The Video Game Critic

Just a thread on the versitile Gamecube and its many applications. Sure, Nintendo didn't support online, but they certainly had some unique features for their Cube. Since this board seems to be pretty Nintendo crazy (I'm so used to feeling like a gaming minority, it is a little unsettling), I thought I'd ask for some input/opinions.

Already made a thread on ereader, got me thinking about some of the other GC oddities:

GBA connectivity : I shyed away from this in the day, because I only had one GBA. But it occurs to me that the origional GBA could maybe be had pretty cheap nowadays, and maybe the time is right to look back into this. Obviously 4 Swords is a must have title, and I remember PacMan VS, which was pretty fun. What were the other connectivity games, and what did you tink of them?

GBA player : Always tempted to buy one, never did. How would you rate it?

Bongos - I have DKJungle Beat and I say it is a 'A' game, even without the bongos. I believe only 2 other rythm games were made, I have no rythm so I stayed away. Bongo Blast is being remade for Wii.

Anyone play Odama?

I just recently bought Animal Crossing, and I highly recommend it.

What have I forgotten?

The Gamecube is one of the most underated consoles ever, and next to Virtual
Boy most would call it Nintedo's biggest failure. Myslef, I owned one since the 2nd year of release and loved every minute of it.

[QUOTE=Steerforth]GBA connectivity : I shyed away from this in the day, because I only had one GBA. But it occurs to me that the origional GBA could maybe be had pretty cheap nowadays, and maybe the time is right to look back into this. Obviously 4 Swords is a must have title, and I remember PacMan VS, which was pretty fun. What were the other connectivity games, and what did you tink of them?[/QUOTE]

Wind Waker used the GBA as a "Tingle Tuner", which would allow you to call on Tingle in the game through GBA connectivity.  The Tingle Tuner in the game actually looked like a pre-SP version of the GBA.  Once summoned, he could be used to hover over a map of the area Link was in, and detect hidden spots, dropping bombs on them would reveal what they had.  The Tingle Tuner was necessary to complete several sidequests, such as to find and collect all of the statues of Tingle and his brothers, and you had to have it to complete the figurines sidequest, because finding Tingle's brothers individually to take snapshots of them could only be done by finding a few of them using the Tingle Tuner.  I forget if you needed it for all of the brothers, or only the last one, but you DEFINITELY had to have it to find the last one.

The only other one I ever used it on was another Zelda game -- Four Sword Adventures.  The Hyrule Adventure part of that game would allow either one person to play the game (and control all four Link characters on the screen) using a Gamecube controller, or through GBA connectivity, more than one player could control a division of the available Link characters.  All of the overworld action takes place on the big screen, but anytime you enter a cave or secret area, the action switches to your GBA screen, where each player can explore the cave on his own.  This meant that some players could stay in the overworld while the others explored nearby openings and caves.

[QUOTE=Steerforth]GBA player : Always tempted to buy one, never did. How would you rate it?[/QUOTE]

I love the GBA Player.  I play it almost all the time now when I play GBA games.  I hardly ever play my handheld GBA anymore.

[QUOTE=Steerforth]Bongos - I have DKJungle Beat and I say it is a 'A' game, even without the bongos. I believe only 2 other rythm games were made, I have no rythm so I stayed away. Bongo Blast is being remade for Wii.[/QUOTE]

After I got used to that game, and realized it was indeed a rhythm game (it wasn't clear to me right off, even though it should have been), I really learned to enjoy that game.  I think those controllers were fantastic.

[QUOTE=Steerforth]Anyone play Odama?[/QUOTE]

The critic didn't love Odama, but I absolutely adored it.  It is one of my favorite video game/pinball hybrids at this point.  It is a strategy video game merged with pinball set in a Japanese feudal setting.  Nintendo really sticks the propaganda in there too.  The "Nin-Ten-Do" is a philosophy that the "good" side in the game (the one you control) is trying to protect against an invading horde.  In Japan, it is believed by many that the invading horde I just referred to is a passive reference to Sony.

[QUOTE=Steerforth]I just recently bought Animal Crossing, and I highly recommend it.[/QUOTE]

It's really cute, but I hated it thoroughly.

[QUOTE=Steerforth]The Gamecube is one of the most underated consoles ever, and next to Virtual Boy most would call it Nintedo's biggest failure. Myslef, I owned one since the 2nd year of release and loved every minute of it.[/QUOTE]

Yes, and unlike the Virtual Boy, it was always profitable.

GBA Connectivity: There is an amazingly weird and frustrating game called Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles which was disappointing to most critics and the GBA connectivity did not need to exist for multiplayer fun to be had. In fact, Nintendo pushing that pissed me off. It's been called the best game of Guantlet ever, but I think it is quite a bit different from that game.  The FF:CC is a hack/slash adventure with RPG elements. The pros of this game is the fun you can have with buddies, epic boss battles, it is difficult, stylish, oddly dark and time consuming, but it also is quite confusing to figure out what to do. Upgrading armour and weapons is difficult. It would probably appeal to people who like playing lutes and renaissance festival geeks. This game was a strange one to me, I felt compeled to beat it a year after the final boss totally kicked my ass (I lost all of my 'memories' and forgot to save after the long trek and lengthy problem solving journey to sub-boss) The lead in to pre-boss fight was a series of questions pertaining to tidbits of info that characters gave you along the way. I did poorly a year after the fact, I'll tell you...

GBA Player: I waited and waited for the price on these things to drop and I think I have screwed myself. The prices on these things are likely to soar now that they quite making them. I heard they are good.

Bongos: There are three American games that use the Bongos. There is a third Donkey Konga game in Japan. They also were going to use the Bongos for Odama and then scrapped it. It is rumored that Bongo Blast will be released for the Wii. Who cares.

Odama: I thought this would be a Vinnie game for sure, but it is a miserable hodge podge. If you like driving in Rush Hour or waiting in long lines at football games, you will probably like this game. It is hard, tentilating, and unrewarding.

Funkmaster V

OK, let's take these one by one:

GBA connectivity: Arguably the element that made Nintendo lose the last console cycle.  Although it made sense for games that you only needed the GBA you already had to use (like Pokemon Colusseum and Pac-Man Vs), the money required to apply it properly to games like Zelda: Four Swords Adventures and Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles was ridiculous and far too expensive (if you didn't have the right equipment, you'd have to spend about 10 times the price of the game to get everything for yourself).  What really killed Nintendo here was their arrogance on how consumers "didn't want online play" and that this was a suitable alternative.  Even Yuji Naka, a big supporter of the Gamecube thought the concept was fundemantally flawed.

GBA player: This was a good move on Nintendo's part.  For the same price as a game, ou can play your GBA and Game Boy games on your TV. Very nice for people (like me) who had the old GBA, had trouble seeing the screen, and didn't have an AC adapter for it.  Well worth it.

Bongos - The games are fun and the peripheral unique and well built, but overall, it was another gimmick, though nowhere near as embarrasing and obviously money grubbing as the GBA connectivity.

Didn't play Odama. 

Animal Crossing? It's fantastic and a must for Wii/Cube owners, especially since you can unlock many NES games that are also on the Wii virtual console.

Certainly, the Gamecube wasn't a bad system, and many cool games came out for it.  But Nintendo really missed the boat in some big areas, including online (despite making an accessory for it, they never used it; Sega brought the system kicking and screaming online), the propriatary disc format (many third party games had to be shipped on two discs), the controller (which although comfortable, had a terrible D-pad, weird button layout that hurt some game's playability, and was very poor for certain kinds of games, like fighters and 2D games) and third-party support (which was negatively affected by the previous two issues). 

I love the GC, and I agree that it is horribly underrated.

Nintendo was wrong not to support on-line gameplay.  They did make a modem, but then never did anything with it.  It was this odd little square shaft that plugs into the port on the back of the Cube.

The GBA player is great.  Playing GB games on a large screen with full-sized controllers and not wasting battery life seems like a winner all around.

I have the connector cable.  With the exception of PacMan Vs., which is a lot of fun, most games don't strictly <i>require</i> GBA connectivity, but if you have it it's a cool feature.  Example: Splinter Cell.  You can use your connected GBA like it were the real-life PDA that Sam Fischer is always relying on.  You can see real-time data on where the bad guys are and you get some kind of bomb or something that you can't get if you don't have the GBA connected.  Pretty neat, all told.

Animal Crossing is a great game, if you have the time to devote to it.  My wife plays all the time.  My son plays a good deal as well.  I decided to stay away from it because I don't want to get involved in a game that requires that much attention--I just don't have it to give anymore.  But if you do, you'll find a rich world to explore that is very rewarding.

Never got down with the e-reader, though.

And I'm not a fan of the Bongos, or for that matter the RE chainsaw controller.  I don't dig highly-specialized single-purpose controllers like that.

I disagree that lack of online is what did in the GC.  It was all poor marketing and stupid decisions on the part of Nintendo.  They had a great launch, then blew it.  They had a short-lived prohibition on "M"-rated games, which sent a signal to adult gamers that this Nintendo product was intended for children, so they looked elsewhere.  I think they didn't market it all that well, either: here's a system that cost less than the other two players on the market and delivered impressive graphics that were better than the PS2 and approached the capabilities of the xBox.  It was compact, lightweight and cool.  It supported four players out of the box.  The memory cards were a better deal than what Sony had to offer (more space at less cost--I have two that just live in their slots, so it's almost like having a hard drive).  You never heard about that stuff, though.  They also never defended themselves against the "It doesn't play DVDs" propaganda spewed forth by fanboys of the other systems (nevermind that pretty much everyone had a DVD player within a short time of the system's release).  For what it's worth (which is nothing at all), I really like the GC's system interface and start-up screen much better that what the xBox and PS2 have going on.

I suppose that the fact that the Wii is pretty much a GC with minor enhancements and special motion-sensitive controllers ends up being Nintendo's revenge.  The R&D costs were probably a lot smaller, too.

Let's remember that the Gamecube was a good system that sold 21 million units and had hundreds of games. I think that's successful. The Xbox barely did any better and perhaps had less good "exclusive" games.

Funkmaster V

I know I'm probably in the minority, but I liked the Gamecube more than the X-Box.  At least the 'cube had some good exclusives.  Aside from Halo, the X-Box didn't have anything that interested me that I couldn't find on the PS2.

[QUOTE=Michael D]the money required to apply it properly to games like Zelda: Four Swords Adventures[/QUOTE]
Well, in it's defense, unlike Crystal Chronicles, FS+ was a perfect pick-up-and-play game, due to the lack of stats, records, items lasting beyond levels and characters. And while it's true the quest portion didn't really require GBA cables to work if it had been designed a bit differently, Navi Trackers (which wasn't included in the non-japanese versions of the game for some stupid reason... it's awesome) was completely built around these things.
Plus, you got a cable free with the game as well, and since the game works in single player as well, people are more willing to buy their own copy of the game rather than having a bunch of people playing one guys copy.

There are a couple games that use the cable well in single-player mode too, like Splinter Cell and Wind Waker, but an annoyingly large amount just say "insert GBA game x, then go to the option menu and click a button to unlock some new stuff we could've had unlocked from the beginning anyway".

Mario Tennis 64 did the same thing with the transfer pak. Put the GBC game in the pak and connect to the N64 game to unlock minigames in the GBC game. Beat said minigames and reconnect to unlock some new courts in the N64 game. Blah.