Happy 24th anniversary, Nintendo GameCube

[Prowler]

Well when I was a teenager in 2003-2007 and I'd mention NES games to my classmates they'd usually be like "that's so old!" and not care. The older games they'd care about were the ones they played when they were little kids. Usually Mega Drive, PS1 and Game Boy games. So, Sonic, Crash, Pokémon, etc.

Keep in mind most kids I knew back then were casuals and thus weren't looking for emulators or anything online to play games from systems they never had. Of course there were also "nerds" like me who did that, but we were in the minority.

I know "geek culture" is more socially acceptable nowadays than ever, but are most people aged 25 and under nowadays really watching retrogamers on Youtube and Twitch instead of watching those big channels that play modern popular games like Fortnite?

The N64/PS1/Saturn are to those kids the same thing the NES and the Master System were for people of my generation (1990) when we were kids. Unless you grew up with a significantly older brother(born in 1983) like me, you'd never get to play the NES as a kid. Even though I loved the NES when I was 5-6 years old and was introduce to it, by then it was considered a pretty old console. And the majority of kids are not exaclty open minded when it comes to older stuff, let's face it.

Ofc some people aged 25 and under might be curious about Ocarina of Time, GoldenEye and Super Mario 64. Occasionally you see someone on Reddit sharing that they're playing OOT for the first time ever, whether it's on the N64 NSO app or the Nintendo 3DS or something. But I seriously doubt those people are the majority. They would rather be playing the latest hot Switch or PS5 or Steam game instead, surely?

[CyberCubed]

All the Gen-Z kids need to be educated.

[Original TMNT Cartoon Fan]

Originally Posted by CyberCubed

All the Gen-Z kids need to be educated.

About what? The Nintendo Gamecube?

[CyberCubed]

Yes, I will educate them all if I could.

[Prowler]

The GameCube is, more or less, Nintendo's Sega Saturn. Ignored at the time, but its legacy grew as time went on and people realised there's plenty of good games for it.

And a lot of both systems' games require you to sell your a kidney in order to be able to afford them these days

[Storm Eagle]

Originally Posted by Prowler

The GameCube is, more or less, Nintendo's Sega Saturn. Ignored at the time, but its legacy grew as time went on and people realised there's plenty of good games for it.

And a lot of both systems' games require you to sell your a kidney in order to be able to afford them these days

The GameCube seemed to be more relevant during its time of activity compared to the Sega Saturn. When Saturn was active, I don't believe I've ever heard it mentioned. It seemed to be all about the PlayStation, and the N64 to a lesser extent.

[Prowler]

Originally Posted by Storm Eagle

The GameCube seemed to be more relevant during its time of activity compared to the Sega Saturn. When Saturn was active, I don't believe I've ever heard it mentioned. It seemed to be all about the PlayStation, and the N64 to a lesser extent.

Right. It's not a direct comparison, but there are no perfect comparisons, anyway.

[CyberCubed]

Gamecube only sold about 3 million consoles less than the original Xbox. Now the PS2 sold 155 million consoles so it was the clear winner, but Gamecube and Xbox were pretty close. It's only Halo and the push of online that Xbox did better. Around 21 million Gamecubes were sold compared to 24 million Xbox's.

[sdp]

The whole Nintendo is for kids was just too much for the Gamecube, it couldn't compete with that stigma. Being a kid and liking Nintendo was like saying you liked Barney the Dinosaur. Super Nintendo was so good that despite the Sega ads of how it was cooler, it didn't work for sega to beat nintendo but it did damage that helped the Playstation over the Nintendo 64 but it was still going strong with the ineartia of the SNES. By the time the Gamecube came out it was just impossible to escape the idea that Nintendo was for kids, no matter how hard nintendo tried to market itself as the "cool kid".

Xbox was a newcomer and from a boring adult company like Microsoft. It basically only had one good exclusive game and online gaming going for it, but the millions of dollars MS dumped on marketing helped to make it sell more than Gamecube. The Nintendo brand was so Toxic the next console dropped any references to NIntendo and just called it the Wii. If you look at pre-release footage of Wii Sports it used to say "Nintendo" over the courts but they removed it and put "Wii" instead, changed their logo to silver/grey to look classy and their brand change worked and they sold millions. The Wii is really just a Gamecube with motion controls, in fact the motion controls were originally going to be an adapter for the Gamecube.

[Prowler]

Originally Posted by CyberCubed

Gamecube only sold about 3 million consoles less than the original Xbox. Now the PS2 sold 155 million consoles so it was the clear winner, but Gamecube and Xbox were pretty close. It's only Halo and the push of online that Xbox did better. Around 21 million Gamecubes were sold compared to 24 million Xbox's.

The difference might just have been 3 million units sold, but the Xbox had a bigger mainstream presence. You're forgetting how big Halo was back then. And also, the fact the console was made by Microsoft.

Originally Posted by sdp

The whole Nintendo is for kids was just too much for the Gamecube, it couldn't compete with that stigma. Being a kid and liking Nintendo was like saying you liked Barney the Dinosaur. Super Nintendo was so good that despite the Sega ads of how it was cooler, it didn't work for sega to beat nintendo but it did damage that helped the Playstation over the Nintendo 64 but it was still going strong with the ineartia of the SNES. By the time the Gamecube came out it was just impossible to escape the idea that Nintendo was for kids, no matter how hard nintendo tried to market itself as the "cool kid".

Xbox was a newcomer and from a boring adult company like Microsoft. It basically only had one good exclusive game and online gaming going for it, but the millions of dollars MS dumped on marketing helped to make it sell more than Gamecube. The Nintendo brand was so Toxic the next console dropped any references to NIntendo and just called it the Wii. If you look at pre-release footage of Wii Sports it used to say "Nintendo" over the courts but they removed it and put "Wii" instead, changed their logo to silver/grey to look classy and their brand change worked and they sold millions. The Wii is really just a Gamecube with motion controls, in fact the motion controls were originally going to be an adapter for the Gamecube.

That mentality is still alive today in parts of the world where the Super Nintendo lost to the Mega Drive... like Europe. Or Eastern Europe where video games have a different history than the rest of the continent. For a lot of Eastern Europeans, consoles did not fully establish themselves until the PS2. And they're priced out of Nintendo systems. Hell, in Poland you couldn't even find a GameCube or a Wii in major retail shops from what I've been told!

People who've never played Nintendo games or only played Pokémon on Game Boy when they were kids, tend to have the worst takes on the company, calling it "kiddy" and such. I used to think it was just bitterness of their precious Sega Mega Drive losing to the SNES, but perhaps it's more than that.