No shit. I mean what console has survived as long as those OG Gamecubes. I have had mine for 20 years and the first issue came up this year. Turns out it’s an easy fix I can do myself and nothing destroying the console itself I can still play while working on this fix.
Also the Gamecube had so many games that were moved from the N64 that and some of the rarest games exist on Gamecube. Sometimes I can’t believe it was ever a flop for them because it was a childhood favorite. I’m so glad I kept mine and tried to take good care of it even when it was in storage for so long.
I don’t think any console today or even back at the time in 99 or early 2000s would last 20 years with kids turning into adults and 5-6 moves without having a console breaking issue.
Ive had 2 PS2’s go down, a PS3 Gen1 break, 3 Xbox 360, and very sadly an OG Xbox that did last from 2005 to 2015, an N64, and my PS4 Slim is getting there for sure. All (except the 64) gotten years (some a decade) after this Gamecube I still have today.
Thank my lucky stars my sister gave it back to me because it is my rock of a console. It should have done so much better than what articles and money say. It’s a very sought after retro console and I’m glad I still have and take care of mine from 2003 when I was a youngin’
GameCube was good, but I say the SEGA Dreamcast definitely takes the Underrated and Underutilized Console award.
It’s a shame the Wii U never really saw the modding community the Vita had
It finally got there though at the end of it’s life. I have mine available still because it’s basically a modded Wii with the ability to also play WiiU Roms too.
WiiU was underpowered when it launched. Even if someone had utilized it 100%, it still would have been behind compared to the Xbox360 and PS3. 720p only when the Xbox and PS2 were already supporting 720p and 1080i was also a bad choice.
WiiU was just a bunch of bad choices combined in a single product. Bad hardware choices, bad marketing, bad name, requiring the massive gamepad for console setup, etc.
Some of this is factually wrong, some of this I disagree with personally.
I’m not gonna stand here and claim the WiiU was a good business choice or the best possible design for what they were going for. That was the Switch, and… well, yeah, it’s the biggest console out there for a reason.
I’ll say for it that, like the GameCube, it’s less of an interesting retro ownership piece just because so much of its library ended up getting Switch ports. Given the scarcity, some of the reliability issues and the rarity of some games, though, you can be sure I’m sitting on my Wii U and physical games indefinitely. I’m not a speculative collector, but that Wii U copy of The Wonderful 101 is gonna be a good investment at some point.
Kind of missing the point of Nintendo. They make epic games. The Wii-U was a massive miss step for Nintendo from a marketing perspective and even the control pad had some massive flaws around it too but damn I love this console for what it was and the games.
It was a stepping stone to get to the Switch though. It was super under powered compared to the PS4 and Xbox when released and even more so with the PS5 and Xbox Fridge or Toaster or whatever the One is called these days. Based on specs but it played great and looks damn good on my 4k UHD tv and the OLED console display really pops for its size. But all and all it’s shit on paper based on specs and that’s fine as Nintendo knows how to work with what they got and it’s a mighty fine console.
Also Blast Processing!!! Bro
The only thing wrong with the wiiu was the price of the games. People call it the “switch tax” but I had to pay $90 for pikmin 3 in 2013, when the idea of $70 games was still rocking the world of Sony and MS fans. If it wasn’t for a gift I never would have accepted that price.
Had an internet browser.
Controllers had mini screens available.
Shit was OP, ahead of its time.
It did cloud game streaming in 2012 and, unlike the Sony Portal, the Steam Link or Xbox Cloud, it actually worked.
Granted, while you were within spitting distance of the unit and had clear line of sight, but still. Impressively lagless wireless video out of a console in the early 2010s? We don’t respect that enough.
I’m not a fan of the Dreamcast library at all. If you ask me, that’d be the Saturn, which has more interesting games by a wide margin, IMO. If anything, I feel the DC has been mythologized unfairly. It has good ports of a bunch of great ports of fighting games from the worst period for fighting games and a few 3D arcade ports from the worst period for 3D arcade games.
The Dreamcast library can feel underwhelming because of how shortlived the console was. Most Dreamcast games didn’t get to fully realize the console’s power because it didn’t last long enough for the potential to be fully realized. EA was afraid of piracy so didnt even try to develop for it, and the Dreamcast launched too close to the Saturn for most people. However, it was the fastest selling console in the US at the time. But then like, a year and a half later the PS2 launched and killed any chance the Dreamcast had.
Dreamcast had a lot of good games. Notably, Sonic Adventure, Soul Calibur, Shenmue, Grandia 2, and Record of Lodoss War. But what I think makes the library good is how experimental all the games on it were. Games like Illbleed. Its hard to find “duplicate” games on the Dreamcast, unless you look at like, the Resident Evil port and Dino Crisis port.
For a console that realistically only existed for about 18 months, it did quite well. Had the Dreamcast not launched so close to the Saturn, had SEGA supported the Saturn in the US more, had the PS2 not come along to kick it down, and had EA not dropped it instantly, then I definitely think the console would have done well.
It didn’t have a chance. Those are a lot of “ifs”. You’re basically saying if the other console manufacturers hadn’t manufactured consoles then the Dreamcast would have done great.
Look, from a design perspective, the DC was ahead of its time: cram a PC in a console shell, focus on sharp resolutions and online support. The template ended up becoming the Xbox and eventually after the 360 era it’s what all modern consoles are.
But in the context of them trying to bounce back from the Saturn’s very mishandled Western run, it was the absolute wrong console to make. All the arguments from Sega fans about how the games looked nicer than the PS2 and whatnot just didn’t hold up to scrutiny on the displays of the time. Was the resolution much higher? Yep. Did it matter when plugged in using component cables to a crummy consumer CRT? Absolutely not. It looked a whole generation behind.
And again, be careful about rating worldwide success from what happened in the US. The DC did surprisingly well there, like the N64 did, but much less elsewhere. The Gamecube outsold it 2:1, as did the original Xbox, and the PS2 ended up outselling both of those 10:1. The Dreamcast was in stores over here, for sure, but I have never met anybody who owned one.
It had Sonic Adventure which was and is a really great game. The chao garden made great use of the little screen thingy compared to other games.
Oh and Crazy Taxi was an arcade port but pretty dang decent despite that!
And uh… Sonic adventure 2?
OK maybe not a lot of greats but that’s part of the mythos of DC, it could’a been a contend’a but games didn’t make good use of its capabilities.
Shenmue!
Skies of Arcadia!
Grandia II!
Ikaruga!
MvC2!
Phantasy Star Online (WITH ONLINE PLAY?!)
DoA with age slider for boobies!
D2! (Criminally underrated)
Elemental Gimmick Gear!
Caution: Seaman!
ALL THE NES GAMES, SNES GAMES, GENESIS GAMES, MAME, GAMEBOY, you could just burn em on a regular CD and play them! In fact, NO COPY PROTECTION, just download whatever game you want and burn it, doesn’t even need to be a GD-ROM!
DVD playback was a big issue at the time. Buy a PS2 and you got a built in DVD player. Here’s the 2000 JCPenney Christmas catalog for DVD players:
https://christmas.musetechnical.com/ShowCatalogPage/2000-JCPenney-Christmas-Book/0689
Around $250-$350. The PS2 was introduced that year in North America for $300. So you could get one for about the price of a standalone DVD player. Why wouldn’t you? Nobody cares now, of course, but it was a big thing at the time.
Oh, and the PS2 played all the existing PS1 games. To this day, I still tell people that the PS2 is one of the best deals in retro gaming because of the wide range of titles it can play. Lots of hidden gems to find. Even better if you can score an early model PS3, but they’re harder to find and more expensive than a PS2.
The early model PS3 had a literal PS2 crammed inside of it for the sole purpose of backwards compatibility which was fascinating. The death of physical media (blu ray) and high price kind of caused it to flop that generation. Look who’s laughing now though!
PS3 still outsold the XB360 globally, barely. 87M vs 85M. That was also the generation Nintendo decided to take its ball and play by itself with the Wii. Microsoft had its own fuckup with the red ring of death. PS3 wasn’t a total flop, though certainly not as dominant as it has been against Microsoft before or since.
People commonly think the PS3 was a flop due to very poor performance in the US. Outside of the US, it did way, way better. Then later in the generation when you could get one of the Super Slim models for dirt cheap and the library was so massive, it caught up in sales in the US.
In Australia it cost over a grand on launch, and it still beat out the 360 for a while. Toward the end you could get a super slim and two games from EBGames for like $100.
A lot of people don’t realize this, but the same thing applied at an even greater scale with PS3’s Blu-Ray player.
At the time, Blu-Ray players cost $1000 while the PS3 launched at $500 or $600. Sony was legit doing everyone a solid, and they got shat on for it.
It’s so sad how the xbox 360 won that gen, considering it was the more expensive console when you factor in paying for 2nd internet. Then it ended up normalizing the trend of 2nd internet, lol.
Needless to say, I stopped buying consoles at the PS4 era. Thank god emulation is great, PC hardware is cheap, and many console exclusives are getting PC releases anyways.
The GameCube was a flop mostly because of image and marketing, not because it wasn’t technically good.
I have one and I love it, but I only got it long, long after release.
What 12-year-old boy asking for a Christmas present is going to choose the cutesy purple brick that “only has kid games” over a sleek black PS2 that is seen as being adult, with action and fighting games? Not many, and so the GameCube flopped.
I think Nintendo were starting to see at that time that consoles weren’t just for boys. They were for girls too, and for the whole family, and the GameCube was a step towards that. But it didn’t go far enough. They ended up stopping short and falling smack in the middle where it didn’t appeal to the established ‘male gamer’ demographic, and still didn’t grab families either.
Then the Wii came along and went HARD on the family-friendly aspect, and just blasted off the shelves. Nintendo learned a lesson, but the GameCube was the price they had to pay for it.
Okay, here’s my obligatory reminder that it’s less of a flop than people, particularly in anglo territories, give it credit for. It sold just shy of the original Xbox and it outsold well liked stuff like the Dreamcast or the Vita about 2 to 1.
A few consoles at that time were very regional. The N64 was a rare sight where I’m from, I have seen an original Xbox in the wild exactly once, it was being used as a DVD player and the owner had no games for it. The Gamecube picked up a lot of steam over here once the price went down to 100 bucks and it got a reputation for having some of the best excluisves of that generation later in its lifespan.
The one thing I’d argue about its longevity as a retro console is that it’s almost entirely superseded by the Wii, which can play the entire library natively, has more functional output options and is super easy to find. The Cube is cuter, more iconic and built like a brick, though, so it’s a better thing to have on a shelf.
Here’s MY obligatory reminder that GameCube had little compartments on the bottom that you could hide yer drugs in!
You touched on a few good points, but I think ultimately reached the wrong conclusion.
What 12-year-old boy asking for a Christmas present is going to choose the cutesy purple brick that “only has kid games” over a sleek black PS2 that is seen as being adult, with action and fighting games?
This was literally Segas entire marketing strategy. Nintendo early on decided to lean heavily into the family friendly marketing for their consoles starting with the NES (or famicom, literally family computer) for various reasons but most prominently because of the videogame crash of the 70s.
Sega saw an opportunity to position themselves as an edgier option that would appeal more to the tween and teen demographic and so leaned very heavily into that in their advertising in the 80s and particularly the 90s. This tactic was rather successful and so Nintendo developed a reputation as the console for children. This image was further cemented by certain decisions by Nintendo around game content, most prominently by the rather shortsighted decision to force the Mortal Kombat series of games to recolor characters blood to green instead of the red it was on arcade and sega systems (this could be disabled using a hidden cheat code somewhat rendering the entire exercise moot).
When Sony and Microsoft came along they didn’t really need to do anything special besides release whatever games they wanted, the damage to Nintendo’s rep was already done. Nintendo then made things even worse for themselves by releasing a console in bright candy colors most closely associated with marketing towards young children that literally looked like a small childs lunchbox.
Then the Wii came along and went HARD on the family-friendly aspect, and just blasted off the shelves.
Nintendo realized that they wouldn’t be able to shake the children’s console rep they had developed easily and so decided to lean heavily into messaging that their consoles were also for adults. Much of the marketing for the Wii (in fact the majority of it) depicted the console being played by adults and the elderly. It was actually somewhat rare to see advertising for the Wii showing young children using the console, a stark contrast from Nintendo’s previous marketing.
This was also reflected in the design aesthetic of the console and its packaging featuring a modern minimalist flat white color scheme with minimal light blue highlights. Compared with previous Nintendo consoles the Wii was downright drab looking. Its packaging looked more like a product from Ikea than a games console.
Nintendo further lucked out with the Wii in that it had a novel control system utterly unlike anything else in the market at the time and so had a massive novelty factor going for it. Additionally helping with this was that they positioned the console at the extreme low end of the market releasing it at a price point well below half the cost of their nearest competitor.
They didn’t “luck out”, they were reproducing the strategy that had already worked in the DS. Remember “Brain Training”? To this day I know people who claim to loathe videogames who owned a DS and were cool with it. Same core design: accessible, unorthodox input system as a trojan horse for adults, here are all the games it turns out you also enjoy playing.
It’s the same with the Switch and the detachable controller, dockable console gimmick. If anything, the Wii U is the outlier in them not designing it well enough to pay off that ongoing strategy. One could argue that the 3DS did as well, but that glassless 3D screen is amazing, particularly once they figured out eye tracking, you’re all wrong about that one.
Remember “Brain Training”?
No actually, I’m not sure what that is. The only novel feature I was aware of with the DS was the dual screens. The clamshell form factor had already been proven out with the SP, and stylus based touch screens were relatively common at the time having been proven out with the PalmPilot and its various clones. Unfortunately for Nintendo the original DS was just a bit too big and bulky for a portable, something they fixed with the DS Lite and subsequently the DSi and 3DS.
That said, the bigger factor I think at the time was the price point. The Wii at launch retailed for $250 and very quickly fell to $200 and late in its life could even be found for as low as $100. In contrast the PlayStation 3 launched at a minimum of $500 to as much as $600 for the highest capacity model. The XBox 360 which had been on the market for about a year at that point was a little better off with its minimal configuration being available at a modest $300, with its most expensive offering coming in at $480.
Making things worse for Sony but better for Nintendo the PS3 had rampant supply shortages and scalping leading to it commanding even higher prices at launch. Around the holidays the XBox 360 had similar issues although far less extreme. In contrast Nintendo managed to maintain a steady supply of the Wii and while there would occasionally be shortages leading to bare shelves they never lasted long which helped cut down on instances of scalping.
The pricing in conjunction with the novelty of the Wii controls is what led it to such a huge success. The funky motion controls were an interesting gimmick and were enough in many people’s minds to justify spending $200 even if ultimately the Wii was just a glorified Wii Sports machine that ended up gathering dust after a few months.
There’s a reason both Sony and Microsoft rushed out their own motion control systems and then just as quickly abandoned them and why Nintendo never really went back to them after the Wii. It was very much a fad. The very limited motion controls of the joycons in the switch are the last remnants of that design, but even Nintendo seems to have realized it’s a fairly niche control system that the Wii went a little too hard on.
Nintendo has always been willing to gamble a little and try unorthodox things with their game systems, be it the frankly bizarre controller of the N64, or the unusual lenticular lens of the 3DS, and the less said about the VirtualBoy the better. Sometimes those gambles paid off, sometimes not so much. Ultimately though I don’t think Nintendo’s decision to include motion controls in the Wii was some kind of grand strategy to appeal to a wider audience, rather I think it was just part of Nintendo’s policy of experimenting and willingness to try unusual things. So yes, in that regard Nintendo very much lucked out with the release of the Wii.
And for the family friendly aspect nothing after the wii beat it.
The multiplayer games there are just better than something like the switch offers, and the controllers are a good size and weight for emulating whatever they are representing in games. Stuff like tennis with the tiny light switch controllers just feels wrong.
I thought the Dreamcast earned this title
For sure. Lots of people knew how awesome game cube was and what it was capable of. Its lacking graphics with extremely well made games. The dreamcast was a powerhouse with VGA out. Barely anyone knew how amazing it was. It could have blown away Sony. Sega really dropped the ball. I wish I had known when it came out.
I’m on my 3rd dreamcast but it’s been fine for the last couple decades. My genesis, though, 1991 and still fine. Kicking myself actually, the cartridge port was feisty for EVER but i finally had the guts to really look in there and i tweezed out 30 years of fuzz that had felted down in it.
I mean what console has survived as long as those OG Gamecubes
Uhhh the N64, SNES, PS1 to name a few
PS1? Those disc drives were very fragile. Mine didn’t work unless I physically tilted console sideways after like 2 years of use.
SDIO mod is almost mandatory at this point. Not an easy mod, though. Certainly not a first time soldering project. You have to carefully scrape away the protective layer of some very thin traces to expose the copper and solder a fine wire to it.
Still, the quality of life improvement is worth it, even if you don’t download ISOs off the Internet. Vastly reduced loading times and no dealing with scratched discs.
