Happy Birthday, GameCube!
Abbreviated as both NGC and GC in Japan, and as GCN in other parts of the world.
Today is GameCube’s 23rd birthday. I didn’t review much of the GameCube games when Shinkansen Retrogamer was on Medium, but Substack needs more GameCube reviews than Dreamcast. I remember when my brother showed me the GameCube (and we took it to Canada once) when we had Smash Bros. Melee and Crazy Taxi … and my older half-brother was like this: FOUR REMOTES! This was before my nieces were born (2002 and 2004, respectively).
We only got one memory card with 59 blocks, but twelve years later, my brother got a 251 model for the GameCube. I also remembered playing Mystic Heroes (which I reviewed five years ago, but won’t migrate it to here) as the PlayStation 2 version has eight playable characters instead of the original four and has more features that aren’t available on the GameCube port.
In Japan, between 280,000 and 300,000 GameCube consoles were sold during the first three days of its sale, out of an initial shipment of 450,000 units. During its launch weekend, $100 million worth of GameCube products were sold in North America. The console was sold out in several stores, faster than the initial sales of both of its competitors, the Xbox and the PlayStation 2. Nintendo reported that the most popular launch game is Luigi's Mansion, with more sales at its launch than Super Mario 64 had. Other popular games include Star Wars Rogue Squadron II: Rogue Leader and Wave Race: Blue Storm. By early December 2001, 600,000 units had been sold in the US. 24 million GameCube units were sold worldwide before Nintendo discontinued the console in 2007. It was succeeded by the Wii in late 2006, which I have to share in the same post. GameCube controllers, game discs, and certain accessories continued to be supported via the Wii's backward compatibility, although this feature was removed in later iterations of the Wii console. The final game officially released on the GameCube was Madden NFL 08, on August 14, 2007.
Nintendo Wii
The Nintendo Wii was released on November 19, 2006, which is also the console’s 18th anniversary. The Wii was extremely popular at launch, causing the system to be in short supply in some markets. A bundled game, Wii Sports, was considered the killer app for the console; other flagship games included entries in the Super Mario, Legend of Zelda, Pokémon, and Metroid series. Within a year of launch, the Wii became the best-selling seventh-generation console as well as a social phenomenon in many countries. Total lifetime sales of the Wii had reached over 101 million units, making it Nintendo's best-selling home console until it was surpassed by the Nintendo Switch in 2021.
There were also MySims games that both of my nieces liked as I bought every MySims game including SkyHeroes. In Party, I made MySims versions of myself, my nieces, younger brother, father, and other friends/relatives. Unfortunately, the MySims Cozy Bundle is sadly unavailable in physical form on Amazon (I pre-ordered the game before its release), because it will not be in stock until after Thanksgiving/Christmas, so I have to take the digital option via Nintendo eShop on the Switch so I can play it (Updated: I bought the game at a Target store). I hope I can take the written test so I can drive as I had to postpone it for a year last year, then during late August/early September due to my dad mishandling me (required to come to his work often for the majority of March last year, then was required to work late in late August/early September, then he had to work the whole month).
This wraps up the story of the GameCube and the Wii. Thanks very much for reading this article. Don’t forget to subscribe (it’s free, and Shinkansen Retrogamer does not have any paywalls!).
