It took several years and a second Nintendo Switch, but Nintendo Switch Online’s getting GameCube games! An emulator of the purple lunchbox is getting added to the service, just as Nintendo Switch 1 got apps that could play games from NES, SNES, Game Boy, Nintendo 64, and Game Boy Advance. These systems—now all under the banner of “Nintendo Classics”—have been a great way for Nintendo to leverage its old material. But seeing it for GameCube feels special, because the GameCube has a special energy.
Much like its short-lived rival the Sega Dreamcast, the GameCube had and never lost an underdog energy. It was trounced by PlayStation 2 and struggled to compete with Microsoft’s Xbox, which bought its way into being Sony’s main rival. It also was a bit of a struggle to work with thanks to its weird minidiscs and Nintendo’s lessening but still notable abrasiveness. And although it had many important games, it never had quite the killer apps of other consoles, partially due to changing circumstances and partially due to Nintendo taking odd and at times controversial creative paths. This did not let it “win” the seventh generation—for the longest time it was considered definitively third place, though in retrospect it actually did better for itself than Xbox in many important ways—but its shaggy nature defined a certain space in the sixth generation marketplace. And that came about through, more than anything else, the games themselves.
Image: The Internet Archive. Mario Sunshine ushered in an era of strange, at times demented Nintendo headliners.
Mario used contentious and fascinating water pistol gameplay in the tropical Super Mario Sunshine. Smash Bros. ratcheted up the speed for Super Smash Bros. Melee, the best-selling game on the system. Mario Kart: Double Dash!! and F-Zero GX were beloved racing games for very different reasons. The Wind Waker’s cartoon graphics got tons of hate before the game become one of the most beloved entries in The Legend of Zelda. Luigi’s Mansion, Pikmin, and Metroid Prime used the system’s higher power not to make an expansive world, but zoom in on hyper-detailed ones. The Thousand-Year Door is The Thousand-Year Door. These were, for the most part, decidedly not system sellers or killer apps, The standout by far, Resident Evil 4, was released near the end of the system’s life and very quickly ported to PS2 and everywhere else. Instead, they represented an aspect of game design that was largely shrinking from the mainstream. These were oddball, strange, often colorful, and had a warped element to them. Alongside PS2 classics like Õkami and Katamari Damacy, they were almost like a last stand for Triple-A game design as something that could consistently explore wildly new gameplay. A last stand for a game design that was often distinctly Japanese.
No matter how far the GameCube app goes and no matter how many games it will get (or how many get retroactively removed), it will carry that legacy. It has to because pretty much every major GameCube game carries this aesthetic to some degree. Every entry in the preceding paragraph is a bona fide GCN game in the way A Link to the Past, Super Mario World, and Super Metroid were bona fide SNES games. If you were on the system, high profile enough, or made by Nintendo, you carried that energy. It’s a kind of energy that we could use more of, so this app’s coming in at the perfect time. And thankfully there are quite a few offerings that can give us that feeling back. So we’ve decided to put together a list of the ones we want the most. Some of these may be likely. Most of them definitely aren’t, or at least would certainly surprise us. Melee is not on this list; neither is Double Dash!! But all of the ones that are radiate that GameCube energy like a battery.
For your convenience, here’s what’s been confirmed:
- The starting roster: The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker, Soulcalibur 2, F-Zero GX.
- Planned titles for the future: Super Mario Sunshine, Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance, Pokémon XD: Gale of Darkness, Super Mario Strikers, Chibi-Robo!, Luigi’s Mansion, Pokémon Colosseum.
As a side note, we’d like to show our appreciation to the Internet Archive, whose Nintendo GameCube Database is chock-full of documents and images that we’ve used here. Dear lord, you have no idea how much of a pain it can be to source high quality assets from that time.
Wolfman Jew: When I thought about the inevitability of GameCube getting on NSO, I thought about how Nintendo might market it. Since they’ve started releasing these Nintendo Classics apps, they typically start with a collection of big titles, maybe a cult classic or two, and at least one really weird option. So their Nintendo 64 emulator comes with Super Mario 64, Ocarina of Time, but also WinBack: Covert Operation. For GameCube it’s the unimpeachable Wind Waker, the very dug-in cult classic F-Zero GX, and while I was entirely rightfully surprised by Soulcalibur 2, part of that surprise was that they hadn’t gone with my choice for the role: Eternal Darkness: Sanity’s Requiem. Nintendo’s first M-rated publication is also a delightful survival horror game with mind-bending sanity effects and one of the best haunted mansions in video games. Given the long, entirely self-directed implosion of Silicon Knights and the game’s poor sales, it’s probably a hard sell for Nintendo to openly sell again or remaster. But it rules, and while I’m reasonably confident we’ll get it eventually, I hope it’s sooner than later.
Image: The Internet Archive. Twilight Princess was big, then got a backlash for its darkness and grit right before an era of dark, gritty games, and then got a more positive reappraisal on its strangeness and humanity.
Speaking of “big” games, using The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker was a smart pick. With the console’s dedicated Super Mario game being a bit, uh, challenging, Link’s oceanic escapade is a great (pun not intended) flagship for the GameCube app. But it also makes me desperate for The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, whose excellent dungeons and complementary aesthetics caused the GameCube to end its life as a killer Zelda playing machine. I mean, you had it and Wind Waker and Four Swords Adventures and that minidisc that emulated Zelda 1, Zelda 2, and the Nintendo 64 games. The shortlist Nintendo gave to the public did not include it, which was a bit weird. Like, maybe they’re holding it off for the Wii emulator they might already be working on for 2027, so that the GameCube and Wii versions could be added at the same time. I certainly hope we get this version. Or maybe they just wanted to have the list be shorter for whatever reason. Either way, the closer we get to a Nintendo device that can play every Zelda, the better. Especially one where the game isn’t entirely flipped for little reason.
So technically, killer7 is available on modern hardware. But its 2018 port is PC-only, with seemingly no intention or expectation of release on anything else. Besides, its home is the GameCube! This was one of the “Capcom Five,” the big cadre of exclusives that were gonna revive the console’s somewhat muted life. But… it didn’t, really; one of the titles was canceled and while the little-loved P.N.03 stayed on the console, Viewtiful Joe, Resident Evil 4, and killer7 were all ported to PlayStation (and by the time the latter two came out in 2005, the damage was done). This one was an utter flop, and the intrigued but somewhat confused critical reception dinged it as an incomprehensible mishmash of FPS, RPG, rail shooter, M-rated cel shading, and nonlinear storytelling. Of course, they also championed it as daring, funny, scary, nasty, stylish, thoughtful, and utterly unlike anything on the market. Especially not for a Nintendo exclusive—for their part, Nintendo Power openly complained that so few of their readers tried it. More crucially, the game was Americans’ first experience with director Suda51, who leapfrogged off the small but powerful cult reception to make No More Heroes. I loved killer7 as a teen; it was my first time with what we sometimes now call “art games.” A bolt from the blue whose bonkers strangeness still stands alone. And more than any of Suda’s releases since, it remains a landmark title in the ongoing discussion of interactivity, challenge, and player discomfort as tools of artistic expression. I’m skeptical it’ll happen, but it really should.
Image: The Internet Archive. At the time, playing it, killer7 was like absolutely nothing else on the planet.
The Switch 2 has a microphone! This means that, in theory, we could get Odama, one of the strangest games in Nintendo’s history. It’s a… pinball RTS, where you direct your units around battlefields while using flippers and tilts to manipulate the path of a giant unstoppable ball. Now, Odama is by no means a cult classic like killer7. By most accounts it’s at best a curio, even lacking representation in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate. But I’ve wanted to play it for years. Everything about it sounds fascinating and demented, befitting the penultimate GameCube release. There are games that kinda sorta sound like they come close, like Yoku’s Island Express or Kunitsu-Gami: Path of the Goddess, but Odama seems to stand (or roll) alone.
Kawlums: Geist (2005) – The thing about Geist is that it’s not a particularly good game. The concept is sick, a horror-themed first-person shooter where you play a ghost inhabiting the body of soldiers to shoot other soldiers and solve puzzles. But it’s incredibly slow and clunky and runs surprisingly poorly for a GameCube release, let alone an exclusive to the console. But more than what I think about Geist as a game, is that the game is a really fascinating curiosity. Nintendo OWNS Geist, it’s their game to do whatever they want with. One of the system’s last exclusives was a Nintendo-published and owned M-rated first-person shooter. It’s also one of developer N-Space’s final original console games before falling down the hole of making Call of Duty spin-offs for the DS and loads of other licensed IP dreck (although there were already doing the latter before developing Geist). But I would like to see the game preserved and made accessible through Nintendo Classics. I’ll admit, the multiplayer is a bit of a hoot.
Metal Gear Solid: The Twin Snakes (2004) – Another game that I actually personally dislike. Don’t get me wrong, though, I LOVE the Metal Gear Solid series and the original PlayStation (and PC) release(s) of Metal Gear Solid is an all-time incredible game. Twin Snakes, however, is a real oddity. Developed primarily by Silicon Knights with next-to-no involvement from series creator and director Hideo Kojima, Twin Snakes is a fairly straight forward remake of the first MGS game in terms of design but is so radically different in every other regard. The engine is updated to that used in Metal Gear Solid 2 and many of that game’s mechanics are brought over to a game that is still at its core a 2.5D PlayStation game. The game’s dialogue was also completely re-recorded and the game’s cutscenes were totally rewritten and directed by Japanese film director Ryuhei Kitamura (who’s past work includes…Godzilla: Final Wars oh geez). Not that the first MGS is an entirely serious game but the new engine and cutscenes really dial up the zaniness of the story and everything becomes almost farcical in nature. It’s kinda like going from the first Mission:Impossible film to the second. Now with the MGS Master Collection released, the original PlayStation version of MGS is available to all platforms and is the definitive way to play. But why deny those who want to play the version where you can see Snake do a kickflip off of a fired missile.
Image: The Internet Archive. Getting the original Resident Evil 3 feels more prescient with its fine but quite lacking remake.
Every Resident Evil game – I feel like this one speaks for itself. Capcom is generally good when bringing its past titles to newer platforms, and those include some of the Resident Evil titles that were published for the GameCube. Resident Evil Remake, Resident Evil 0, and Resident Evil 4 were all primarily developed for the GameCube and have been re-ported to nearly every console since, including the Switch. But Capcom has also occasionally turned a blind eye to a select few of their older classics. Most notably, the original releases of Resident Evil 2 and 3 have been missing from modern game storefronts seemingly in favor of their modern third-person shooter remakes. The same can be said for Code: Veronica which will probably get a remake soon, too. But it would just be nice to see all of these games, including those with more modern ports, to come to Nintendo Classics anyway and preserved in their original forms.
PhantomZ2: Amongst the variety of our staff members, I wouldn’t be surprised if I were the only person among us who never owned or spent a lot of time with the GameCube. The only memory I have of playing the GameCube was going over to a friend’s house back in elementary school and playing a little bit of Dragon Ball Z Budokai, which would never happen despite how much I would want it to. Thus, most of the games I’d be interested in seeing come to GameCube Classics on NSO are based upon impressions from their visuals or ports, starting with:
SONIC RIDERS (2006): Although my experience playing Sonic Riders was on the PlayStation 2, the games are one-to-one, aside from the GameCube controller causing your hand to bleed. With the recent appearance of Sonic Riders- anything being the Extreme Gear featured within the upcoming Sonic Racing CrossWorlds, this would be the perfect instance to reintroduce newer fans to Sonic’s first attempt at interpreting extreme sports. Although I do feel that Sonic Riders: Zero Gravity is the best of the trilogy, the original Riders is still a fun title that keeps the focus on the main gear you choose and its abilities, as preferred by most others.
Image: The Internet Archive. Sonic Riders, featuring Jet the Hawk and the Babylon Rogues.
P.N.03 (2003): As stated earlier by Wolfman, P.N.03 was one of Capcom’s Five, as directed by Shinji Mikami with no relation to Hideki Kamiya. Despite that, the rhythmic and acrobatic movements of its female lead, Vanessa Z. Schneider, feel as if it is the other half in spawning Bayonetta after a night out with Devil May Cry. Rather than in-your-face combat, Vanessa shoots from a distance while dodging with flips and dance twirls in desolate wastelands and blinding sci-fi facilities. It looks like an interesting title, so getting the chance for myself and many others to play it would be fantastic.
MVP Baseball 2004: When I was a kid and had to suffer through hearing family members discuss sports, I still had the sensibilities to know that the Yankees were the best baseball team. I would watch their games on YES with my Grandpa, and there were times when visiting my Uncle, where I would also see him play this game. Once he left for the Army and gave me all of his sports titles for PS2, MVP Baseball 2004 was the one that I spent the most time with. While that was due to enjoying my attempts to become a big shot in the game’s career mode, most of my enjoyment came from the tracks EA selected to include in it. “Walkie-Talkie Man” by Steriogram, “Please” by Maxeen, “Time and Time Again” by Chronic Future, and many more tracks. Cycling through these songs in my attempts to hit home runs or strike out the opposing team made some of my most memorable summer days before moving apartments for middle school. Being able to return to this title, with the possibility of online multiplayer, would be amazing.
NantenJex: A lot of the key GameCube games I want to see on NSO have either already been announced (Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance and Chibi-Robo), been mentioned previously in this article or are Japanese-originals with no chance of a localisation (RIP GiFTPiA). That said, there are a handful of very obvious choices I would like to see get added to the service and then some more out-there, non-Nintendo picks. Basically, all games I didn’t get a chance to buy and own myself when the Gamecube was fresh on the market.
Starting with the obvious choices, it would be great to get Mario Party 4–7 all on the service as the Switch could then have access to almost every console Mario Party game. That would make it super convenient for party nights at mine. Then we’ve got Star Fox Assault, Kirby’s Air Ride and Custom Robo, all Nintendo gamecube games that I completely skipped over growing up and would love to get a chance to play. I technically do own the first two in Japanese but easy-access to the English releases would be nice.
Image: The Internet Archive. At the bottom of the article I roll off a few super obscure GameCube games to spur on comments by you, the viewer. I had to cut the Custom Robo one because Nan came in right at the end with this entry.
Speaking of games I own in Japanese, The Legend of Zelda Four Swords Adventure would be another great choice, simply because its inclusion would mean Nintendo would’ve found a way to emulate the Game Boy Advance connectivity and I think it would be far easier to play with friends using four Switch 2’s than it was back in the day with four Game Boy Advances. While we’re at it, give me the Nintendo Puzzle Collection as well.
Lastly, looking over at the third party options, having access to the original Super Monkey Ball 1 & 2 would be fantastic. And while it would be a licensing nightmare, I’d love to see DreamMix TV: World Fighter and Battle Stadium D:O:N! To fill the Super Smash Bros. Melee gap I fear this system might have (add the original onto the N64 service first and then I’ll have some more hope).
Hamada: Admittedly, while I really liked every GameCube game I’ve played (whether they were a remaster or the genuine article), I’m drawing a blank regarding worthwhile pitches. They already blew me away with the return of the Shadow Pokémon duology, and I can’t wait to play Ike’s debut game after loving Engage, but the quality lineup means I’m not wanting for much. That being said, Metroid Prime Remastered blew me away and proved there were plenty of GameCube classics I needed to try. I’d played all the 2D entries beforehand, but this one’s unforgettable overworld and knack for immersion wowed me on a wholly new level. Needless to say, I’m dying to get my hands on its sequel, and while I’d have liked to see Metroid Prime 2 get a similarly stunning overhaul, I’ll play any version they give me. It’d also help build excitement for Prime 4, so I’m hopeful this will happen sooner or later.
Cart Boy: It’d be nice if Donkey Kong Jungle Beat joined the Nintendo Classic lineup. One potential problem is that it was designed around the DK Bongos, a long-discontinued controller that was never exceptionally popular (Jungle Beat’s Wii re-release reworks its controls, sacrificing that distinctiveness). But the game is still playable with the standard GameCube controller, even if that’s admittedly less satisfying, and who knows—Nintendo renewed a patent for the Bongos a while back. Maybe it’ll be reissued someday. Regardless, Jungle Beat’s absence on the Switch ecosystem is felt; it’s one of only two mainline Donkey Kong games that isn’t available therein. Hopefully Donkey Kong 64 and Jungle Beat hit the Switches in the lead up to Bananza‘s launch as the Land trilogy did Returns HD‘s.
Image: The Internet Archive. Jungle Beat, the predecessor to Mario Galaxy, Mario Odyssey, and probably Donkey Kong Bananza. I imagine we won’t any of the three Donkey Konga games, though.
My colleague PhantomZ2 already gave Sonic Riders a shoutout, but I’m going to go a step further and nominate every Sonic title for the GameCube. Now, I don’t expect Sonic Mega Collection; I figure SEGA wants people to buy Sonic Origins to play Sonic 3 & Knuckles today. Gems Collection sadly might run into the same issue, given its inclusion of Sonic CD. But the Sonic Adventure games are important, and though I’d love to see SEGA remaster them well (Sonic Adventure DX is… rather slapdash), re-releasing their GameCube versions might be the best we can hope for. And, yes, Sonic Heroes and Shadow the Hedgehog are also important and have fans. They’re deeply flawed and the latter’s also deeply embarrassing, but their impact can still be felt as recently as last year’s Shadow Generations. Weak material can be salvaged, and it’s worth keeping these two around for those curious enough to try them.
TheMangoViking: I could rattle off some fan favourites, but I think whoever’s in charge of managing GameCube releases clearly knows what fans want, and will deliver. Demonstrated both with the NSO selection so far, but also Switch releases like Pikmin 1 and Pikmin 2, a remake of Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door, and a sequel to Kirby Air Ride. So instead, I’ll talk about just one unlikely game…
Gotcha Force: Aliens that resemble toys (called “borgs”) plan on destroying the Earth, and it’s up to a boy and heroic borgs to save the day. Imagine if Toy Story was a shonen anime. “To infinity and beyond” says G Red, as he punches a Vampire Knight into the stratosphere… it’ll make sense… maybe.
Image: Wikipedia, not The Internet Archive, as Gotcha Force is surprisingly obscure.
Gotcha Force is a third-person action game where the hook is collecting a smorgasbord of borgs to use in battle against waves of enemies. Borgs range from standard fare such as a cowboy, ninja and fire-breathing dragon, to fighter jets, scuba divers, chainsaw knights, and an ICBM. You read that right, you can play as an Intercontinental Ballistic Missile… it’s hard to use more than once without dying (or instantly with some variants), but it sure is fun the first time you obliterate everything on screen. Other borgs can pause time, shoot wrecking balls or giant lasers, or slice through objects from halfway across the stage. There’s a lot of interesting choices.
Before going into battle you can choose (usually) up to 5 borgs based on their cost. When one borg dies, it moves to your next in line until you complete the mission or you run out. Each borg has 1-3 attacks, and sometimes a special ability. While your default borg, G Red, is more robust and a stable option for any mission.
They are going for novelty and quantity (200+ borgs) over depth, but I didn’t mind as you’ll cycle through them before too long. The variety was interesting and surprising enough to keep me interested, at least as a pre-teen. Some variants are minimal like a different elemental dragon, others are more unique like a ninja with shurikens vs. a teleporting ninja with claws. Each borg has their uses in different situations and duplicates can be useful if you want multiples in one team. I believe you can capture specific borgs (albeit difficult), but they’re mostly randomized rewards after a mission.
This is the sort of game that will get repetitive, so your tolerance will vary. But I like the variety in playable fighters as they’re atypical, and the mundane settings like a child’s room or the middle of the street help sets itself apart from others. It’s an odd (and costly) game that I think a service like this is good for, highlighting unique games you missed out on. It’s fun to discover and try out new borgs or fight one and think “I hope I get that one”. From what I recall, every borg you fight is recuirtable (if your RNG is lucky). If you’re curious, a user named Solo Wing Fury, gave a 60s overview of each borg in a handy playlist, if you want to know how they play or how weird the choices get.
Gotcha Force is unlikely to appear on GameCube Classics, but it was developed and published by Capcom so the right’s owners at least have a working phone number. Maybe it can return and they can take another crack at a toyline, but with amiibo. Surely, the Street Fighter 6 amiibo are a test bed and sign of things to come. Surely.
What’s crazy is that this list, while largely comprising obscure titles that may not grace the service at all, is just the tip of the iceberg. Doshin the Giant is still out there, rampaging ‘cross the land in his experimental launch game glory. And so’s Cubivore! You know, the game where you have cubes eat other cubes? In retrospect, I really wanna play that one way more than Odama! And Nintendo sort of made it, kinda, so it isn’t the most legally difficult choice on this list! But forget legalities; why don’t you tell us about the GameCube games you’d like to see?
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