to your correction to the correction of the correction, the xbox wasn't actually used as a box
Slight correction of your correction of the correction of their correction as a correction: The Xbox One is actually not the first Xbox.
I vividly remember this era. The same kids who grew up loving the N64 or Super Nintendo suddenly turned on Nintendo, saying things like, ‘Nintendo is just for kids, like Sega. Video games have matured past these childish brands. Sony and Microsoft are for adults and are the future of gaming.’ Many of those same kids celebrated Sega’s exit from the console market and actively hoped Nintendo would abandon gaming too. They saw Nintendo as outdated and out of touch, something to be left behind as gaming ‘grew up.’ Fast forward to today, and every single one of those people I know has come full circle.
Th truth is gaming in the early 2000s was a lot like the gamers themselves-it was going through an awkward teenage phase. It was no longer ‘cool’ to like colorful, whimsical characters like Mario or Sonic. Instead, everything had to be edgy, dark, and gritty. Games like Halo and Grand Theft Auto became the gold standard, as if embracing mature themes made gaming itself more legitimate. It’s fascinating to see how much things have changed since then.
As a kid who grew up with the Gamecube, I was the only person I knew who owned one at my school. But *everyone* had a PS2 or Xbox. Like you said, it just seemed like they were everyday devices in people's living rooms.
I know, I was the only one in my dorm at Ohio State with a GameCube but, I always loved it
Everyone I knew had one personally. Even my fucking school had multiple gamecubes and no Xbox/PS
Yea I only knew one person that had one growing up. I didn’t get one until I was an adult. Might be the most underrated console of all time. The only thing I don’t like is it’s kinda hard to build a collection for when literally every game is $80-$150 😂
A lot of people forget this but the Gcn outsold every single Xbox combined in Japan, yes really, the Gcn sold 4.04 million in Japan the Og Xbox sold 470.000 the 360 sold 1.6 million, The Xbox One sold 140.000 and the Series X/S sold 622.000.
The Failed Dreamcast even outsold the OG Xbox in japan with 2.56 million units.
@theothenintendomaster3717 Sadly I wasn't in Japan at the time :') Would have been cool though! Probably would have been easier to meet people to link up GBAs with too lol
You left a hughe important factor: The existence of the Xbox with MS sinking billion of dollars. This is related to why the 2nd console option strategy didnt work as consumers attention was divided between to ps2 alternatives.
Another thing that wasnt well received by developers was the GC controller lack of buttons compared to PS2. Devs often complained about having to modify their games to fit the controller.
As if developing for the absolute dog that was PS2 wasn't bad enough.
@@hitkid2456 It was part of Sony's strategy after they cornered the market with PSX, until they stopped with PS4. Very exotic architectures, so devs had to lead with Playstation versions.
This had a positive thaught. Having some devs squeezing every ounce of the hardware was a sight to behold. Cant believe some of the best games ever ran on 32 mb. One would expect having upto 18000 mb would make games 1000s of times more impressive.
@@Refreshment01 That did bite sony massively with the Ps3 especially with the infamous ''599 usd'' moment at E3 2006.
@@theothenintendomaster3717 Sony got too comfortable getting away with it 2 straight generations. Also in the 7th one they were completly blind sided by MS putting opt efficient & more developer friendly hardware. MS got lucky in this hat nvidia failed to offer the expected gpu to sony, which gave them a slight grhical advantage that developers loved. Then Nintendo surprised everyone with revolutionary controller. Various important factors aligned against Sony. Including the BR player was the best move they made. Its the only positive they took out of the ps3 generation.
@@Refreshment01 At least Sony saved the ps3 following 2009 with MS focusing way to much from 2010 to 2013 on the Kinect a thing no one liked that made a lot of Xbox fans upset and was one of the things that killed the Xbox One reveal.
The N64 was not less powerful than the PS1. It had far less memory and that's what killed it but it's actual 3D capabilities were better than the PS1. Sticking with a cartridge format was disastrous for Nintendo. The goofy controller didn't help matters.
Pretty much this. The PS1 could do better FMV and CD audio, but paled in comparison with 3d environments (as evidenced by the fact it couldn't do floating point resulting in glitches and distortions). Its why we had wide open world games like SM64, OoT, Banjo Kazooie, and others. Where on PS1 most of their open world stuff was limited to overworld (Final Fantasy 7-9) with little gameplay or tunnel type stuff. PS1 was better for the jRPG genre, but not for pretty anything else.
The PS1 was intended to be an addon to the SNES and unfortunately much of its restrictions came from that.
Indeed. It actually took Nintendo all the way to the Switch to learn a lot of lessons that included
1) Using formats that have good memory. (Learned by the Wii era)
2) Having strong launch titles and a top games coming out frequently
3) Not allowing long barren gaps between big releases to avoid players being bored and putting their Nintendo console away
4) Making 3rd party support easy
5) Having games which are attractive to players.
6) Not trying to compete in the tech arms war just to be different
@danielebowman I couldn't agree more. They almost had it with the Wii but they lost hardcore gamers due to how hard they leaned into the casual audience and motion controls.
Sonic was treated very kindly on Gamecube; every mainline Sonic before Sonic 06 was released for it. Sonic Adventure 2 Battle even became the best selling 3rd party game on the console, and anecdotally I can say that pretty much every Gamecube owner I knew back then was having more fun playing Sonic games than Mario games.
Sucks to play the 2d ones with that controller though.
I've mostly preferred Mario growing up, but SA2 absolutely blows Sunshine out of the water.
The N64 was very much meant to be the most powerful console on the market (I'm old enough to remember all the hype about the Silicon Graphics power of the ULTRA 64 bringing the special effects of Jurassic Park and Terminator 2 to our video games), and in many ways it was - while lacking in other areas. In terms of visuals, the N64 was very competitive with 3D-accelerated PC games of the time, which were running on massively more expensive hardware. Obviously, it was held back by critical weaknesses like the cartridge format, minuscule 4KB texture cache, and being tricky to develop for in general, but it was a powerful system for its day.
@@DMRetroLP Its biggest issue is not even the small texture cache, it is actually the data throughput. It's very slow and can't send too much at once. One could basically say "make sure the Ram bus is used well, because you only get one of them".
@@lpfan4491 yup, make sure the rambus goes vroom vroom.
If the N64 had a better ram bus, texture cach, and used some sort of CD then we’d have a direct competitor to the Dreamcast, which is more like 6th gen in principle and specs alone
@@lpfan4491Kaze Emanuar has optimized Mario 64 to run at 60fps with more polygons and better textures and better lighting. He says the CPU is still idle half the time.
So yes, the N64 CPU is more powerful than the Playstation. But the N64 CPU is more powerful than the N64.
I guess you could try to design a game that uses a lot of CPU without using extra RAM bandwidth, but I don't think anyone has ever done that. So basically the N64 isn't able to use the potential of its CPU.
At least the cartridge design mostly removed the annoying loading times of other consoles.
During that era gaming truly felt like it was growing up. The PS2 and Xbox (in particular Halo) felt like "adult" systems to own. I was a teenager during this time period and everyone wanted to play GTA3. Nobody really wanted the "kiddy" Nintendo platform. The purple color and goofy controller stood out negatively against the sleek looking PS2 with its high tech DVD player or the Xbox, which hit big with the college age kids using it for Halo LAN parties.
And I know a lot of people got pissed that the RE Remake and RE4 was exclusive to the GameCube because fans wanted to play them but nobody wanted to buy a GameCube to do so. It was a tough time for Nintendo. People love the "Nintendo Nostalgia" these days and will buy the Switch simply for the 1st party games. That wasn't the case back then. For that brief period of time it wasn't really "cool" to want to play Mario anymore.
Nostalgia is a nice thing, it's also highly delusional. I remember "the old days" as some people would term it and people seem desperate to return to those times when they were just as bad as things are now. Just less amplified.
The Gcn being indigo was one of the worst marketing decisions ever, indigo at that time was associated with woman, trans people and children, which made the Gcn look like the joke console.
Yeah I remember being mad as well that I couldn't play RE4 and the remake on PS2. I was done with resident evil and moved on to the devil may cry games.
RE4 ended up coming to PS2 though
@@theothenintendomaster3717It came in black too though. Lol
As a teenager who grew up with investing in the GameCube, I was the more- or less the only person who owned one at my school. Everyone had either a PS2 or Xbox. I got to learn some got a GC at its late stage, but mostly for a cheep deal and played just a few games like Mario Kart Double Dash. I was one of few defenders of the system where I got the most remarks of "Kid system, looks ugly, and can't play DVD movies", but when they said was "weaker", was the only argument they never could win. "Fewer games" was IMO the thoughest one as I often saw games released on the PS2 that easily also could been on the GameCube. BUT the system had its flaws....
1. The mini discs was a HUGE mistake to not go with the DVD format as PS2 and Xbox. The amount of data limitation made GameCube lose a lot of possible games ported;
Grand Theft Auto III, Vice City and San Andreas all never came over because Rockstars plain-out refused to port them on 2 discs each to fit all, and when the sales also was not what they wanted that also sunk that ship. Kingdom Hearts, Final Fantasy 8 & 9, Tekken, Metal Gear Solid etc. all lost because on mini-discs.
2. Can't play DVD movies.
3. License-fee. While Nintendo was not as greedy as in its NES and SNES days, its license fee was still higher then what Sony and Microsoft had, and those publishers that signed up at start of the Sony brand made deals of life-time cheaper licenses.
4. The Gamecube games of 3rd party titles was often more expensive then its PS2 or Xbox counterpart (?) making it so often finding a copy of a game cheaper on there systems, despite it was THE SAME GAME!
5. More stores sold PS2 games only = made Gamecube less accesible as this is still in the early internet era and not as well used in same extent as just a few years afterwards.
Even nowadays I can't be bothered to collect gamecube stuff because the games are like 10-20 dollars more than ps2 or xbox versions.
@@Noone-ym3dp Yeah that is so-so true! Now it is greatly insane.
@@WarioSaysSo All the gen Z and Millenial Gcn nostalgia in the 2020"s caused a spike up in prices but that is normal for all consoles.
Expect in 2027 190$ ps3 games sadly.
@@theothenintendomaster3717 That will suck!
Gc was my first console. I feel that the use of mini discs was a huge mistake.
It was the death blow to the Gcn.
I remember listening to another video about the GameCube and at the end the narrator said that the console wasn't a failure because it helped foster a community that felt tighly knit because most of their friends moved on to PS2 and they continued to play with a Nintendo console.
And all I could think was how by that logic, the Windows phone was a massive success because I get to pull it out of the drawer every now and again and show it to people who come over...
Except for the ending, where Microsoft pulled out of the phone manufacturing market but Nintendo turned it around with the Wii, so I guess it's not a perfect analogy.
It was a financial success unlike the og Xbox, Microsoft lost 4.7 billion dollars on the og Xbox and only sold like 2,3 million more than the Gcn so yea in the 6th gen you were 90 percent likely to have the Ps2 as your only console.
That sounds like a lot of cope. They may have eked out a profit, but by almost any measure, it was a failure. But I think there are two versions of failed consoles: those that fail so hard that the people who buy it feel like they have useless hardware (Virtual Boy, Atari Jaguar), and those that fail in the market but do well enough that owners feel like they got a good library of games. At least the GC managed to get in that second category.
@@joelressler5619 Really everyone except Sony lost in the 6th gen because of the Ps2, As soon as the Ps2 was out it was over for Sega, and the Other 2 consoles never stood a change, even the Wii and Ds for as successfull as they were still, did not sell as much. The Switch might be the first console to outsell the Ps2.
@@joelressler5619 Then why is the og Xbox considered a success when they also sold bellow 30 million which makes that system also a failure.Both systems failed, the Ps2 might as well had won before all the other consoles even arrived.
@@theothenintendomaster3717 Here's why the OG Xbox was a "success" while the GC was a failure despite selling roughly the same. The GC continued to lose Nintendo ground against Sony. They were number one with the SNES, a healthy second place with the N64, and an unhealthy distant 3rd with the GC. Back to the Xbox, the reason I put "success" in quotations is that it lost money and in many ways was a failure, but... It was their first console and taking on the juggernaut Sony, survived, and got some franchises (mostly Halo) off the ground that built up interested that would help them going into the following generation. The original Xbox wasn't a success on its own, but it was successful in setting up the 360. There were a lot of PS2 owners who knew someone with and Xbox, saw Halo, Forza, etc, and once the 360 launched, they switched over. I don't think many of the people that bought a Wii did so because of anything they saw on GameCube.
Another unfortunate cause of the revision was the "hardcore" gamers resenting the Wii's success, especially with women and girls, I mean "casuals". In just a couple years I saw those who mocked the GC then insist they loved it and wanted Nintendo to return to that direction.
The bs & fake information about the Wii persist today close to 2 decades later. Really sad.
And the N64 was way more powerful than the PlayStation 1 as i sold my PS1 to get a N64
@@jdarg4163 Not that I disagree (aside from the puny texture memory), but this isn't relevant to my post.
@@Refreshment01 I know. There needs to be more debunking on those.
It doesn't help that people who were calling those "hardcore" gamers out back in the day either quit because it was like talking to a wall, or got so insane from repeating themselves they turned into conspiracy nuts.
I was born in ‘92 so my first ever consoles were the gameboy color and the N64, and so that just naturally led to me owning a GameCube without much thought, and since we moved overseas in 2000 I was greatly removed from a lot of the wider gaming culture of the US. So like you mentioned, as a kid I didn’t know anything about sales or performance, I didn’t know what an E3 was and that there were cool tech demos. How can I be disappointed by Wind Waker when the first Zelda game I owned was Oracle of Ages and Seasons? I can’t be mad at Mario Sunshine when I was only able to play Mario 64 at a friend’s house and my only other experience was Super Mario Advance? The biggest thing going on was that Smash got a sequel.
And there’s this thing where my closest friend when I came back to the states had nearly all the consoles but was on the GameCube 90% of the time.
I think your notion on revisionist history tying back to Smash has a lot to do with it, but I have another theory and it stems from the lack of third parties. If you grew up with the GameCube you weren’t exactly blessed with the same amount of options the PS2 had. But the PS2 had a bazillion options with a lack of manufacturer identity. With limited options, it means that if you owned a GameCube, odds are nearly everyone played the same games. Which builds stronger fanbase communities and a greater appreciation of the games there over time. The GameCube becomes beloved because of its small but strong set of exclusives, regardless of initial reception. So you have the most passionate fans as grown ups talking about it and its games a bunch. And I’m not even just talking about first party games, Tales of Symphonia is considered one of the greats not just of the console but of JRPGs at the time. And it’s where Dreamcast greats like Skies of Arcadia and the Sonic Adventure Games got to have second life after the Dreamcast became little more than a dream. I think being a poor seller and just having good games improved the GameCube’s long term reputation.
In addition to everything else you said in the video.
The lack of full size disk play was the largest factor initially and then later in to the generation the lack of internet put the nail in the coffin.
I sold my gamecube after a year and a half to get a PS2 so I could watch movies from blockbuster and play with friends.
The reception to Wind Waker is easy to understand when you look at the popular culture of that era. It was the age of Jackass, South Park and nu metal. With all that angst and edginess it's no coincidence that franchises such as Halo, Tony Hawk's Pro Skater and GTA rose to the top. So for Nintendo to release Wind Waker into that environment was just a huge miscalculation on their part, and in a way it symbolizes the entire Gamecube era. We got some high-quality games but they were too niche or too aesthetically different as a result of Nintendo being out of step with the cultural trends of the time.
Personally, I ended up owning all three consoles in that generation, but the Gamecube was my first and by far my favorite. The exclusives were just on another level, with Metroid Prime 1 & 2, F-Zero GX, Paper Mario TTYD, Super Smash Bros. Melee, Star Fox Adventures and then they went out with a bang with Twilight Princess. Initially, third party support was pretty decent, and I remember playing games like Burnout, Need For Speed and FIFA on Gamecube. I was a young kid, so I didn't know anything about sales figures, but it was pretty well known that the PS2 was the most popular console by a mile. People who had an Xbox in those first few years seemed like unicorns, so I always assumed that was the least popular console.
In any case, it's good that the Gamecube and its library are getting some love after all these years. It wasn't a perfect console, and I do think some of the criticisms of Wind Waker and Sunshine were warranted (I was a bit underwhelmed by Double Dash too), but if you look at the amount of Gamecube games that got remasters/re-releases on Wii U and Switch, it just goes to show that there was a lot of lasting quality there.
It's anecdotal, but in my neighbourhood so many of us had Gamecubes. It wasn't until later in life that I learned it was such a huge flop. My family got it within launch window with four games: Wave Race: Blue Storm (which I love and think is underrated), Sonic Adventure 2 Battle (which I also love), FIFA Soccer 2002, and NBA Courtside 2002. My older brother told me later that he was disappointed that my parents went with the Gamecube; he wanted a PS2.
Great video.
That's how I felt, I only learned about a year ago that the GC didnt sell well originally. Then I remembered seeing the ads as a kid about the gamecube price geing slashed to $99 lol.
But the few friends i had at the time had GC's, and since it had 4 controller slots natively, it was easier to play multiplayer with friends and family lol.
Failed consoles at the time they released don’t seem like a good choice but 10-20 years later you’re not worried about the “do I buy a ps2 or GameCube?” They are retro now and instead of looking at it from its time period we’re just looking at way to play games, the library is fantastic and the console is cool when your not worried about the competition and whatnot as that’s all long gone, thus why everyone loves the GameCube as a retro console but not during its actual time. It was hard to choose a GameCube over a PS2 or an Xbox as those systems dominated the era but now as a retro console the GameCube library has aged like fine wine and has captured the hearts of many who didn’t appreciate it back then
Those double dash visuals still go hard to this day
I just can’t believe that after the n64 used cartridges that had low storage they were just like, nah, let’s do that again.
The n64 was more powerful, but the cost and size limitations of cartridges led many devs to shift focus to PlayStation development.
yeah it definitely wasn’t weaker than PS1, though it was weaker than some of its (considerably less successful) competitors
@@METC500 The tiny texture cache however was a major limitation.
And Nintendo Pioneered the invention of 3D free moving camera game.... ✅ Nintendo from past to present, Focus on gameplay experience not on graphics.
@@QuantumChrist crash bandicoot was a sad response even at the time
@@shaolinotterI feel bad every time I say it but I don’t like that game…like at all
Revisionism on Sunshine doesn't really exist. A LOT of people still don't like that game from what I can find, as people find the level designs frustrating to this day when they decide to go back and play it. People tend to hate the controls and say the game is too harsh and not really friendly. In fact I think people treat the game much more harshly with the existence of Odyssey now. A game much easier and forgiving to players. I've seen more people say Sunshine is just straight up bad more than I've seen positive reception.
Granted that's not to say NOBODY likes Sunshine now, but I feel like the game's reputation has overall gotten worse with ever changing standards.
Odyssey has better physics and progression too
Sunshine and Spm are like the most divise Mario Games literally any opinion on those games is valid, I think sunshine is a good game with many issues but TTYD is my Favourite Gcn Mario Game.
Remakes and remasters feel like they play a big part in it. Just the past few years we got rereleases of Super Mario Sunshine, Metroid Prime, Pikmin 1 & 2 and Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door. Also a large part of the online gaming community are younger millennials who have fond memories of the system.
I remember a few years back when people couldn't stop talking about N64 games like Banjo-Kazooie or Goldeneye 007, making me mistakenly think that it was a big deal back in the day and not completely decimated by the PS1 in sales
I loved Nintendo games most and had friends who did too so I wasn't 100% alone in owning a GC, but it still was a really rough position to take (basically no one thought it was cool or good; Microsoft's Xbox was *way* cooler), and even as a fan all the games felt like letdowns. The graphics upgrade felt considerable and people wanted normal Mario, normal Zelda, etc. like SM64 or OOT but just new content and upgraded for GC hardware; instead we got Mario the power washer, Wind Waker had the really out-of-the-box art style that was honestly ugly to me at first and there were people in my life, let alone online, who hated it *far* more than me, etc. Every Nintendo sequel had some weird gimmick that made it feel way too different in the context of Nintendo at the time. Now that we've had a string of "normal" games since then, people can look back and see that the GC games are wonderful in their own right and a nice change of pace. But when your only Mario game in 10 kid years was Mario the power washer it felt a little like you got ripped off. It was still fun, but it wasn't the Mario you wanted. Wind Waker was still fun, but it wasn't the Zelda you wanted. Double Dash was still fun, but it wasn't the Mario Kart you wanted (and it came out really late). The video said about Wind Waker that it was "right game, wrong time" and I basically think that about the GC and its games in general. Incredible, but you felt very much like you were in the Nintendo doldrums at the time, and were going against societal trends to a point of risking being made fun of, even as a kid fan.
Experiences that had fewer expectations around them were hits if you had the opportunity to try them though -- Super Monkey Ball, Melee, and Animal Crossing all come to mind. And Sonic Adventure 2 Battle was mindblowing both in that a Sonic game was on a Nintendo console, and that it was an absolute blast too.
Outside of that, I remember a strong obsession with first person shooters in gaming culture / media, which the GC didn't have much of, contributing to the childish image. GC didn't have -any- online-enabled shooters either. It got to where Nintendo even used shooters in their marketing for DS and Wii, which had to have been a reaction from the GC's poor reception. I'm glad gaming has moved on from this phase to a larger variety of genres again.
I’m 40 and grew up with the NES. Until Wii U, GameCube was BY FAR the most depressing time to be a Nintendo fan. Luigi’s Mansion was seen as a big step down compared to previous Nintendo launch games. At the time games like Sunshine & Wind Waker were seen as unfinished and a huge step behind their predecessors. In particular, Wind Waker was mocked for its art style. It has aged well but at the time it felt like the wrong choice since society was desperately trying to be cool - which was what the PS2 was. Third party games were mostly worse than those found on PS2 & Xbox due to a lack of disk space and less buttons on the controller. The loss of Rare was massive with a huge hole in the library where games almost to a Nintendo standard had once been. The FPS genre mostly moved across to Xbox after the N64 had led in that area previously on console. It has been lost to time but a large % of the console’s sales, after the launch window, came after desperate price cuts which dropped the price to a ridiculously low level - Even then the console struggled to compete. Stores started to reduce hardware and software space after just 18-24 months. You’d walk into game stores with huge PS2 areas and then see a tiny little GameCube stand in the corner. A lot of the love today seems to come from gamers who had the GameCube as their first console or were just little kids at the time so have a wave of nostalgia for the system. There’s also people going back in time and enjoying the console compared to what systems offer today - no online updates etc.
I had a tremendous amount of fun with the GameCube. Luigi’s Mansion and Pikmin are my two FAVORITE games on the system. It’s such a shame that Nintendo didn’t include online play or the ability to use DVDs with the GameCube. I’m sure it would’ve done much better if that were the case.
In a way the newfound love people have for the GameCube makes me think of how the PA Vita was largely viewed as a joke since Sony hung it out to dry. It only later got the recognition for the technology marvel it was after people went crazy modding the thing. I recently bought a modded one and it’s amazing. Such a shame the thing didn’t reach the heights of its predecessor the PSP.
Absolutely loved the Gamecube when it released
I’ve been amused by the revisionism. The Game Cube was as fine, but the gaps between games were huge at a time the PS2 always had a bunch of interesting games out.
Also it does have some fab games, but they were hardly the best in their own series. Mario Sunshine was the least good 3D Mario, the Wind Waker had long dull sailing sections its WiiU remake had to update. Mario kart double dash was good but hardly the best Mario kart.
So I can see it looks strong in retro spec but at the time you had decent entries to each series and long barren periods of nothing to play.
This is the best message i see so far. Besides the continual droughts & degradation on game series quality as you pointed out. Other things to add is that Nintendo was seriously lacking in features compared to the competition, marketing was abysmal & Nintendo had to contend with wn extra rival that had better 3 rd party support.
you are really downplaying how good some of the GCN games were. Melee, F-Zero GX, Metroid Prime, Pikmin, Animal Crossing, Viewtiful Joe/RE4/Super Monkey Ball/Symphonia were originally GCN exclusives, etc.
@@Refreshment01 The N64 was far more damadging in the long Term the Gcn could have saved Nintendo if the made the discs not mini-Dvd"'s
Double Dash is sure as hell better than every game before it and Wii. Even 7 people consider to be forgettable. What other game in the series has tag-team racers and Special Items?
@@Enoby_Darkness But Pikmin was a niche game and to some degree still is, most gamers aren't into tough, complex, real time puzzle games. It's not a console seller. Nor was Metroid ever a console seller (as much as that perplexes it's fans). Melee was excellent, but that's one game and F-Zero isn't a big seller.
Regardless, no one is saying the GC didn't have some very good games. But it had entries that were less desirable and inferior to prior ones and they were to few and far between. People love Mario, but no one wanted a Mario game whose fundamental core mechanic was to spray water over mud. It's not hard to see how Sunshine is the least attractive 3D Mario game.
And that's the issue each GC entry for most franchises came to late, ended up being the least attractive and desirable and wasn't worth the months and months of having no reason to play your GC. It may be the hipsters revision to claim it was a great time, but it really wasn't and it's taken Nintendo up to the Switch to truly get to grips with why so many of their post SNES consoles struggled or under performed.
I grew up with a backwards compatible Wii as a kid and would visit a used game store with my brother every few weeks after school. Since Wii and DS games were full price at the time (this being 2008-2011) GameCube and GBA were for the most part incredibly inexpensive. Got bangers like Pokemon Colosseum and XD, Luigi’s mansion, Chibi Robo, Wind Waker, the GBA Pokemon games, Fire Emblem Sacred Stones and more all for pretty cheap (anywhere from $10-20 a piece) we usually got 1 or 2 Wii or DS games a year so whenever we got money for helping our grandparents or birthdays/holidays we would buy last gen games and then trade them back in when we were done. Didn’t get a gamecube console till I was in high school and started working but I grew up with the system thanks to the Wii’s backwards compatibility.
Sounds like we had very similar experiences. I hope you kept some of those games like chibo robo and fire emblem!! They’re so expensive now
Easily Nintendo best console. Almost every series got a game. Zelda, Mario, F zero, Metroid, Kirby, smash, animal crossing (sorta), fire emblem, pokemon, warioware, starfox. The list goes on. And it’s third party and new games were also amazing Killer 7, Re4, Eternal darkness, skies of arcadia, tales of symphonia, pikmin, viewtiful joe, chibi robo, twin snakes. Gamecube was an amazing console
I know people who disliked the GameCube, but once the Wii launched they claimed to lament the fact that Nintendo had 'abandoned' the hardcore audience. It annoys me because, at the time, Nintendo was on such a downward trajectory in sales and shifting focus made absolute sense for the company. And maybe that wouldn't have been necessary had all these closet GameCube fans actually bought one when it was relevant.
Im totally with you there i was a gamecube fan back in the day still am to this day and funny enough my second favorite console other than the gamecube has the same issue alot of fan now but nobody bought it back when it released and of course im talking about the ps vita another device that didnt sell well and deserved better .
Looking back, I was eating *good* throughout the 6th and 7th generation of consoles because I have two older brothers who got a console each, plus my parents had a decent gaming PC on the side.
One brother was the PlayStation kid, the other brother was the Xbox kid, and I was the Nintendo kid. So in addition to all the GameCube, Wii and GBA classics, I also got to sample many of the big games from the other platforms such as Halo, God of War, and Uncharted.
That said, apologizing in advance if I seem selfish, I definitely felt the stigma against Nintendo at the time... to the point where I sometimes get a bit annoyed by some of the obsessive praise for the GameCube today. It doesn't sit well with me seeing people worship the system now when they weren't around to support it at the time when it desperately needed them the most. Whereas I was there when it went down & took the slings and arrows that came from supporting Nintendo at one of its low points.
Thats not selfish, what you describe is how humans behave, basically they dont appreciate what they have.
Some of the same people thst praised the GC, were the ones angry at Nintendo in 2017 because they continued supporting the 3ds.
It seems these guys get invaded with nostwlgia when scalpers start selling nintendo systems for double the price. Thats when their appreciation grows.
god its wierd seeing retro footage of something i was alive for
Wow, what a gem of a video. Such a great balance of accurate information and research as well as a side of personal opinions and perspectives where they fit and explained in a very professional yet digest able manner. Easy subbed.
I hope to see more where this came from!
I was still a nintendo kid at this time. halo and grand theft auto just felt tacky compared to nintendo's great designs. but that was becoming kind of a hipster position as everyone was playing ps2
and while everyone was playing wwe smackdown, I got to play the day of reckoning games which are super underrated
I must admit, having lived through this exact period of gaming and knowing how it all went down, I was expecting a much more negative take and was ready to dismiss it. I'm glad I didn't because you basically hit the nail perfectly on the head with this one.
There's one detail you didn't include when it came to the system's perception and the time it released, though: First Person Shooters.
While previous generations had dabbled in the genre, It was the GC/PS2Xbox gen that REALLY moved the genre from being almost exclusively a PC affair to consoles slowly becoming the primary platform of the genre. And while the GC had it's share of fps games, people never associated the system with them. The Xbox had Doom 3 and Halo 1 and 2, and the PS2 had Time Splitters as well as Killzone. The GameCube Had Metroid Prime 1 + 2, which even Nintendo tried to sell as a First Person Exploration, not a shooter, and the Geist, a game no one remembers.
This had a lot to do with the "mature" perception the other systems were going for. And yeah, most 3rd party FPS games did come to the GC, but they tended to sell the worst, were usually missing features, and the marketing usually focused primarily on the PS2, with the Xbox selling itself as the "premium" version, leaving the GC no niche to it's own except for the very few people who had one exclusively.
There was also a general feeling at the time that Nintendo was lagging behind and should go 3rd party as a result (which is funny in retrospect, considering what the other two companies are doing today), and the lack of an online strategy, and their focus on linking the GBA to the GameCube didn't help.
And then there was the whole thing with the handle...
I don't think that's true, though. Most people I've seen talking about the Gamecube acknowledge it's financial failure. Hindsight isn't revisionism.
Looking back... I think I might heavily dislike Generation X gaming journalists and especially Generation X Nintendo fans during the early 2000's. Never forget how they also took Star Fox and F-Zero for granted and then those series became dormant.
I remember seeing the GameCube for £100 in my local store and knew it was cooked! It's a shame as well as it's the first console I saved up to buy day one and was so sad to see it slowly fade out.
I'm loving the revisionism on this due to the fact that some of my fav games released on that system are finally getting loved. But yeah, I do like pointing out to some that it wasn't all sunshine and rainbows 20+ years ago with the Gamecube.
Game cube was my first console and I didn’t really like it. Maybe it was the lack of quality games I had. I only had star fox as far as Nintendo games everything else being 3rd party games. It was a decent system I guess and as far as dvds go I had a dvd/vhs player for that and I didn’t get into music until I was older. The Wii was really neat but for me the PlayStation 3 was what made me a gamer. I mean I felt rich as heck being able to play blue rays on that thing…granted I only had two blue rays but I mean cmon man! I also really loved the Xbox 360 all my consoles lived at my dads or grandmas house so until I got an Xbox I didn’t have a home console I got to live with.
I think another deterrent for lack of third-party support, albeit a small one is the GameCube controller itself. It lacks clickable analog sticks like its competition and has less buttons. Making third-party devs/publishers hesitant to streamline the controls exclusively for a Cube' port.
NintenTubers did irrepreable damage to gaming analysis. The fact that zoomers think the GameCube came anywhere close to the PS2's level of critical and commercial success is shocking.
This goes way further back than that.
Gaming internet, especially on the English-speaking side, is built on N64 fanatics.
I'm yet to see a single person under that delusion. This revisionism of history is non-existent, nobody denies that GameCube sold poorly, it's just that nowadays more people find its library attractive compared to contemporaries. Sure, I've seen a fair share of fanboys huffing copium by claiming that N64 was a major success for Nintendo but nobody, I mean NOBODY, ever did this for GC.
@@Diwasho I never grew up with the Gcn instead buying that system in 2020, apreaciating and loving the Gcn but it was a failure nobody denies that, people don,t deny the Wii u, or Dreamcast,s failure the only console that is overhyped is the N64.
Kurriochi a European gen Z youtuber that knows that the America centric perspective on Nintendo and Gaming in general, especially regarding the so ,,called crash of 1983,, is incorrect provides a less biased perspective on the N64 and global gaming markets.
Did we watch the same video? I've never once heard ANYONE say that, including here.
I get soo many gamecube documentary videos in my recommendations and feedback. Kinda gotta bored of gamecube retrospectives and they all seems to feed some narrative that gamecube is some obscure console. It was never obscure back in the day, its just system that didn't vibe with people back in that era of gaming. The cartoony/anime games on ps2 sold pretty well but not as high as western adult high budget games released on the ps2. It's the og xbox and some of the Japanese 90s console (non big 3) that are actually obscure as hell.
13:37 Homie on the right look like he finna bike into Butler, Pennsylvania with a mysteriously large backpack
Thank you for doing a retrospective on the Gamecube. Gamecube was my first home Nintendo console. My sister and I loved playing the GameCube in EBGames or GameStop. Lots of memorable games were introduced to us like Zelda Wind Waker, Super Mario Sunshine, Luigi's Mansion, and even Billy Hatcher and the Giant Egg were all bought because we played them on a Gamecube Demo Kiosk. Wind Waker is still a favorite to this day.
I was there, Game Cube was my first console. I love that box to death, so many memories of my friends and I playing Melee, Mario Party 5, Mario Strikers and Soul Calibur 2.
At least such a video does not have to be made for the WiiU because there really is not much of a revisionist history surrounding it. We fans generally agree that for how good of a console it actually is, to pretend it had much cultural impact or big relevance is just kinda incorrect. The media landscape forgot about it so hard that the Switch gets false credit for several things it carried over from the WiiU, or retro releases that were first made on it.(People are still quoting NSO for the official international release of Earthbound Beginnings and the US release of Kuru Kuru Kururin. Even tho WiiU VC did it.)
The Wii U revisionism is there just as much, it just took on a different form of "Nintendo used to be a lot less corporate"
I miss Iwata too, still, some of the praise of him online feels slightly overblown to overplay his less business-savvy decisions such as Wii U.
@@SobmicSSBB The Creator's Program was corporatism to the max, and they were just as aggressive towards fan projects. Remember Pokémon Uranium and AM2R?
I got my Gamecube in 2002 and I loved it. I didn't play any Nintendo games, mainly Metroid Prime and Viewtiful Joe and those 2 games were worth owning the system. The decision to not use full size discs was just moronic, even at that time they were ripped for it's stupidity. I mean Microsoft are basically clueless old geezers and even they knew that their console needed full size discs. Also remember that at that time Nintendo was still pretty much hated by developers for their shady monopoly practices during the 90s, so many teams just wouldn't make games for Nintendo and were happy to see Sony trounce them.
You've made a lot of good points about the longevity of the Gamecube's popularity.
I believe one of the biggest factors of this is that the audience that usually goes for the more realistic and visually impressive games will usually just go onto the next console for what they want.
I may be incorrect, but my impression of people who play racing, sports and military FPS games (which all look their best on the PS2 rather than gamecube) will more typically move on to the bigger better games.
If I want to have the best time playing Call of Duty, I'll probably pick the latest one.
However, Nintendo games have a quality that makes them very easy to revisit.
Simpler visuals don't feel as aged as more realistic ones do as time goes on.
Pikmin could probably be released today and I don't think anyone would call it ugly.
Metroid Prime still looks really good, and needed minimal input to make the remaster as good looking as it did.
The Wind Waker remake felt kind of pointless to me as it still looks really good.
There's also the fact that a lot of these Nintendo games are worth visiting because they still are pretty big today.
If you like Zelda, you're probably going to pick up Wind Waker, which as I mentioned, has not really aged that much.
In each series there's a continuity of games that do something different enough that they don't out-date the others.
Despite people's frustration that there hasn't been a new F-Zero game, it's probably part of their approach to making sequels that they never want to make a game look or feel like 'the old one'.
This is not to dunk on games that have tried to push the limits to present realism, as a lot of those games are still really fun regardless of the age, but Nintendo series
Also this is the last of my multi-paragraph comments. I guess I just really like the gamecube.
I find the GameCube to be underwhelming. It had some good ideas, but the execution could and should have been better.
the reason why the Gcn failed was because of Yamauchi and his decisions. I don,t hate the man as I respect his contributions to Nintendo but Yamauchi in his later administration (1991-2002) made some of the worst decisions in gaming history, first he agreed to the Sony deal even though Sony was effectivelly planing to turn their ,,partnership,, into a de facto Sony aquisition of Nintendo, he then exited the deal last minute and entered into another failed deal with Phillips which made Sony and especially Ken Kutaragi mad, this lead to the development of the Playstation, released in late 1994(their own worst enemy).
Then the N64 was delayed from a 95 to 96 release and so to not make the customers wait for their 3d console and feel like they were behind the competition, they released the Virtual Boy in 1995, a failure far bigger than than the Wii u, that destroyed even more trust in Nintendo and was Gunpei Yokoi,s final console.
For some baffling reason they decided to make the N64 a Cartridge based system (instead of a cheaper Cd based one) which made development on it for 3rd parties harder than the Saturn allowing the Ps1 to outsell it by 70 million.
In the N64 era Nintendo was so completely sure that they were doing the right thing that they made the same mistakes in the next generation.
With the Gcn they finally moved to Optical media but instead of normal Dvd,s they went with Mini dvd,s with once again less storage and higher cost compared to the competition(the ps2 being the cheapest Dvd player at the time did not help) and when the PS2, Xbox and even Dreamcast emphasized online play the Gcn having one online game(Phantasy star online, a Dreamcast port) made it look even more outdated.The Gcn also released 1 year after the Ps2 allowing them basically a free year to garner sales and an audience.
The final nail in the coffin for the gcn in my opinion was the fact that Yamauchi emphasized and even said himself that the Gcn was a toy not to be taken seriously making the system,s basic color Indigo , despite the fact that Nintendo of America protested it all the way until launch, this made the system look like a game console for girls and Babies, the handle and especially Wind Waker,s reveal did not help to remove this kiddy image.
The only good thing Yamauchi did after 1991 was to propose to Iwata to make the Ds and only once Iwata and Reggie took charge in 2002 and 2004 did the Gcn,s reputation and sales finally start to rise with mature and teen rated titles launching on the cube but it wasn,t enough to make it a succes or outsell the Og Xbox, and Nintendo will have to effectively enter a new casual market with the Wii and Ds, finally achieving success for the first time since the Snes.
The gcn is my 2nd favourite console off all time and for anyone reading this essay of a comment, please don,t assume I hate Yamauchi, the N64, or Nintendo.I just tried too present the reasons for the fall of the Gamecube and why I feel so mad that they almost had success with the Gamecube but that Yamauchi killed it.
In a nutshell, Nintendo did all the things that were good for the evolution of gaming in the long run, but bad for their own business at the time. It's really odd to have it summarised like that. Maybe Yamauchi had some sort of future vision, lmao.
I really hope you're talking about the 1991-2002 period and only that. Let's not forget he appointed Iwata to the CEO role during then too
@@PrinceVegetaBrief Yes I am only talking about that period of Nintendo history, and Iwata becoming president was the catalyst for Niintendo,s revival, so I did forget one good decision.
@@theothenintendomaster3717 Personally I have a fair bit of disrespect for him. When he became president of the company, he fired every employee that was part of them previously, and he made fun of RPG fans, conveniently ignoring all of the RPGs that came out on SNES and some that would have come out on N64 if it used discs from the get-go.
I really hope Nintendo finally brings Gamecube games to Switch 2 Online. This is the system I had through my teenage years and is the Nintendo system I have the fondest memories of. It's the first system I bought with my own money and I invested a lot of my time playing it with my friends.
12:40 Third party games almost never were worse on GameCube. PS2 consistently had the worst versions of any multiplat release between it, GC and Xbox purely because it was underpowered compared to the competition and its architecture was difficult for developers to work with. Some games like Sonic Heroes were virtually unplayable on PS2 but ran just fine on GameCube and Xbox. Whatever minor compromises developers had to do for GameCube were nowhere near as bad compared to the extreme downgrades the PS2 versions were receiving.
Yep, fun fact katamary damacy was actually developed on gamecube because of the comparatively ease of programming vs the ps2. This was the initial reasoning of capcom for the ill fated capcom’s five.
The criticism was unfair. Eternal darkness was awesome
Has public perception about the Wind Waker actually changed or have the haters just moved on creating an echo chamber within the Zelda community? Like I suspect that if the next Zelda game on Switch 2 is starring toon Link, it will suffer a massive decline in sales compared with Totk and Botw.
Seen more N64s in my time than GameCubes. And seeing an N64 in the flesh was very rare.
A few corrections:
2:06 - The N64 was the most powerful console on the market when it released.
3:38 - Nintendo had always been focused on power. The NES, SNES, and N64 were all specifically designed to outperform competing systems. This only changed with the Wii.
12:59 - Nintendo's "kiddie" reputation began with Sega's aggressive comparative marketing of the Genesis against the SNES, solidified with their removal of the blood from the SNES version of Mortal Kombat, and worsened during the N64 generation, when some games (like Tony Hawk and Cruisin') were censored on N64, and other more "mature" cross-platform releases (like Tomb Raider and Dead or Alive) never released on N64 at all.
Other than these points, most of your analysis was spot-on. Good video!
As a second console the Xbox was infinitely more appealing than the Gamecube. PS2 covered everything the gamecube did except *the nintendo version* of those games. It had better platfomers (and significantly more of them,) better adventure games, better racing games, better open world games, better rhythm games, better horror games, and on and on. PS2 did have online from day 1 (shoutout to THPS3,) but it never had a strong online foundation. As cool as Socom was Xbox became the place for online play which was something genuinely new. What did the Gamecube offer? Did it have a vision for the future? 2003's release schedule for the Cube is anemic, by 2004 they had so little on the plate that it stopped hitting peoples radars. By 2005 anything that came out there was overshadowed by the upcoming Xbox 360.
The internets fetishism with the Cube is weird, but mostly driven by emulation. They tend not to play many games so for the past 14 years since Dolphin's proliferation all you've heard from the dedicated gamecube emulation camp is the same 3 or so games. The critics at the time were right and anyone comparing the consoles today can see that. The Gamecube failed because it had none of the games people wanted, and the "nintendo version" wasn't very appealing.
I like these kind of docu-youtubers talking about topics. I'd like to see more uncommon topics about gaming stuff.
This is for anyone who wasn’t there and doesn’t know. The idea that Nintendo abandoned hardcore gamers with the Wii overlooks an important detail: hardcore gamers abandoned Nintendo first, and it all began with the GameCube. Despite having an incredible library of games like Eternal Darkness, Resident Evil 4, and the remake of Metal Gear Solid, the GameCube couldn’t capture the attention of hardcore gamers. The console’s aesthetic design, with its small, colorful, toy-like appearance, turned many gamers off, even though the system had some of the best games of its generation. Hardcore gamers were drawn to the more mature designs of the PlayStation 2 and Xbox, and they overlooked the GameCube’s potential, choosing those systems instead.
Nintendo tried to cater to hardcore gamers, but the market had already shifted. This led to a pivot toward the casual market, beginning with the Wii and its motion controls. The Wii’s success came from its accessibility to casual players, lapsed gamers, and families, and it worked in tandem with the DS, which also targeted casual and non-traditional gamers with its dual screens and touch interface. The Wii and DS together were Nintendo’s bold move into the casual market, after seeing that hardcore gamers weren’t supporting their more traditional consoles.
With the Wii, Nintendo made a deliberate effort to move away from the battle for hardcore gamers and instead focused on accessibility. While it still delivered core games like The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess and Super Smash Bros. Brawl, the focus on motion controls and party games helped Nintendo dominate the casual market. This shift was necessary because hardcore gamers had already left after the GameCube era, unwilling to give Nintendo another chance despite its incredible game lineup.
When Nintendo tried to recapture hardcore gamers with the Wii U, it was too little, too late. The system had the right games and the right features, but hardcore gamers had already moved on. The Wii U failed because it couldn’t bridge the gap between the casual market, which had moved on to other platforms, and the hardcore gamers who were no longer interested in Nintendo.
In the end, the failure of the Wii U was the culmination of this toxic back-and-forth: hardcore gamers rejected Nintendo after the GameCube, Nintendo pivoted to the casual market with the Wii and DS, and when they tried to bring hardcore gamers back, they didn’t return. Nintendo wasn’t abandoning hardcore gamers-they were responding to the fact that those gamers had already abandoned them.
I got a Gamecube in 2001 at launch and by late 2002 I'd largely abandoned it in favor of the PS2 (which had gotten cheap enough that you could buy it secondhand for like $100 if you knew where to look). Being a GC owner was basically getting 1 or 2 really good first party games a year and nothing else - and if you weren't a fan of whatever thing Nintendo was releasing that year, you were SoL. Modern Nintendo fanboyism does a lot to launder the GC's reputation but I just remember it being the first console I owned that felt like it had nothing coming out.
P.S. Nintendo always competed on hardware. The NES, SNES, and Nintendo 64 were all designed to be cutting-edge technologically. The first gen where they stopped doing so was with the Wii.
I grew up with the wii, never had any gamecube games until I start collecting retro games, and imo the gamecube is the best nintendo system.
The more unpopular it was during its time it was actually trying to sell and make money, the more desirable it will become by hipster collectors. It's really sad. They won't give their money to Nintendo but to resellers.
And Nintendo's stuff is almost always valued higher than something from another game-company, because Nintendo has the most history and love from gamers.
I was in my early 20s when I had a GC and I wish I could go back and tell my past self how awesome it’ll be in the future
01:17 You drew the wrong conclusion. Nintendo wasnt more focused on power since the n64 was more graphically capable (just look at n64 most complex games) thsn the competition. With GC, their focus was efficiency & ease of development. i mewn you even n got Lincoln speech in your video. Hell Nintendo didnt even match storage capacity & shot themselves in the foot again with storage medium choice.
Great video ❤
You deserve way more views
Thanks for watching!!
Hello 😊 Fellow jaywood commenter 😂😂😂
@PrinceVegetaBrief hey 👋
One of the least talked about aspects of the GameCube was how its games had a very experimental feel to them.
I had a gamecube on launch. I was 14 years old, which is why I think I started to drift towards the og xbox the next year. Just couldn't look away from halo. I regretted trading in my gamecube for an x box, but now I can go back and play all the gamecube games I missed.
The best Nintendo console I ever played and luckily grew up with
I had no idea that the GameCube was disliked back in its heyday until very recently.
All the kids on my block and all the kids at school absolutely loved that console. Back then I never heard anybody say a bad word about it.
I would get beat for owning it
This video is wrong.
The N64 at the time of launch WAS the most powerful home console. What else was there? PS1, Saturn, 3DO, Jaguar? The N64's 3D capabilities blew them all out of the water. Even PCs were not that great - 3DFX accelerators were only just becoming a thing.
Dreamcast
@@AkameGaKillfan777 Oh for goodness sake. Dreamcast launched the very end of 1998 in Japan, several years AFTER the N64.
@@Sketcz So? The PS4 and Xbox One released over a year after the Wii U.
@@AkameGaKillfan777 False equivalence. The PS1 / Saturn / N64 constitute a specific generation. The Dreamcast belongs to the subsequent generation, alongside PS2, Xbox, and GameCube. You can't just shoehorn the Dreamcast into a discussion about the PS1's capabilities versus the N64.
@@Sketcz This is about the era they came out in. The Dreamcast beat them all by several years, and was VASTLY ahead of the PS1 and N64. If it released later close to the GameCube, PS2 and Xbox, then it would count towards that generation.
Yeah I felt the same way when the art style of Wind Waker released. I was so excited for “Ocarina of Time Link” with nex gen graphics but, I loved OoT and Majora’s Mask so much I was buying the new Zelda regardless. By the time I finished Wind Waker my opinion has completely 180’d and I loved the entire unique feel of the game. Literally just bought a Wii bc I never played Twilight Princess (which I just finished) and I never played the HD Wind Waker, meaning it’s been over 20yrs since I last played it. Which is absolutely wild to think about
I still remember my dad yelling at me for taking my gamecube with me to his house all the time so I could play it over there. His reason, he thought I was showing it off to everybody when I went outside with it, said "No one gives a tihs about your crap! Stop playing with this crap and taking it outside with you, nobody gives a tihs about your crap!" This happened back in 2021, my gamecube doesn't work anymore.
The n64 was more powerful than ps 1 idk what you’re talking about but ya got ya facts wrong
PS1 straight up didn't even have a Z-buffer
i was a kid in these years. We were a playstation family (my dad loves Grand Turismo). I only played a gamecube once (007) at a friends house. their family was known for being a bit eccentric and goofy.
I played the GameCube, but almost exclusively Phantasy Star Online Episode 1 & 2. I was really into that in the day. Honestly I missed many games of the day because I was so focused on PSO.
After the original console the hardware wasn’t that great until the wii. The snes has some of the greatest titles of all time but the later ones before 2006 are forgettable.
1:25 Plot twist: the conference was held during an earthquake. xD
The reason GC has a revisionist history is because no one else except the hardcore fans actually cared about the thing. Mario, Zelda, Pokémon games and Mario Party were all clear steps down in quality from the previous generation, and for some reason all the single player games had to try to be weird or quirky in some way. Double Dash was a good improvement, but was surpassed by the Wii version in every single way just a couple of years later. The only reason I've ever seen people drag out their old GCs is to play Melee, which I will admit is a good time and the best Smash game they ever made.
I wonder which failed console (in regards to sales) gets more love nowadays: GameCube or Saturn?
Gamecube for sure.
GameCube without a doubt
The saturn was crippled by sega of america if you take a glance at the japanese library for the console you can see how fast SOA gave up on the thing plus it had many games that were simply too ahead of their time like panzer dragoon saga a game with that level of fedility on that scale wasn't a thing in the 90s same goes for say powerslave a first person shooter with the structure of a metroidvania and just like every other Sega console the arcade ports were elite(i guess the gamecube had f zero gx super monkey ball and soul calibur 2)
lol only sonic fans and adjacent sega nerds care about the saturn
The GC because it had almost all the best Saturn games ported to it. I had a Sonic collection CD with like 15 Saturn games on it I swear
The Gamecube by far. The Sega Saturn is far less memorable and has far less of a fanbase than the Gamecube does as the Saturn was quickly replaced by the Dreamcast and did not have as many games that would make it memorable like for example a memorable Sonic game.
The Gamecube had far more games that people still remember fondly to this day like Smash Bros Melee , Mario Sunshine , Luigis Mansion , Wind Waker and many others. The Saturn has many people who like it but it does not have the same kind of fanbase around it that the Gamecube has.
I remember considering the GameCube at the time, but ultimately going with the PS2. I had an N64 and loved Zelda and SW Rogue Squadron on it so was considering getting the GC to play the newer games in those series, but also had discovered Final Fantasy PS1 games, so wanted a PS2 for them. The DVD was a huge bonus, but what made my mind up was seeing that the new Zelda was cartoony looking (when then everyone was wanting more realistic better graphics).
Gamecube was my 5th console and I always loved it. In my friend group Melee and Double Dash ruled but it was obvious PS2 and Xbox specifically Halo were more popular overall back then. It is funny to see the revisionist history with Gamecube but I’m glad WW, Luigi’s Mansion, Sunshine and other games are better regarded now.
The only experience i have with the Gamecube is renting Custom Robo for a day and beating it in one go while staying at a friends house.
I only got to play Metroid Prime via the Wii collection on the Wii U.
Sony is also a movie studio, and they're in the DVD Consortium. So the PS2 helped sell Sony's movies, and Sony's DVD technology for other companies' movies. In return Sony's DVDs helped sell the PS2.
Sony made the movie Reign Over Me, a 2-hour commercial for Sony products. Adam Sandler plays a Sony PS2 on his Sony TV, playing Shadow of the Colossus from Sony. Then he listens to Bruce Springsteen from Sony Music. Then they sold this movie on DVDs.
It was even more of a factor with the PS3's release, since the $600 PS3 was the cheapest BluRay player.
One thing the gamecube did well was its controller.
It had a better grib then that of the N64, build in rumble pack and the yoysticks were much more durable, even after years of constant usage.
Sooo basically the GameCube was foreshadowing the Wii U.. and Nintendo didn’t listen
Tbh the game cube was my most played console of that generation, as it gave me the Zoids vs. series and as a massive Zoids fan since i was kid in the mid 90s i must've spent thousands upon thousands of hours on Vs III and i have all four games, that's vs. I, Vs. II, vs. III and battle legends(english version of vs. II) in my physical collection.
It's interesting that years later in 2021 i bought my switch and discovered two new Zoids fighting games, the second one they released, unfortunately was not localized, but had full costumization and a pretty cool roster, i loved that game, and just like vs. III my play time on that game is insane, and that alone made the Switch that extra special to me, always great to feel like coming home.
I was a PS1 kid. But I’m truly shocked N64 flopped. But yea the tiny disc and not have big titles is what killed the GC. GC was the console you had on the side. Was never a go to. VERY underrated controller tho. Very comfortable.
Just a small anecdote on my experience on the negativity of GC back in the day. To start with I loved my GC. It was at a time when I had to slow down my gaming because IRL got busy that I couldn't put in as much gaming as I did say with my PSX back in the day so I wasn't as fussed with the "lack of games" since I had a huge PSX library on the side along with the choice games I got on GC one of which was the legendary RE4 which was originally made ground up for GC and was pretty much the best way to experience the game before it got ported to the next generations more powerful consoles and current remasters not counting.
The PS2 port was notorious for having to cut back a LOT of the stuff that made the atmosphere from GC (fog, enemy count, etc) and had to make up for it with the PS2 exclusive costumes and such. So as I was browsing the a shop back in the day and I saw the PS2 port and had a quick look. Person next to me said "oh that's a great game! you should try it out!" At this point it had been out for ages on GC and I enthusiastically went "Oh yeah it's an awesome game! Actually played it already. I have it on GC". The look on the guys face went from enthusiastic to that condescending "you poor clueless person" because I had admitted to playing it on the "inferior" console. The irony of course being RE4 on PS2 was the worst port at the time xD
I disagree that Nintendo's focus on power began with the Gamecube.
Unless you count the NES (being one of the biggest gamechangers in video game history), it's been a pretty standard climb with not many gimmicks.
Unless you're counting the N64's weird controller (which I have to love because it was my first game controller), I think Nintendo really only started gimmicks with the DS and the Wii.
I was originally very scared of the Nintendo Switch, but I love it now. I do wish it was more powerful though. I shouldn't have to turn to emulating a console to get 60 FPS on a mario game.
You say that like previous Nintendo consoles never had Mario games below 60fps
@@AkameGaKillfan777 I'm aware of that. 60fps is a modern standard, or at least should be.
Gamecube is my favorite console of all time amd it had so many great agmes and not to mention Sega Bringing Over Sonic The Hedgehog in which as a kid i grew up with a Sega genesis and Sonic has had such an impact on my life i cant really use words to explain but i will say The Sonic games of "Sonic Adventure DX" "Sonic Adventure 2 Battle" "Sonic Heroes" "Shadow The Hedgehog" "Sonic Riders" were huge parts of my Childhood! Thanks Sega for the support of the gamecube and nintendo even Allowed Sega to Develop one of their own 1st Party Games and that game is "Fzero GX" and that game is by far the best In the Fzero Series and its ashame that Nintendo has abandoned such a beloved franchise!
Gameboy Advance was not a negative at all for the GameCube. That was definitely a win it was just the reputation of being for kids that the GameCube alone held, I remember adults holding the GBA and having more hardcore experiences at least back then. Now knowing it's entire library the history has been revised, Smash Bros, Soul Calibur, Metroid Prime series, etc... made it grow up but in the beginning it was a lunch box for kids 😂😂
Yeah, this video's a nice little insight as to what went wrong with the GameCube. While a great little console with a slew of great first-party titles, people often forget why it couldn't make a dent in the Xbox, let alone the PlayStation 2, so this could be pretty helpful for that crowd of people!
I was the only person in my friend group with a GameCube. I would get looks until everyone wanted to play smash
I was in middle school when the Gamecube came out. My friends got it at launch and I got mine with Star Wars Rogue Leader a few weeks later. I loved it and the Gamecube had great games but eventually I sold it. PS2 and Xbox kind of took its place for me. PS2 had its sheer amount of games and Xbox had Xbox Live which online gaming was new to me. That said these days Gamecube games are some classics that I fondly remember and enjoy like Rogue Leader, Smash Bros Melee, Wind Waker and Metroid Prime.
The Mini -DVD's main issue was not small space. Remember, most PC -games were still on CD -ROM. Many games released on PS2 but not on NGC were actually less than 1,5GB. A lot were released even on blue disc CD -format for PS2.
Mainly only FMV was compressed when converting full DVDs into NGC.
Mini -DVD may have even speeded -up loading times.
Nintendo's own games were still on small size. Luigi's Mansion for example, was less than 200MB.
But, the lack of DVD -movie player was a big no go to customers.
Success of DVD -Movie feature also created false imago to publishers that there were 150 -million gamers on PS2, when there actually only were as many as most successful games sold.
Nintendo was still controlling manufacturing and raising high licence fees.
This was s major reason to decline GameCube -versions or even completedly refuse to develop for it.
But at the end of the say, yeah, it's incredible to think that system so powerful and great was sold as a new for $50-$99, during active lifespan.
I got the GameCube and several games as one of my first major Amazon purchases. I got it a few years into its life, so I was able to pick some of the better games that were already well loved.
I definitely remember the frustration over Luigi's Mansion and Wind Waker. People really wanted a new Mario game, because that is pretty consistently among launch titles for new Nintendo systems. So it was bizarre to have Luigi's Mansion, which was a bizarre new form of game. That said, even though it may not have paid off at the time, people now love it and it's given way to the sequels which seem to have performed much better.
A big problem with Wind Waker was the way it looked. Gameplay overall was actually pretty good, but people really wanted darker, grittier graphics. It just looked over the top cartooney. And sailing around the ocean took way too much time and was truly boring. The re-release revamped that system and made it much better.
The biggest thing on GameCube though was Metroid Prime. Everyone hyped that game, everyone I knew loved that game. I literally went to a programming club meeting on campus soon after it launched, and the guy who was running the meeting was like, "Sorry guys, I don't really have anything prepared to talk about because I've just spent all my time playing Prime recently." Retro truly knocked that one out of the park.
I remember absolutely loving Eternal Darkness. Just everything about it was incredible. That you had to play it through three different times to get the true ending, learning the magic, the overall concept of playing through different eras in the same set of environments. I can still hear "Charlemagne!" being said all creepy in my head.
I truly loved Mario Sunshine. It was incredibly challenging, but that was so much fun. That sand bird level was the hardest thing I'd done in gaming up to that point.
I think the only other console to even approach this amount of retroactive love and appreciation is the Dreamcast
Failures tend to get the rose tinted glasses treatment (loved my dreamcast)
I was a teenager during that generation, so I definitely remember the GCN being looked at as the "kiddie" console. I didn't realize at the time though, that it was the worst selling console of the generation. i was too busy enjoying the games on it. Metroid, Mario Sunshine, Chrystal Chronicles, all of the Zelda games, MK Double Dash, Tales of Symphonia, the Resident Evil games, Fire Emblem, PSO, Battalion Wars, the Gameboy Player for my GBA library. I'm sure I missed a few games but I'm just saying that to me personally, it didn't feel like a failure of a console.
I do remember having issues with Wind Waker before I played it because of child link, but that was because it felt like it was being overdone at the time. People forget, the Zelda games around that time were Majora's Mask (child Link), ALTTP 4 swords (child link voices were added to that game), 4 Swords Adventures (child Link) and Minish Cap. That had a lot to do with the backlash for Wind Waker because it truly felt like Nintendo wanted the Zelda franchise to be just for the kids. That being said, I played ALL of these games around their releases, and enjoyed them, especially Wind Waker. This is also why Twilight Princess was such a big deal when it came out. It reminded us of OOT but also, it felt like it had been ages since the last time we were able to play as adult link.
One thing I will say about that generation is that all three consoles (GC, PS2 and Xbox) were special in their own way. If you were lucky enough to have all three during those times, you know exactly what I'm talking about.
Thank you for the great video!
Thanks for watching!!