Gamecube Lost Gems

The final requiem of Gamecube games at Nintendojo talks about the forgotten and new franchises on the Cube. 

We conclude our look at GameCube franchises by looking at new and lost properties from the last generation. For the previous part of this story, click here.

The Fresh Franchises

While Nintendo clearly took the time to improve its current franchises, it was able to add a few new ones to the Nintendo family as well. This section takes a brief overview of some of the new franchise universes introduced in the GameCube generation.

 

Pikmin
Featuring: Pikmin, Pikmin 2
A rumor long told goes like this: Legendary Nintendo EAD developer Shigeru Miyamoto was working on his garden until he took notice of the fanciful environments and came up with a new idea for a game which we now know as Pikmin. Pikmin stars the intellectual space traveller, Captain Olimar, whose ship, the Dolphin, crash lands on an unknown planet and scatters 30 parts across the land. Olimar, who can withstand the planet’s oxygenic atmosphere for only 30 days, recruits the help of the local and obedient inhabitants, the Pikmin. Players are given control of an army of Pikmin, divided into three colors, each one highlighting its strengths and puzzle-solving capabilities, and must help Captain Olimar retrieve the ship parts before his carbon dioxide supply runs out. In Pikmin 2, Captain Olimar returns to the planet, this time with an assistant traveler named Louie, in order to retrieve treasures to pay off his company’s debt. The sequel presented two new colors of Pikmin, an assistant for multitasking, and removal of a time restriction.

Animal Crossing
Featuring: Animal Crossing
Like Pikmin, Animal Crossing was considered to be one of Nintendo’s most innovative works for the GameCube this generation. In the game, players are placed in a randomly generated village and must live through the game in an open-ended format. Players have several options as to what they may wish to do in their village such as improving the size of their home, finding new furniture, capturing insects and fish for the local museum, or designing clothes for the villagers to wear. Players’ interaction with other villagers in the game determines how the village changes over time and who leaves and arrives. The game makes great use of Nintendo’s internal clock and calendar, by incorporating specific times for certain bugs to appear and holidays and seasons depending on the time of the year.

Geist
Featuring: Geist
Upon its announcement, Geist was a highly anticipated title for both being a first person shooter and a Mature-rated game being developed by Nintendo’s in-house developer, n-Space. The game focused on civilian scientist and member of the counter-terrorism team, John Raimi, who after experimentation has his spirit torn from his body. In a twist to the FPS genre, Geist lets the player, represented in the form of a spirit, take on a variety of hosts ranging from dogs to machinery. While the game was overall seen as a disappointment when compared to other FPSes of the GameCube era such as Timesplitters 2, many found reason to give praise as Geist presented innovative gameplay concepts for a conventional genre.

Odama
Featuring: Yoot Saito’s Odama
Odama takes place in a feudal Japanese setting and focuses on a young general named Yamanouchi Kagetora who hopes to avenge his father’s death by unleashing the powerful weapon: the Odama. The Odama is a giant pinball that can pulverize all men on the battlefield upon contact. Players are able to control the Odama by using the L and R buttons as flippers and controlling the movements of their own troops using the microphone. While the game design wasn’t perfect, Yoot Saito’s Odama received praised for bringing a new level of innovation, especially with the use of the microphone.

The Forgotten Franchises?

This final section highlights a few franchise series that were missed out on in the GameCube Generation.

  • Golden Sun:Camelot’s famous RPG for the Game Boy Advance has still yet to make an appearance on a console system.
  • Ice Climbers: Despite appearing in Super Smash Bros. Melee, this chilly couple has no plans to to appear again as a standard Nintendo game.
  • Kid Icarus: This game hasn’t seen a revival on a console system although hopes look promising with the arrival of Pit oi the upcoming Super Smash Bros. Brawl.
  • Earthbound: For fans of this series, Earthbound 64 was one of the most anticipated announced titles for the Nintendo 64. Sadly, that game was cancelled and no word of the Mother series’s appearance on console systems has been heard since.
  • Yoshi: While Yoshi has been the star of several games, it is interesting to note that there was never a sequel released to Yoshi’s Story.
  • Pilotwings: Never made an appearance on the GameCube but speculation suggests it may return on Wii.
  • Excitebike: Excite Truck may be headed to Wii but whatever became of this dirt bike franchise?

Closing Thoughts

So now, we shall return to the original question posed by this article: How did the developers manage to balance the fine line between keeping the traditional elements of Nintendo franchises while adding innovative concepts that will spark interest in gamers? By analyzing the above franchises closely a number of well-founded generalizations can be made. However, three points in particular do stand out in Nintendo’s design policy during the GameCube Generation:

1. In the beginning, Nintendo was more willing to incorporate bold new changes in their games. While games such as Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker kept gameplay the same, it was startling to see such a huge change in the graphics system. In addition, it would have been difficult to predict that Nintendo would make such grand changes to the gameplay in Super Mario Sunshine by incorporating the FLUDD. This willingness to incorporate bold changes often led to some erratic results such as Pokemon Channel which had little interaction. However, it became a time when two of Nintendo’s newest franchises came in the spotlight: Animal Crossing and Pikmin.

2. As the GameCube moved towards it close, Nintendo games focused more on maintaining the original successful elements while tweaking more minor aspects. One especially interesting example can be seen with the “fluffing” of Metroid Prime into Metroid Prime 2: Echoes. One of the largest differences between the two games was the use of different power-ups. New power-ups such as the Echo visor allowed for new types of sound puzzles, and avoided repeating old puzzles from the previous game by discarding earlier visors. In Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door, the gameplay was largely kept the same with tweaks made to issues that were lacking. Note this trend does not apply to all games as Super Smash Bros. Melee underwent the same process as Paper Mario.

3. Nintendo sought a larger reliance on third and second party developers. The GameCube has often been called a transitionary console to cultivate relationships with third party developers. This allowed many games to be given in the hands of third party developers. In addition, since the number of franchises has increased over the years, more second party developers are needed to pitch in efforts. This overall resulted in mixed results, however.

It is somewhat strange that overall, Nintendo failed to create a single or a couple truly memorable games for the GameCube. It would seem that the task would be easier to improve an existing franchise rather than translating it across dimensions, but reality paints a different picture. Nintendo seemed to feel more comfortable given more freedom to experiment with gameplay and it was possibly these sentiments that led to the design of the next console.

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