Pushing the Nintendo Gamecube to its Absolute Limit!

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Gamecube has a lot of fond memories attached to it. It was the last classically Nintendo-ish Nintendo console. Different, strange, unapologetic, but tightly focused on doing its singular job as well as possible.

I can't prove it but suspect Shigeru Miyamoto is responsible for Nintendo's 5th gen console being a purple lunchbox. Something like that would've really tickled him, I'm sure. It hurt the public's percpetion of the machine however, given that Nintendo was already associated with children's entertainment.

I nevertheless camped out for it, waking up cold and achy at 7am on November 18th, 2001 outside of a Toys R Us. It was serious business! As a helpless Nintendo fanboy there was no way I'd miss the successor to the phenomenal N64.

There must be a great many out there who also have fond memories of Nintendo's little purple cube, because they're still coding for it. 'Intrinsic Gravity' by Still shows that there's still life in the Gamecube, and spirit left in its programming community:

While Intrinsic Gravity is artful, it doesn't make much use of the Gamecube's 3D capabilities. 'The Scary Demo' by CRTC rectifies this, throwing around smooth, detailed 3D visuals which still seem halfway relevant even in the modern era:

Not all demonstrations of the Gamecube's graphical prowess were made after its death. Some were made before it came to market, to give the press some idea of what it would be able to do and how big a leap it was beyond N64:

But what about the games? Of course we have to look at which games were considered the greatest graphical triumphs during the Gamecube's lifespan. The first of which has to be Star Wars, Rogue Squadron 3: Rebel Strike:

Star Fox Adventures was made by Rare, beginning life as Dinosaur Planet for the N64. Just like all other classic Rare titles, Star Fox Adventures was graphically remarkable for the system, because of its fur shading on certain characters in particular:

Metroid Prime is another famously gorgeous Gamecube game. Retro Studios has some seriously talented level designers with an eye for detail. Every individual room in Metroid Prime looked like it had more polygons than every structure found in a typical Halo level, put together:

Why is Luigi's Mansion on this list? It was a launch title after all, and there was nothing particularly special about the models or environments. It's here because it used stencil shadows and bump mapping. That's right, just like Doom 3.

The stencil shadows are visible whenever there's a lightning flash or when cast from objects before Luigi's flashlight, and move around dynamically in relation to the light source. The bump mapping is found only one place in the game, a brick texture on the side of a staircase in the basement:

Resident Evil 4 is a no brainer for its beautifully, artistically detailed levels. Every branch of those trees is modeled! Leon's coat has a fur shaded collar! This game was actually built from the ground up for Gamecube, and it shows:

Just like how Breath of the Wild got a WiiU release so WiiU owners wouldn't feel betrayed by the project moving to Switch, Twilight Princess also got a release on Gamecube for the same reason. Zelda titles have a history of straddling console generations like this. The result is a Gamecube game with graphics that look like they would be at home on the Wii:

That's all for this time. Did you have a Gamecube? Have you ever waited in line for any console? If you didn't have a Gamecube back then, what did you think of it? Stay tuned for further issues!

^{...and Stay Cozy!}