The Gamecube occupies a nice little corner of my personal history when hormones were sabotaging any chance I had for a normal adulthood. As such, I view it with quite a lot of fondness. It didn’t have the massive library of the PS2, nor the substantial beef of the Xbox, but it did have one thing that gave it an edge over its competitors: a handle.
Below are five games that I picked out of its library to represent its best. You don’t have to agree, but if you come in here making claims that Pikmin 2 was the best game in its library, you’re wrong and should leave.
I’m too edgy for the purple one
In this list, we will explore some great GameCube games that I think are worthy of being revisited at any time. Unfortunately, many of them have never been re-released in any form, so it might be time to dust off that purple (ok ok, let’s make that a darker blue so we are all in agreement) box.
F-zero GX
There were quite a few games that I was super into when I was a teenager, but I think F-Zero GX might be the big winner. It was just really slick and it featured many different gameplay modes, cars, and pilots to unlock. You could race for hours while Samurai Goroh and Captain Falcon screamed their lungs out.
Just when you think you hit the bottom, you find out you can unlock the tracks and cars from its arcade counterpart: F-Zero AX. That game was actually published by Sega, under the Triforce brand, which was an agreement between them, Nintendo, and Namco. Talk about strange bedfellows…
It felt a bit tighter than the N64’s F-Zero X and was magnitudes better looking. The fact that Nintendo hasn’t commissioned a sequel to the Gamecube title or even re-released F-Zero GX is all the evidence I need to be certain that they hate me, specifically, and want me to suffer.
GX was also the last main console release for the F-Zero series, making its disappearance all even more tragic. Sure, there were a couple of Game Boy Advance titles, plus F-Zero 99, but those were definitely not meant to be in the same ballpark as GX. It’s just too bad it didn’t have an X Cup. A bunch of horrible, randomly generated tracks would just be the cherry on top. Still, remains one of the best GCN games around.
Chibi-Robo!
Released at the end of the Gamecube’s lifespan, Chibi-Robo is unequivocally the best thing that ever happened to video games. I hope that by making hyperbole such as that, I will convince more people to play it. But if you are not convinced yet, read on.
You will take on the role of a cute little robot that has only one goal: to bring happiness to the Sanderson family. Thus, the robot explores the house and can collect points by completing certain tasks that will make members of the family happy. This happens at night when the family is asleep, try to complete tasks and not lose too much energy in the process, or you’ll have to go back to an electrical outlet pretty soon.
If the references to Toy Story did not already make it clear, Chibi-Robo remains a heart-warming little niche of games that, unfortunately, never really transformed into an actual franchise. It’s definitely no coincidence that Chibi-Robo Zip Lash, on the Nintendo 3DS, actually became a meme in later years.
But if you want to experience what the franchise did when it was at its peak, the first Gamecube game still has everything you need for a little cozy game session.
The Legend of Zelda Collector’s Edition
Can this really be considered a strict Gamecube game? Well, it is definitely a compilation and it does contain one of my favorite titles in the series, The Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker. Each time I replay it, I’m reminded of all the little things I love about it. However, it’s not my absolute favorite.
The Gamecube Collector’s edition contains:
- The Legend of Zelda
- Zelda II: The Adventure of Link
- The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time
- The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask
While many would say the inclusion of Ocarina of Time alone would make this compilation worthy of being picked up, I would beg to differ. The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask is not only the best in the series, but it’s also one of my top game picks.
It was apparently not the greatest port and had a bunch of sound, graphical, and crashing issues, but even an inferior version of Majora’s Mask is worth your time and money. Unless it’s The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask 3D. I just couldn’t deal with the changes that were made.
But that’s not all, as the compilation also included both NES classics The Legend of Zelda and Zelda II: The Adventure of Link. The latter, today, could be considered little more than a curiosity. A 2D action side-scrolling RPG with Link jumping around and having his health restored via curious house visits to ladies (!). As for the first, need I say anything? It still remains as a shiny example of how early 80s NES games could both confuse and excite.
NHL Hitz 2003
As a Canadian, I’m perhaps a little more on the mild side of liking hockey. I don’t have a jersey. I don’t own a pair of skates. It’s okay, though. It’s not a dumb sport like, say, football. That’s fun to say, because I offend both people who enjoy American football and real football.
The NHL Hitz series is of the same Midway bloodline as NBA Jam and NFL Blitz. NHL Hitz 2003 was the best one yet, with all due respect to Next Level Games’ NHL Hitz Pro. It was simply the series at its most ridiculous. You could set up a franchise, and there were essentially no limits to how bizarre your team was. Should everyone be dinosaurs? Yes. Perhaps snowmen instead? Also yes.
Let’s not even get into the minigames or the absolutely crazy fights that could break out during matches and would not stop play. Has a player just gone through the glass and into the stands? Oh who cares, let’s continue playing.
The biggest downside was that there was no cheat code to just unlock everything, so you actually had to play modes and win lots of different matches that you might not care enough to get into the real meaty strangeness. Unfortunately, the series pretty much ended after 2003, how sad is that?
Eternal Darkness: Sanity’s Requiem
For a really long time, I used to say Eternal Darkness: Sanity’s Requiem was my favorite game ever. Then I didn’t play it for years. And when I picked it up again, it didn’t feel the same. Perhaps because so many other survival horror games had been released since that faraway year of 2002.
Still, I don’t want to say that adolescent me was wrong, so I’m going to meet her halfway. Eternal Darkness remains one of the first survival horror games, at least on console, to try something quite different, using the fourth wall in unique and never-before-seen ways.
While your character’ sanity goes down, you will start to experience some strange side effects, which, at one point, might go as far as fake sequel promotions and several fake TV or Gamecube errors. Definitely no coincidence that the developers, Silicon Knights, took some pages out of the Call of Cthulhu rulebook.
With a story that spans several centuries and different cultures (and was actually subject to censorship following the 9/11 attacks!), even those who never really went crazy for Resident Evil‘s classic house of horror vibes, should find something unique in Eternal Darkness.
Published: Nov 16, 2022 8:00 PM UTC