Been playin' a lot of Gamecube this year and I feel like there's growing nostalgia for the system, so I thought y'all might wanna talk Gamecube.
So I picked up a black DOL-001 this spring and dropped in a GC Loader for disc drive emulation, a cheapo SD2SP2 for memory card emulation and patching, and the Game Boy Player that @Ixo gave me for Christmas; then set up Swiss and Game Boy Interface; and now I have the ultimate Cube (almost). I was playing it on the CRT but I've been enjoying it so much that I think it's making the cut to the new entertainment center, so now the only thing to fix now is the output. As such I think I'll be grabbing a GCHD Mk II at some point in the coming weeks.
So far I've been playing a couple of old favourites:
The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker is still the best Zelda game ever, outside of maybe BOTW. I don't have much to say about this one, because I just assume everyone already loves it. It's like trying to describe what fries taste like.
The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess is better than I remember. It's incredibly slow to ramp up and parts of it have aged very badly, but I'm liking it a lot. I had only ever played the Wii version prior to this so it's been fascinating to go back and see it without the flipped world and with much nicer controls. Replaying the water dungeon is probably the first time in years where I had to take a break in the middle of a Zelda dungeon and not just blast through it in one go.
The Simpsons: Hit & Run is fantastic. I mean, it's not, it's a middling GTA clone. But it's good enough and the charm of the early Simpsons license is more than sufficient to push it the rest of the way into cult classic territory.
Chibi-Robo! is extremely sweet. I feel like it would have done gangbusters as a Switch indie game or something. As it is it arrived too early for people to really appreciate the charm of bein' a little dude helpin' people and cleanin' a house. Also I remember my friend in middle school playing this and saying the footstep noises were annoying. Well fuck you, Michael, I like the footstep noises.
Animal Crossing is a game that's been basically replaced by its sequels. Having only gotten into AC later in life, there's a few things in here that are nice surprises (namely NES games and the fact that your villagers can be outright pricks and not just nice all the time), but yeesh do I miss the QOL stuff from later entries.
So what else should I check out? There's other old favourites I want to revisit (Pokémon Colosseum, Pikmin 2, Luigi's Mansion, etc) and I'm definitely tracking down a pair of DK bongos for funsies but there's plenty of the Gamecube library that I just never got to experience.
And yes, I'm playing with the Wavebird. I have two with receivers (and one without) and they work much better in the new setup than the old one. I think the closed-in spot where the Wii sat may have provided too much interference or something. Love my wavey boi.
So I picked up a black DOL-001 this spring and dropped in a GC Loader for disc drive emulation, a cheapo SD2SP2 for memory card emulation and patching, and the Game Boy Player that @Ixo gave me for Christmas; then set up Swiss and Game Boy Interface; and now I have the ultimate Cube (almost). I was playing it on the CRT but I've been enjoying it so much that I think it's making the cut to the new entertainment center, so now the only thing to fix now is the output. As such I think I'll be grabbing a GCHD Mk II at some point in the coming weeks.
So far I've been playing a couple of old favourites:
The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker is still the best Zelda game ever, outside of maybe BOTW. I don't have much to say about this one, because I just assume everyone already loves it. It's like trying to describe what fries taste like.
The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess is better than I remember. It's incredibly slow to ramp up and parts of it have aged very badly, but I'm liking it a lot. I had only ever played the Wii version prior to this so it's been fascinating to go back and see it without the flipped world and with much nicer controls. Replaying the water dungeon is probably the first time in years where I had to take a break in the middle of a Zelda dungeon and not just blast through it in one go.
The Simpsons: Hit & Run is fantastic. I mean, it's not, it's a middling GTA clone. But it's good enough and the charm of the early Simpsons license is more than sufficient to push it the rest of the way into cult classic territory.
Chibi-Robo! is extremely sweet. I feel like it would have done gangbusters as a Switch indie game or something. As it is it arrived too early for people to really appreciate the charm of bein' a little dude helpin' people and cleanin' a house. Also I remember my friend in middle school playing this and saying the footstep noises were annoying. Well fuck you, Michael, I like the footstep noises.
Animal Crossing is a game that's been basically replaced by its sequels. Having only gotten into AC later in life, there's a few things in here that are nice surprises (namely NES games and the fact that your villagers can be outright pricks and not just nice all the time), but yeesh do I miss the QOL stuff from later entries.
So what else should I check out? There's other old favourites I want to revisit (Pokémon Colosseum, Pikmin 2, Luigi's Mansion, etc) and I'm definitely tracking down a pair of DK bongos for funsies but there's plenty of the Gamecube library that I just never got to experience.
And yes, I'm playing with the Wavebird. I have two with receivers (and one without) and they work much better in the new setup than the old one. I think the closed-in spot where the Wii sat may have provided too much interference or something. Love my wavey boi.