GameCube

"Simply a middling console."

While the Gamecube is overall a better system than its predecessor, it was decried for being childish; despite Nintendo having removed it's censorship policies a long time ago, and having published 3 M-rated titles over 4 years (Conker's Bad Fur Day, Eternal Darkness, Geist), the "kiddie" image from days past stuck with them. That the N64 overall was a weak system in terms of games didn't help them either; yet overall the Gamecube improves.

Graphics: 9/10
Perhaps one of the more controversial fields and the cause of several flamewars, The graphics capabilities are a vast improvement over those of the 64, fixing many of it's earlier flaws; the prohibiting 4kb texture cache of the 64 is a relic of the past and when you see the texturing on games like Super Smash Bros Melee or Resident Evil 4, you will be blown away. Most people see the Gamecube as underpowered for the official specs are only 6 million untextured polygons/second, when third-party benchmarkers are easily able to get up to 5 times that many untextured polygons/second. The system's PowerPC architecture is relatively simple to program for making it OK for homebrew game development..

Sound: 7/10

Because Nintendo chose not to support DVD-player functionality, they chose not to use true surround sound; this isn't too big of a deal unless you play the PS2 version of Resident Evil 4. However, the sound is a vast improvement over the 64.

Storage Media: 6/10
This is the Gamecube's first weak point; rather than sticking to a standardized DVD-ROM format, Nintendo chose to use modified Mini-DVDs. The initial advantage was that in conjunction with the Gamecube's exceptional memory bandwidth, loading times are almost non-existient in a lot of titles. From a professional standpoint, modifying the mini-DVDs meant that it took a lot more time (and several third-party modchips) to successfully build a Gamecube emulator, which discouraged piracy.

On the other hand, you'll notice the Gamecube versions of multiplatform games lack all the extra "free stuff" found in other titles; because a mini-DVD can only hold 1.5 GB (as opposed to 4.7 GB), this means that games will have to either remove extras or be split into two seperate discs (as is the case for Tales of Symphonia, Resident Evil 4, REmake, or Metal Gear Solid: Twin Snakes).

While still behind the competition (1.5 GB is only slightly better than the Dreamcast GD-ROM's 1.3 GB), the Gamecube's storage media is still vastly superior to the N64's 64 MB cartridges.

Games:
FPSes: The Sega Saturn did not do First Person shooters; all it had was Doom and Powerslave. As it stands, the Gamecube has no exclusive FPS games [I am counting Metroid Prime and Geist as adventure games]; Timesplitters 2 is a good shooter but as it stands this is the console's weak point. 5/10.

Sports Games: I don't play sports games, so I can't review. I've heard horror stories about games taking 300 save blocks, but I won't go there for if I wanted to play football, I would do the real thing and burn some calories while I was at it.

Racing Games: We have Burnout 2, which is pretty decent. The more recent ones have not appeared for Gamecube ever since EA (curse them for ages) bought out Criterion for their IPs. That said, Mario Kart is decent, but the real champion of the day goes to F-zero GX. That said, the X-box has Project Gotham and PS2 has Wipeout so bleh. 7/10

Action-Adventure Games: A definite strong-point. While Mario Sunshine was a dud, and Wind Waker offended too many people by it's "cute" nature, Metroid Prime and Prime 2 are excellent games. Then there's Eternal Darkness, Geist, Resident Evil 4, Second Sight...the list goes on. 8/10

Fighting Games: We have One Piece Grand Battle, Budokai, and Capcom vs. SNK II which are all mediocre. Soul Calibur 2, Smash Bros Melee and Naruto IV (Import title) save this genre from a lower score. 7/10

RPGs: Nowhere on the same scale as the PS2, the system still is an improvement for the N64's sad excuse of an RPG lineup (though Ogre Battle 64 is a notable exception). For those that missed out on the Dreamcast Game, Skies of Arcadia is back and is still a fun title though looking somewhat dated. Namco was nice to us, with Tales of Symphonia and Baiten Katos 1&2. While people may laugh at Thousand Year Door for being overly simplistic, simplicity is a great virtue when one plays Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance. For multi-platform games, the only real one worth noting is Gladius, of which the Gamecube game is most stable (the PS2 version takes forever to load, and the X-box version had a tendency to crash, at least with the earlier version of Xbox). For those willing to import, there's Mobile Suit Gundam: Ace Pilot, and Super Robot Wars GC. You COULD get Mega Man X Command Mission if you really wanted too but I'd try a rental beforehand. Overall, there are enough exclusive RPGs to warrant the system. 8/10

Old-school Gaming: Ikaruga deserves it's own paragraph, for it is basically Radiant Silvergun 2. Formerly an arcade and Dreamcast title, Ikaruga is the classic example of a game not for kids as many kids would run away from the game crying after being defeated by insanely difficult levels.

In May, we're getting the toon-shaded shooter Radiligy, and hopefully Under Defeat if we're lucky. For multiplatform games, the Gamecube got the short end of the stick, for SNK chose not to port Metal Slug 3-5 to the system, but Alien Hominid and Viewtiful Joe should be a good substitute until you get MAME running on your system (see modding). 7/10

Overall: 7/10. Nowhere as expansive as the PS2's library but it is a far better library than that of the N64 or X-box. (this is assuming you own a high-end PC)

Modding/Online: 6/10
This is an interesting score; if you're willing to buy the 56k modem cable (or an ethernet cable) and can find an SD card adapter, and can upload GCLinux through your Action Replay, then you have the potential for your own low-powered computer. Subsequently download a tunneling software of your choice (e.g. Warp Pipe) and you can play LAN games online, while ControlSim allows you to play your offline games online. Unlike the Xbox, it is in fact possible to modify the Gamecube without actually having to solder a modchip and risking the destruction of the system. The reason this score takes a hike is because the console will remain offline unless you go to extreme measures, and because if one really wants to do open-source programming, they should instead get a PS2 w/ Linux developer's kit or a GP32.

Overall: 6/10.
Not the best, nor the worst, the Gamecube is simply a middling console.

Reviewer's Score: 6/10, Originally Posted: 03/08/06, Updated 04/27/06