The Nintendo Gamecube is a forgotten piece of gold that could have saved or at least delayed the inevitable fail of the Nintendo WiiU. And this forgotten behavior just adds to the legacy of the purple box that housed more hidden gems than disappointments. That poor purple box suffered from gamers’ post-traumatic stress from being N64 owners and also suffered from the giant third-party conquering monster known as the Playstation 2. Now, this blog entry is splitting into two categories: Why it Failed, and Why it Could Have Been Revived. Why it Failed belongs to my Entire World blog, with the Revived entry belonging to the Eighth Generation. Now, without further interruption, my upcoming 3,000 word dedication to the Nintendo Gamecube.
Why It Failed
Check out the monster year of the Gamecube in 2002:
Super Mario Sunshine
Soul Calibur II
Animal Crossing
Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit 2
Resident Evil 0
Metroid Prime
Resident Evil (Remake)
Smash Brothers Melee (In Europe)
Wind Waker (In Japan)
Super Money Ball 2
Nice little lineup, eh? The Europeans finally got the greatest fighting game of all-time (not being released simultaneously worldwide was an awful move), Nintendo got the best version of the second-best fighter in the generation (Link in Soul Calibur should have been a staple), and the best game of the sixth generation (Metroid Prime----there is no arguing here). Honestly, the WiiU never had a year with this many buyable games.
Now…let’s look at PS2’s 2002:
Grand Theft Auto: Vice City
Virtua Fighter 4
Spider-Man: The Movie
NFL 2K3
The Thing
SOCOM: U.S. Navy Seals
Kingdom Hearts
Sly Cooper
Tekken 4
Burnout 2
Timesplitters 2
Wild Arms 3
Tony Hawk ProSkater 4
Ratchet and Clank
ATV Offroad Fury 2
Marvel vs. Capcom 2
DBZ: Budokai
Grand Theft Auto: Vice City (Worthy of repetition)
How can anybody compete against that? That is at least four franchise-starters and several of among the best games in the entire generation (Burnout 2 is easily one of the most underrated). No matter what the Gamecube threw, the opposition had an answer quantified. Metroid Prime should have conquered the holiday season of 2002 because of its incredible graphics and outstanding presentation and marketing campaign. However, the nasty controversial 1-2 punch of GTA III (still selling like absolute hotcakes) and Vice City overshadowed everything Nintendo could throw towards the Month of Metroid (Fusion hit stores around the same time).
Speaking of which, Nintendo should have learned from the Prime/Fusion combo and not made the 3DS/WiiU games so darn similar. The two Smash Brothers games should have had way more differences, as should the Mario 3D and New Super Mario Bros. games. Fusion and Prime each had the Metroid touch, but were two amazingly different games that each delivered their unique brand of thrills. Back to topic.....
Gamecube’s delays resulted in clunky release dates, which also affects game sales. And if you don’t believe that, every XBox 360 game that sold over 5 million copies with the exception of Minecraft came out in the fall. More proof: 10 of the 16 best-selling Wii games were released within the September-December range.
One more, one more: the best-selling game of 2014? Pokemon OmegaRuby and AlphaSapphire. Guess the release date.
Why yes, November 21st.
Animal Crossing and Super Mario Sunshine were released at the end of summer when it’s a summer-based game. Eternal Darkness was released in June (Bad month for a horror game of any kind) as opposed to Halloween season—the second most lucrative holiday season in the United States (behind Christmas, of course). Wind Waker was released in March of 2003, missing the crucial holiday season. Smash Brothers Melee didn’t get a worldwide launch (and never became online-friendly, which was a major missed opportunity in the sixth generation). Lastly, Metroid Prime is a franchise that always had terrible timing; the original Prime got wiped out by GTA: Vice City, while the other Primes ran into Halo release dates—prompting disappearing under the hype of a better-known shooter.
Here are other games that suffered from bad release dates: Twilight Princess (Right on beginning of Wii era), F-Zero GX (August, instead of early summer), Star Fox Assault (February is always a bad month), Luigi’s Mansion (not strong enough to be launch title, should have switched with Melee), and NBA Courtside 2002 (For missing the start of the NBA season by 3 MONTHS!)---among other examples.
What really harmed the Gamecube was the underneath the hardcore Nintendo titles were all the shortcomings and bad decisions. Not going online severely hurt the Gamecube to a point that it would never, ever recover. Even an imperfect online functionality piece still would have been better than none at all. Melee and F-Zero being online would have been nearly impossible to handle considering its speed, but not having Mario Kart, Soul Calibur II, Mario Party (Honestly, an online mini-game mode would have been perfect), Mario Tennis, Mario Golf, and Super Mario Strikers online was a travesty and a mistake for the ages. Nintendo was definitely working a lot with other companies during these years, surely they could have built some friendship with a company with online credentials, no? Apple anyone? I’m sure Apple would have loved sticking it to Microsoft during the first XBox run.
At the end of the day though, nobody was going to come even close to the Playstation 2. The Gamecube failed more because the opposition was so good, as opposed to the machine being so bad. The PS2 (Whose dominance can probably never be duplicated ever again) was the better purchase choice for first-time gamers, hardcore gamers, mainstream gamers, and those that just want a DVD player that did more. The PS2 had more sports games, more RPGs, more action games, more platformers, more racers, and was practically the first console to have multiple sandbox games (PCs don’t count…ever). The Gamecube would not be appreciated until the Wii became so family-friendly it made gamers break out into convulsions. Nintendo went from Metroid Prime to...Metroid Other M. Nintendo went from the Twilight Princess/Wind Waker combo to....Skyward Sword. Nintendo went from Smash Brothers Melee to.......Brawl. And most egregious, Nintendo went from F-Zero GX to.....nothing.......................
The Gamecube has a legacy similar to the Dreamcast: good hardware, had a few innovative things, a few great ideas, a few bad ideas, lots of grand niche games, but overall was curbstomped by Sony. The XBox falls in here too and the only reason it had the second place medal was Halo and of course the best online features in the early 2000s. It would take Sony years before it could catch up to the XBox Live. The Gamecube deserved better, deserved a better sendoff.
By the end of its run, the third-party relationships were pretty much damaged (except for Sega, ironically), the hardcore fanbase had shifted towards Sony, and the Nintendo brand had taken several hits. All the damage would explain why Nintendo went in such a different direction when they released the innovative Wii and DS systems. Yes, they may have shoved the remaining hardcore fans into a corner, but hey they had five years to support a previous generation machine that was chock full of games catering to that audience.
How can a system with masterpieces like Metroid Prime, Smash Bros. Melee, Twilight Princess, Paper Mario: Thousand-Year Door, Eternal Darkness, Resident Evil IV, Soul Calibur II, Animal Crossing, F-Zero GX, Mario Golf: Toadstool Tour, Super Mario Sunshine, Tales of Symphonia, and Donkey Konga 3 (Kidding about that last one) become a failure? It took a lot of bad luck, and a slew of bad decisions. But at the end of the day, if Nintendo gets smart they can preserve the legacy of these great games for the future. Otherwise, there will be at least a dozen worthy gems disappearing from the gaming consensus, if it hasn’t happened already.
Well, besides Melee, which will definitely live in the fighting game circle for all eternity.
Part 2 Will Arrive on April 29th in Eighth Generation Blog....
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