20 years GameCube: We look back on Nintendos Wonder Cube

Nintendo Co., Ltd. is a Japanese international consumer electronic devices and video game business headquartered in Kyoto, Japan. The company was founded in 1889 as Nintendo Karuta by artisan Fusajiro Yamauchi and initially generated handcrafted hanafuda playing cards. After venturing right into different lines of service throughout the 1960s and also acquiring a legal standing as a public company under the current firm name, Nintendo dispersed its initial video game console, the Shade TV-Game, in 1977. It acquired global recognition with the launch of Donkey Kong in 1981 and also the Nintendo Entertainment System and Super Mario Bros. in 1985. Considering that after that, Nintendo has actually created a few of one of the most successful consoles in the computer game sector, such as the Video game Kid, the Super Nintendo Enjoyment System, the Nintendo DS, the Wii, and the Nintendo Change. It has actually produced countless significant franchises, consisting of Mario, Donkey Kong, The Tale of Zelda, Pokémon, Kirby, Metroid, Fire Symbol, Pet Crossing, Splatoon, Star Fox, Xenoblade Chronicles, and Super Knockout Bros. The personality of Mario is internationally recognisable, as well as works as the business s mascot. Nintendo has several subsidiaries in Japan and also abroad, in addition to service partners such as The Pokémon Firm and HAL Research Laboratory. Nintendo and its staff has obtained honors including Emmy Awards for Innovation & Engineering, Video Game Honors, Game Developers Choice Honors and also British Academy Games Awards. It is just one of the most affluent and also most beneficial firms in the Japanese market.

The older ones among you remember: Until 1995, Nintendo seemed unbeatable in the highly contested console market. With the 8-bit console NES and the 16-bit successor Super Nintendo, the Japanese quickly established itself as a fixed size and benefited significantly from an outstanding game library - led by ingenious own productions such as Super Mario Bros. or The Legend of Zelda and garnished Excellent third-party titles from Konamis Castlevania to Mega Man from Capcom.

Table of contents

1. Page 1Retro Special for the 20th birthday of the Nintendo Gamecube, page 1
2. 1.1All under control
3. 1.2in bumpy start
4. 1.3 return to the roots
5. Page 2Retro Special for the 20th birthday of the Nintendo GameCube, page 2
6. 2.1kinderbell undesirable
7. 2.2 Poradian Lights and Technology Goodies
8. 2.3Chazing: unhappy third party
9. 2.4Xclation: Six highlights from six years GameCube 3rd page 3 picture gallery for 20 years GameCube: Our Big Birthday Review to the ...

Many were sure that the victory train would be continued with the Nintendo 64. However, this turned out as a trouge: Nintendo was too confident, demanded high royalties of foreign gaming developers and should repent adequate module technology. At the latest as a long-term partner such as Enix or Squaresoft, the pages changed and their role-playing hits seria as Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy preferred for the first PlayStation, Sony suddenly stood as a winner of the fifth console generation.

Nintendo did not stop the setback but did not put on the course for the next hardware on attack. First known under the project name Dolphin, the GameCube (Buy Now) should convince in any way: through technology, price and of course exclusive gaming facilities.

Everything is under control

The GameCube was like creating a swivel-bizarre action adventure like Chibi-Robo! In which she makes a whole house unsafe as a miniature robot. Source: Nintendo looks more closely at the history of video game consoles since the millennium turn, then one thing is on: the devices were getting bigger and increasingly powerful. Only Nintendo drifted Anno 2001 with the Gamecube in a completely different direction, according to the motto: practical, square, good!

Already the shape of the Gamecubes looked most unusual: the Nintendo designers had decided for a small, cube-shaped box, which could be easily lifted thanks to his wide carrying handle. If you opened the flap in the middle of the housing, then a small drive revealed. There were neither CDS nor DVDs place, instead, the games slumbered on tiny game disc. Such a disc was in principle a miniature DVD, which was able to grasp just a third of an ordinary single-layer DVD with 1.46 gigabyte storage capacity.

Sure, she was quite a technical progress compared to the old-bound module technology of the Nintendo 64, as it enabled lower game prices due to the lower production costs. Nonetheless, the choice of the medium was once again a poor theme: Nintendo continued to cook his own soup - especially to contain pirated copies in the best possible way. However, the potential buyers of the console saw no advantage in it and was quite the same on the contrary rather from the PlayStation 2, which could play free home film DVDs.

In The Legend of Zelda: Four Swords Adventures you could connect up to four Game-Boy Advance handhelds to the GameCube. Source: Nintendo At least as well, the Gamecube controller mutated, which at first sight were rather unpleasant due to its colorful color design. The housing oriented itself on the console and a matt indigo. The big, central A button was turquoise colored, the small B button on the left, however, bright red. There were still a few light-gray buttons as well as a digital and two analogous shoulder buttons.

The control crosses also did not correspond to the common norm: on the left bleed an analog stick and below a Digi cross, which compared to a Playstation Controller smaller. On the right below the keys, another stick shone in bright yellow. He felt consciously different due to his nubenform and took a special role in many games - for example, to switch through menus or adjust the camera.

F-Zero GX was one of the best automatic transforms that the Gamecube had to offer. Source: Nintendo Generally, the ergonomics of the controller was remarkable: he felt lightweight and due to his many curves nicely supple. The analog shoulder buttons were so great that one could lay his index fingers in their troughs. In addition, they expressed themselves differently, which utilizes some games like Super Mario Sunshine (2002), for example, for handling the water syringe.

In other words, all together, we have really taken the controller in a very good memory, even though he was actually potentially potentially and looked purely visually to cheap children s toys.

A bumpy start

Unlike the predecessors, you headed in Mario Kart: Double Dash !! Always a two team instead of a single character. Which items were obtained, depended on the driver s license. Source: Nintendo Nintendo often had a happy hand with the launch titles of his consoles, Super Mario and The Legend of Zelda. But again the GameCube proved to be exception: The first games for the dice were anything but bad, but somehow not what many Nintendo fans had imagined.

In Japan, the console went on September 14, 2001 and with just three games in the start of sales: Luigi s Mansion, Wave Race: Blue Storm and Super Monkey Ball. The former was to carry Mario s brother from Sidekick to the system seller, which did not succeed. The fans preferred to hop with Mario as usual from platform to platform, rather than going a whole adventure with vacuum cleaner and a fearful Luigi on ghost hunting.

Wave Race turned out to be as beautiful as well as playable jet ski racing game, but not the same WOW factor produced as the technically revolutionary N64 predecessor. And super monkey ball? Well, it was Sega s first game for a stationary Nintendo console after the long-standing competitor had to admit the commercial failure of his own console called Dreamcast.

No matter how much the Metroid series changed over the decades: even in Metroid Prime it was possible to turn into a handy ball. Source: Nintendo as I said: These are all good games ... but no Super Mario Bros. (1985) or Super Mario World (1990)! While we had to wait for Europeans until May 2002, the GameCube came to North America on November 18, 2001 and was supplied with significantly more software from the first day. In addition to 08/15 sports games like Madden NFL 2002 or NHL Hitz 20-02, Star Wars Rogue Squadron 2: Rogue Leader from Factor 5 for Furore. The successor to the N64 hits used the strengths of the console consistently and counted until the end of the GameCube era to the technically best games for the console cube.

Only a few weeks later followed with Super Smash Bros. Melee the commercially successful Gamecube game. And by the way, Nintendo surprised with two brand new projects, namely pikmin and Animal Crossing. The former was a mixture of strategy and puzzle, in which one commanded a small astronautmen over a foreign planet conducted and dozens of pikmins. These were able to do all sorts of tasks in the team, including thick stones or bash larger opponents.

Everything listens to your command! The cute pikmins served both to solve riddles as well as to combat great opponents. Source: Nintendo Animal Crossing, on the other hand, debuted at the beginning of 2001 on the Nintendo 64 and appeared eight months later in a technically drilled implementation for the GameCube. Unfortunately, interested players had to wait outside Japan for a while until they were allowed to try the innovative social simulation: Animal Crossing was sold a year later in the US and even from 2004 also in Europe.

Notwithstanding, Nintendo had some titles in the luggage from the beginning, which demonstrated both the advantages of the hardware and demonstrated the continuing creativity of the developer. And yet the lineup felt strange unspectacularly, just because big names like Mario or Zelda were missing.

Back to the roots

Of course, this deficit remained in the long term: from 2002, many of the hot-stretched sequels followed, with Nintendo unusually brought a lot of courage for new concept ideas and did not always hit counter-love. For example, The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker (2002) provided for controversies due to its cel-shading graphic style; Some lidmäuler vulpted the action adventure as Celda .

Protagonist Link finally resembled a little boy in a green pajamas instead of a bold hero who saves the princess from the stow of evil Ganon. Mario in turn got in Super Mario Sunshine (2002) the already mentioned water syringe missed, which he needed to clean the sun-flooded island of Delfino. On the one hand, the gadget enabled a complex leveldesign, which was skilfully lifted from the well-known bouncing, and, on the other hand, sacrificed the accessibility of its predecessors thanks to a relatively complex control.

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20 years GameCube: We look back on Nintendos Wonder Cube [Source: Lucasarts]

From Andreas Altenheimer author & Benedict Plass Fleece Female author & Katharina Pache Editorial manager & Lukas Schmid Editorial manager 15.09.2021 at 09:23

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