2006 will almost certainly be the final year we hand out an award for GameCube Game of the Year. With the release of the Wii, the GameCube can finally be put out of its misery. Any new GC games that come out for it in '07 would probably be nominated for the 2007 Biggest Surprise Award instead of GC GOTY. But hey, if you're going to come out with what will probably be last notable GameCube game, you might as well do it with authority.

Big surprise here (yeah, right): Twilight Princess is far and away 2006's best GameCube game. It's the biggest, baddest, most awesome Zelda game ever created. Although GC owners were shafted twice—once by a year-long delay, and again by a priority shift to the Wii—it's still a GameCube game that commands to be played. It's what GameCube fans have been wanting ever since Nintendo showed us what the “mature" Link and Ganon looked like back at Space World 2000. It took a while, but we finally got it. It was totally worth the wait.