some pretty cool games are comin out for GC and X-Box..i dunno which i should get next..im kinda stuck with a ps2 right now..have been..are GC/Xbox good consoles?
Ok now a chance for the Gamecube to step up to the plate...
First off I just want to say that Nintendo is notoriously bad at releasing hardware without any support (first party and third party,) at first. However, Nintendo, for me at least, has always held through with their promises. Right now is a prime example of this. Casting the connectivity with the GBA aside, I'll delve into my opinions on the Gamecube.
First off the games that are worth buying are, without a doubt, primarily made by Nintendo. This does not change the fact that they are indeed good games. Since I am (slightly) biased, I'll only list the cream of the crop. They are: Metroid Prime, Super Smash Brothers Melee, and Mario Kart: Double-Dash!!.
Ok so looking at this list, you can see that the GC actually ties with the X-Box. I'll even dock Metroid Prime since some may feel that I docked Halo unfairly. So now the X-Box is in the lead by one quality game. What about the GC titles that are good, but not great?
These games are good, but they are not the absolute best of what the GC has to offer. (This is an area where I feel the X-Box needs to greatly improve upon. Just for more extraneous information, the PS2 reigns king in this area.
) Ok so on with the list... They are: Resident Evil 0, Resident Evil 1, Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker, Super Mario Sunshine, Super Monkey Ball 1 or 2, and Viewtiful Joe. Honorable mentions go to: Animal Crossing, Godzilla: Destroy All Monsters Melee, and Wario World. This list does not include the ports of the Sonic games, the Legend of Zelda games, or the Resident Evil games.
My rankings are somewhat questionable, even to me, but I'm trying to gauge the game's popularity by various opinions I have heard. Mario Sunshine and Wind Waker are very good sequels to their predecessors, but I've heard many say that it's really nothing new. Hence they're good, but not great.
While I have a good idea of what the gameplay is like in Resident Evil 0 and 1, I'm not a fan of the series and I haven't played those two much as a result. However, I've heard of many people who have bought the Gamecube soley for Resident Evil 0. Since I really don't want to rank something as the cream of the crop if I haven't played them, I'm going to say that they're good but not great.
I've played very little, but Monkey + Ball = goodness. Very replayable stuff here.
Viewtiful Joe kicks ass, but it is insanely hard. Some may be off-put by this. (I'm not however.) I've also heard people criticize the game soley for its looks and also for the fact that you can't skip past the cinema sequences. (I don't agree with them at all of course.
Gauging none-the-less.)
Animal Crossing is a game that has an amazing amount of content. It's just begging for an online counter-part. It unfortunately... lacks any sort of depth other than collecting rare items and viewing special events. (Nintendo needs to take a page from Natsume with their Harvest Moon series in my opinion.)
Godzilla... is well, Godzilla. If you don't like this sort of thing then you probably won't care for the game much. As far as Godzilla games go though, this one is the best. It's quite fun to play. (Ack... I just realized something. I really shouldn't have included this game as the X-Box later received a version. Go for the X-Box version if you want/have one and like Godzilla.)
Wario World is the first time Wario has ever graced the semi-big screen. In short, Wario World is a good platformer. It's fairly easy throughout except for some excruciatingly hard mini-games sparsely thrown in the game here and there. (Treasure could have fleshed out Wario more as well. Seriously... the manual for the game has more personality than Wario does in-game. I wouldn't mind if this were Mario, but Wario has a distinct personality.) So I slapped on an honorable mention tag. Rent it, play it, and perhaps buy it. Up to you really...
Two other games worth mentioning that I haven't played yet are Kirby's Air Ride and Billy Hatcher. I've heard good things about both.
Alright... so now on to the future. Future games include: 1080 Avalanche, Final Fantasy: Chrystal Chronicles, Harvest Moon: Insert correct sub-title, Legend of Zelda: The Four Swords, some variation of The Four Swords called Tetra's something, and a new Starfox game.
Since I'm tiring of typing this post, I'll skip most of my thoughts on each game. All look promising except the new Legend of Zelda games. Unless they offer significant new content and improvements over the GBA counterpart of Four Swords, I don't think I'll be spending 50 dollars on them.
So while Nintendo only has Sega, Capcom, and Square-Enix developing quality software for the GC, Nintendo has always been able to deliver quality games for their systems. And with the $99 price tag, I think the GC lives up to its promises.
Now if they could just support the E-Reader for the GBA more <_< I wish Nintendo would stop being such hard-asses about closed developement. It really does hurt them more than it helps.
Anyway... there you have it.