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Overview
The Nintendo GameCube is Nintendo's successor to the Nintendo 64 and predecessor to the Wii. The GameCube was released in Japan on September 14, 2001, in North America on November 18, 2001, in Europe on May 3, 2002, and in Australia on May 17, 2002. The GameCube sold a total of 21.74 million units worldwide, coming third place in the "console war" slightly behind Microsoft's Xbox, but far behind Sony's PlayStation 2. The console is officially abbreviated to the acronym GCN for no particular reason. A version of the GameCube with DVD playback was released by Panasonic known as the Panasonic Q.
The GameCube also saw a fair share of games, although most of its popular games were first-party; Super Mario Sunshine, The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker, Metroid Prime, F-Zero GX, and Animal Crossing. GameCube games released only on the GameCube a the time of release have a triangle in the upper left corner that says "Only For," implicating that the game was only available on the GameCube.
As games were no longer on cartridges Nintendo released a series of memory cards where players would save their progress. Memory cards are available in 59 block (of which several were packaged with games including Animal Crossing), a 256 block, and a 1024 block versions.
The first advertising campaign for the Nintendo GameCube was simply a rotating cube that would morph into the GameCube logo. A voice would then whisper, "GameCube." The was usually shown at the end of a commercial for a GameCube game.
Another well known advertising campaign was the "Who Are You?" advertising campaign. This was used to market a wide variety of Nintendo games. The "Who Are You?" logo was graffiti lettering. Most of the commercials and print ads were games developed or published by Nintendo, but some third-party developers were able to use the campaign as well. The idea behind the campaign was that players were the character that they played, with print ads showing pieces of the main character "taped" onto a person (e.g. Mario and Luigi's heads taped onto two hikers to promote Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga).
Hardware
The GameCube was Nintendo's first console to introduce a disc medium instead of cartridges, the games were recorded on mini DVD's. The disc can hold 1.5 gigabytes of data - 190 times more than what an N64 game cartridge can hold. The GameCube had twice the power of that of the Nintendo 64;a 128-bit processor as opposed to a 64-bit processor.
Like many of Nintendo's previous consoles and handheld consoles, the GameCube was released in a variety of colors. The two most common colors were Indigo and Jet Black (Indigo being the default color). Later, a Platinum color scheme was released and marketed as limited edition. Orange Spice GameCubes were also made available, but were primarily available in Japan.
The GameCube's model numbers (DOL-001 and DOL-101) were a reference to Dolphin, the GameCube's codename. Official accessories and peripherals also had model numbers beginning with DOL.
The GameCube allows direct connectivity with Nintendo’s handheld peripheral the Game Boy Advance via the link cable. Later on, Nintendo released the Game Boy Player which allowed backward compatibility with Game Boy, Game Boy Color and Game Boy Advance games. There were also some games where you can connect the e-Reader to the GameCube in order to scan in extra game features. Supported games include Animal Crossing and Pokémon Channel.
Although only a few games have online play for the GameCube (such as the Phantasy Star Online franchise), the GameCube still has its party base with having 4 controller ports and, for some games, having LAN support that allows eight GameCubes to be connected together to play a multiplayer game.
The GameCube controller consists of having a large, green A button, a small, red B button, two gray, bean-shaped X and Y buttons, 2 analog sticks, 1 D-pad, 2 shoulder buttons, and a purple Z button on top of the controller next to the right shoulder button. There's a wireless controller called the Wavebird that has a switch to turn the controller on or off, and even has a tuner for better connectivity. Some Wii games support use of the GameCube controller.
The Nintendo GameCube was released in 2001 as Nintendo's fourth console. Unfortunately, the console was not as well-received as Nintendo's competitors, but the console was still relatively successful.
Overview
The logo for the Nintendo GameCube
The Nintendo GameCube is Nintendo's successor to the Nintendo 64 and predecessor to the Wii. The GameCube was released in Japan on September 14, 2001, in North America on November 18, 2001, in Europe on May 3, 2002, and in Australia on May 17, 2002. The GameCube sold a total of 21.74 million units worldwide, coming third place in the "console war" slightly behind Microsoft's Xbox, but far behind Sony's PlayStation 2. The console is officially abbreviated to the acronym GCN for no particular reason. A version of the GameCube with DVD playback was released by Panasonic known as the Panasonic Q.
The logo for the Nintendo GameCube
Metroid Prime: A popular game for Nintendo GameCube.
The GameCube also saw a fair share of games, although most of its popular games were first-party; Super Mario Sunshine, The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker, Metroid Prime, F-Zero GX, and Animal Crossing. GameCube games released only on the GameCube a the time of release have a triangle in the upper left corner that says "Only For," implicating that the game was only available on the GameCube.
As games were no longer on cartridges Nintendo released a series of memory cards where players would save their progress. Memory cards are available in 59 block (of which several were packaged with games including Animal Crossing), a 256 block, and a 1024 block versions.
Marketing
The first advertising campaign for the Nintendo GameCube was simply a rotating cube that would morph into the GameCube logo. A voice would then whisper, "GameCube." The was usually shown at the end of a commercial for a GameCube game.
Another well known advertising campaign was the "Who Are You?" advertising campaign. This was used to market a wide variety of Nintendo games. The "Who Are You?" logo was graffiti lettering. Most of the commercials and print ads were games developed or published by Nintendo, but some third-party developers were able to use the campaign as well. The idea behind the campaign was that players were the character that they played, with print ads showing pieces of the main character "taped" onto a person (e.g. Mario and Luigi's heads taped onto two hikers to promote Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga).
Hardware
The GameCube controller in the Indigo color scheme
The GameCube was Nintendo's first console to introduce a disc medium instead of cartridges, the games were recorded on mini DVD's. The disc can hold 1.5 gigabytes of data - 190 times more than what an N64 game cartridge can hold. The GameCube had twice the power of that of the Nintendo 64;a 128-bit processor as opposed to a 64-bit processor.
The GameCube controller in the Indigo color scheme
Color Schemes
Like many of Nintendo's previous consoles and handheld consoles, the GameCube was released in a variety of colors. The two most common colors were Indigo and Jet Black (Indigo being the default color). Later, a Platinum color scheme was released and marketed as limited edition. Orange Spice GameCubes were also made available, but were primarily available in Japan.
The GameCube's model numbers (DOL-001 and DOL-101) were a reference to Dolphin, the GameCube's codename. Official accessories and peripherals also had model numbers beginning with DOL.
Peripherals
The GameCube allows direct connectivity with Nintendo’s handheld peripheral the Game Boy Advance via the link cable. Later on, Nintendo released the Game Boy Player which allowed backward compatibility with Game Boy, Game Boy Color and Game Boy Advance games. There were also some games where you can connect the e-Reader to the GameCube in order to scan in extra game features. Supported games include Animal Crossing and Pokémon Channel.
Online
Although only a few games have online play for the GameCube (such as the Phantasy Star Online franchise), the GameCube still has its party base with having 4 controller ports and, for some games, having LAN support that allows eight GameCubes to be connected together to play a multiplayer game.
Controller
The GameCube controller consists of having a large, green A button, a small, red B button, two gray, bean-shaped X and Y buttons, 2 analog sticks, 1 D-pad, 2 shoulder buttons, and a purple Z button on top of the controller next to the right shoulder button. There's a wireless controller called the Wavebird that has a switch to turn the controller on or off, and even has a tuner for better connectivity. Some Wii games support use of the GameCube controller.
Technical Specifications
Central Processing Unit
- 435 MHz IBM Gekko PowerPC CPU
- PowerPC 750CXe based core
- 180 nm IBM copper-wire process
- 50 new vector instructions
- 32-bit ALU 64-bit FPU, usable as 2x32-bit SIMD
- FPU:1.9Gflops
- 64-bit enhanced PowerPC 60x front side bus to GPU/chipset, 162 MHz clock, 1.3 GB/s peak bandwidth
- 64 KiB L1 cache (32 KiB I/32 KiB D), 8-way associative, 256 KiB on-die L2 cache, 2-way associative
- 1125 DMIPS (dhrystone 2.1)
System Memory
- 43 MB total non-unified RAM
- 24 MB MoSys 1T-SRAM main system RAM, 324 MHz, 64-bit bus, 2.7 GB/s bandwidth
- 3 MB embedded 1T-SRAM
- Split into 1 MB texture buffer and 2 MB frame buffer
- 10.4 GB/s texture bandwidth (peak), 7.6 GB/s frame buffer bandwidth (peak), about 6.2 ns latency
- 16 MB DRAM used as buffer for DVD drive and audio, 81 MHz, 8-bit bus, 81 MB/s bandwidth
Connectivity
- 4 controller ports, 2 memory card slots
- MultiAV analog audiovisual port: interlaced YPbPr (composite, Y/C() and RGB video, stereophonic analog audio
- Digital audiovisual port: digital interlaced or progressive scan YCBCR video, stereophonic I²S sound
- Resolutions: 480i, 576i, 480p
- High-speed Serial Ports: 2
- High-speed Parallel Ports: 1
- Power supply output: DC12 volts x 3.25 amperes
- Physical measurements: 110 mm (H) x 150 mm (W) x 161 mm (D); [4.3"(h) x 5.9"(W) x 6.3"(D)]
Graphics Processing Unit
- 162 MHz "Flipper" LSI, 180 nm NEC eDRAM-compatible process, Co-developed by Nintendo and ArtX
- 8Gflops
- 4 pixel pipelines with 1 texture unit each
- TEV "Texture EnVironment" engine
- Fixed-function hardware transform and lighting (T&L), 12 million polygons/s in-game
- 648 megapixels/s (162 MHz x 4 pipelines), 648 megatexels/s (648 MPx 1 texture units) (peak)
- Peak triangle performance: 20,250,000 32pixel triangles/s raw and with 1 texture and lit
- 337,500 triangles a frame at 60fps
- 675,000 triangles a frame at 30fps
- 8 texture layers per pass, texture compression, full scene anti-aliasing
- 8 simultaneous hardware light
- Bilinear, trilinear, and anisotrophic texture filtering
- Multi-texturing, bump mapping, reflection mapping, 24-bit z-buffer
- 24-bit RGB / 32-bit RGBA color depth
- 720 x 480 interlaced or progressive scan
- Integrated audio processor: Custom 81 MHz Macronix DSP
- Instruction Memory: 8 KiB RAM, 8 KiB ROM
- Data Memory: 8 KiB RAM, 4 KiB ROM
- 64 channels 16-bit 48 kHz ADPCM
- Dolby Pro Logic II encoded within stereophonic output
Storage Media
- Matsushita (2.000 MB/s-3.125 MB/s) CAV mini-DVD-like 8 cm optical disk, average access time: 128 ms; capacity: 1.5 GB
- Memory cards of 59 blocks (4Mbit), 256 blocks (16 Mbit), 1024 blocks (64 Mbit), and 2043 (128Mbit) blocks.
GameCube games
Edit
| Platform Name: | GameCube |
| Release Date: | Nov. 18, 2001 |
| Online Support: | True |
| Install Base: | 21,740,000 |
| Original Price: | $199 |
| Producing Company: | Nintendo |
| Total Games: | games |
Systems I Own
a list of 9 items by Merforga
a list of 9 items by Merforga
My Video Game Hardware
a list of 14 items by n1Nj4d00m
a list of 14 items by n1Nj4d00m
Consoles owned
a list of 9 items by Graffiti
a list of 9 items by Graffiti
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Mario first in Donkey Kong |
19
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Luigi first in Mario Bros. |
15
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Princess Peach first in Super Mario Bros. |
14
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Bowser first in Super Mario Bros. |
14
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Toad first in Super Mario Bros. |
14
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Donkey Kong first in Donkey Kong Jr. |
13
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Wario first in Super Mario Land 2: 6 Golden Coins |
13
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Yoshi first in Super Mario World |
13
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Brett Favre first in John Madden Football '92 |
13
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Chain Chomp first in Super Mario Bros. 3 |
11
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New York first in |
59
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Chicago first in |
36
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Space first in Spacewar! |
29
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Los Angeles first in |
26
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Cave first in |
24
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Seattle first in |
23
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Underwater first in |
23
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Miami first in |
22
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Japan first in |
20
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The United States of America first in The Oregon Trail |
20
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3D first in Elite |
169
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Platinum Games first in |
166
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Xbox 360 Backwards Compatibility first in Halo: Combat Evolved |
162
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Health first in |
106
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Tie-In first in |
98
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Boss Fight first in DND |
95
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Death first in |
92
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E3 2003 first in |
82
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Jump first in Donkey Kong |
82
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Difficulty Level first in |
80
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Gun first in |
79
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Helmet first in |
67
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Sword first in |
64
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Pistol first in |
57
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Bomb first in B-17 Bomber |
50
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Grenade first in |
46
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Sports Jersey first in |
45
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Scoreboard first in |
40
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Water first in |
40
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Shotgun first in |
36
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