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Useful Notes / Nintendo GameCube

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The little lunchbox that could. And did when you duct-taped 2 of them together.

"Who Are You?"

The Nintendo GameCube (officially abbreviated as GCN), Nintendo's entry into the sixth generation of the Console Wars, was released in late 2001. It marked Nintendo's shift from cartridges to optical discs in response to third parties being driven away by the Nintendo 64's continued use of cartridges, using miniature proprietary discs. The graphical capabilities can be better than the PlayStation 2 despite the limited mini-DVD storage, and in some cases, on par with those of the Xbox. Star Wars: Rogue Squadron III actually holds the sixth-gen record for polygon count at 20 million polygons. The GameCube was the first Nintendo console to have fewer buttons on its controller than its predecessor; this was due to the introduction of a second analog stick replacing the N64's C buttons, though this C-stick was smaller than the primary analog stick.

This era also marked the start of Nintendo offering many of its properties to other developers, in order to reclaim losses caused by the N64's poor performance (as the Gamecube failed to meet expectations, despite turning in a consistent profit). Namco ran around with Donkey Kong and made the Donkey Konga series, Dolled Up Installments of the Taiko no Tatsujin series of drumming games. Namco and Rare (under the company's last days with Nintendo before getting bought out by Microsoft) both had Star Fox-based games (although Rare's was too a Dolled-Up Installment, this one born out of Nintendo meddling with the would-have-been Nintendo 64 game Dinosaur Planet). Most famously, Retro Studios rose to fame with the smash hit Metroid Prime and its sequel Metroid Prime 2: Echoes. Capcom was working on The Legend of Zelda and liked the 'Cube so much they promised a few exclusive games for it, dubbed the "Capcom 5":

Additionally, by the time of its release, Nintendo had removed its meddling restriction to ensure that the games met its family-friendly image (the restriction was dropped very close to the end of the N64 era with the release of Conker's Bad Fur Day), which also helped sales to older gamers.

Oh, and this thing is tough, as in physically. There are stories of people having dropped GameCubes off the top of tall buildings and them still being perfectly intact, and one G4 segment circa 2003 involved Morgan Webb abusing a PS2, GameCube, and Xbox, with the GameCube surviving every single bit of abuse. It's gotten a reputation for being damn near indestructible; someone once fended off a mugger with a knife with his GameCube and it wasn't even damaged. Intentionally trying to break it is just about the only way to go. Considering Nintendo's history of making their products Tonka Tough, there might be a reason for that.

Its code name during development was "Project Dolphin" and there are often little nods to this throughout early GameCube games, such as Super Mario Sunshine being set on "Isle Delfino" (Italian for dolphin), and Olimar's ship in Pikmin being called the "Dolphin". Additionally, the water-centric gameplay of Super Mario Sunshine and The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker is believed to be a more subtle reference to Project Dolphin, for obvious reasons. All official games and products also start with DOL in their product code. An early rumoured release name for the console was "Starcube", which was apparently dropped for copyright reasons.

There was a stylish-looking variant of the GCN that played DVD videos and contained other multimedia functionality called the Panasonic Q, but it was only sold in Japan and nowadays can only be bought by those who do not care about the health of their walletnote . Interestingly enough, there are some models of the Panasonic Q that lack region-locking, but it is unknown if these are official models or mods, due to the Q's obscurity.

The GameCube, just like the Sega Dreamcast, is a perfect case of Vindicated by History. During its lifetime, it did not manage to sell as well as its competitors, and was the worst-performing home console created by Nintendo (however, the GameCube sold only a couple million units behind the Xbox, while the Dreamcast sold about half of what the GameCube did; the utter dominance of the PS2 is what likely cemented the Gamecube's paltry image). It received lots of undeserved hate due to its toy-like design and Nintendo's kiddy reputation (which Nintendo was still trying to shed despite finally starting to greenlight more teen and young adult-oriented games), and while it did get a lot of third-party games, it suffered from few third-party exclusives, divisive first-party titles, and many T and M-rated titles (especially this is the only 6th generation home console without Grand Theft Auto on it) releasing on the PS2 and Xbox but not the GameCube; one can attribute the console's lack of proper third-party support to the continuing aftermath of the N64's use of cartridges. However, several games have become Cult Classics, or have simply been revisited and given the accolades they deserve. It helps that the much more successful Wii was fully compatible with GameCube games until later in its life, making it easier for people to play games for the latter without actually having to buy one. With critics putting increased emphasis on the importance of loading times in the modern age, the Gamecube's design towards faster loads (in the form of smaller disks and special RAM caches) is also becoming more appreciated. Additionally, the Gamecube's controller has been consistently praised for its comfortable design and layout, to the point of it being almost ergonomic; the growing popularity of the Gamecube controller among Super Smash Bros. fans eventually led to Nintendo re-releasing the controller specifically for Super Smash Bros. for Wii U, complete with a controller adapter.

Oh, and the slow, haunting theme that plays when you turn on the thing and go into the menu? It's the start-up theme for the old Famicom Disk System, slowed down a whole bunch. Pretty neat.

Specifications:

Processors
  • The CPU is a 486 MHz IBM PowerPC 750CXe based CPU codenamed "Gekko". While it was internally a 32-bit processor, it has a double-precision 64-bit FPU (which Nintendo got marketing mileage out of by misadvertising the system as 128 bit, most notably with its demo game "Super Mario 128"). It's essentially an enhanced version of the processor found in Apple's G3-based computers.
  • The GPU was a joint venture between Nintendo and ArtX. ATi later bought ArtX, which explains the badge on the console. Codenamed "Flipper", it's a 162 MHz GPU superficially similar to ATi's own Radeon 7500 for the PC.
  • Audio was done on a custom 81 MHz Macronix DSP that supported 64 CD-Audio quality channels. However it could only output stereo sound, but there was support for Dolby Pro-Logic II for surround sound if the speakers supported it.

Memory
  • 24 MB MoSys 1T-SRAM main system RAM. 3 MB embedded 1T-SRAM within Flipper.
    • 1T-SRAM is a type of RAM that is both high density and avoids the low-level complexity of DRAM.
    • The fact that the Flipper has embedded RAM in it made it extremely fast, compared to the RAMBUS RAM used in the Nintendo 64.
  • 16 MB DRAM used as buffer for game disc drive and audio.
  • Games were stored on a 8cm optical disc based on the DVD standard and created by Matsushita (Panasonic). A key difference is that the GameCube uses Constant Angular Velocity (in which the disk spins at the same speed regardless of the reading laser's position) rather than Constant Linear Velocity (in which the disc spins slower or faster depending on the reading laser's position to achieve a constant velocity of the laser beam traveling across the disc surface). The total storage capacity of the disc is 1.5GB. The three main reasons why this format was chosen was to reduce load times, to make piracy harder, and to avoid paying licensing fees to the DVD forum. Much like what had happened with the N64, Nintendo's choice of the lower capacity storage medium was criticized by some developers. However, while there were a few games that had to come out on multiple discs, and a few others that cut content or used extra compression to fit on one, it was overall much less of an issue than the N64's cartridges.
  • To store game saves and other data, the GameCube used memory cards similar to the PlayStation. For better or worse, cards were formatted into blocks and capacity was Colour-Coded for Your Convenience. Gray came with 59 blocks, black with 251 blocks, and white with 1011 blocks. There's also memory cards that can save off of SD cards as well. Each block is about 8KB.

Graphics
  • The GameCube could output all forms of standard definition resolutions, including progressive scan. However, progressive scan could only be officially enabled on NTSC hardware; PAL hardware requires softmodding to enable progressive scan output. Furthermore, even in NTSC regions, outputting in progressive scan required a rare and expensive cable, so it was rarely used by gamers.
  • Maximum in-game polygon count is about 20,250,000 polygons a second, or about 337,500 polygons a frame at 60FPS. This is about 10 times more than the developers could push on the Nintendo 64; Maximum Polygon count is 60 million a second.
  • Maximum pixel throughput is 648 megapixels per second.
  • It supported all the nice graphical features at the time, such as anisotropic texture filtering, anti-aliasing, and bump-mapping. Color output is at 24-bits, the system also had a 18-bit color mode but only a handful of games used it.

Add-Ons and Expansions
  • The first generation models had two AV outputs, one labeled Analog AV Out for standard use with composite cables, and the other labeled Digital AV Out for component cables and D-Terminal cables. Though the output from the socket was actually digital, the cables that used Digital AV Out used a digital-to-analog converter chip in the cable connector, meaning that actual output is analog. The chip explains why such cables, especially the component cable, were never produced by other companies the way the Wii component cable is today (the Wii seems to only output analog video through its AV port). Due to very few people using the component cables, Nintendo quietly released a second model that had the digital AV port removed.
  • There were three expansion ports total. One was for a high-speed network adapter/modem used for online/LAN games (which was swept under the rug due to piracy applications). One was for the Game Boy Player. The last one never got used.
  • Using a special link cable, the Game Boy Advance could connect to one of the GameCube's controller ports. This was used in Pokémon Colosseum and Pokémon XD to transfer Pokémon back and forth. It was also notably used in Animal Crossing to allow access to Animal Island and free pattern tools. Some games also allowed the GBA to be used as a controller, such as with The Legend of Zelda: Four Swords Adventure or the Game Boy Player (detailed below), though a Gamecube controller could work just fine in most cases. However, Square Enix was a notable abuser of this with Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles, where each Game Boy Advance was the controller.
  • The Game Boy Player, released in 2003, could allow you to turn your Gamecube into a home console GBA. Being a spiritual successor to the Super Game Boy, it was capable of playing Game Boy, Game Boy Color, and Game Boy Advance game paks on a TV. Because the games were letterboxed to preserve their original aspect ratios, the parts of the display not taken up by the game were occupied by one of twenty interchangeable borders, similarly to the Super Game Boy. However, the Game Boy Player couldn't display Game Boy games in color, nor did any games built with the SGB in mind retain their SGB-exclusive special featuresnote  when played on the Game Boy Player. There were also a number of compatability issues with certain types of game paks and devices; The Other Wiki has a full list of them and the issues they had with Game Boy Player. Among other issues, the Game Boy Player could not play GBA Video paks, would need to be physically picked up and tilted for motion control games, and was incompatible with Action Replay. The add-on also required a startup disc in order to function, as the Gamecube could only run optical-based media and the Game Boy Player was a cartridge-based device that plugged into the bottom of the Gamecube. For the Japan-only Panasonic Q, a special gray Game Boy Player exclusive to it was released, as the Q's lower region was larger than that of a regular Gamecube, with the Game Boy Player's outlet being repositioned accordingly; because of this structural difference, a regular Game Boy Player cannot be plugged into the Q, thus necessitating the gray model. The Game Boy Player was discontinued in 2007 with the Gamecube itself.

Intro Jingle
  • There are three versions of the intro jingle; the one played upon startup is dependent on whether 0, 1-3, or 4 players are pressing the Z button. The music is in a 7/8 time signature.

GameCube games and series include:

Alternative Title(s): Game Cube

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