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GC

North America

GameCube

by Justin Nation - October 11, 2001, 4:32 am EDT

At long last Justin's luck has brought him into contact with that cute little hunk of plastic... GC virgin impressions ahead!

Well, unlike almost every other person on staff at PGC up until last night I'd never come into contact with a GameCube. Sure, I have probably every movie that's been released on the web of it, I have my beloved foam Cube that sits on my monitor at work, and I've probably read 90% of all impressions available on the system... but I'd still never been able to take the dive for myself. Finally, for a little over 3 hours last night, I was able to immerse myself in GameCube goodness and here's the gist of the experience.

First, and don't take this the wrong way... the initial experience wasn't Earth-shattering. Yes, it was great. Yes, I had a great time. Yes, I'll still give those bastards at EB my hard-earned cash to be sure to have one on launch day... but as with all things where you've let expectations build to a feverish level, it can't be as shock-inducing as you may expect when you already know what you're going to be in for.

Some of it may have been the numbness from shock of finally getting to play some games on the system but I don't think that's it. More than anything playing GameCube for the first time though was like going out with your best friend and hitting some new spots that opened up a few towns over. Luigi's Mansion and Wave Race were thoroughly Nintendo experiences and Super Monkey Ball was pure Sega wackiness. No need for fanfare, just sit down and enjoy the games that do undoubtedly look better but will still wrap you in with what is inside.

Second, and worth noting, is that while my wife played a little I was able to take myself out of my gameplay-induced trance and experience the intangibles I couldn't begin to care about when first playing. With the component cable hooked up to my 53" digitial TV I will definitely say there's a huge difference between the look and detail of the N64 and the GameCube. N64 games on my big screen honestly look pretty crappy... as they should expect to look honestly. All 3 Japanese launch titles for GameCube look terrific though with fine details everywhere, a nice crisp look to replace the trademark N64 blurriness, and just an unreal level of glorious color to be seen everywhere. Similarly, on the quality note, plug in a game like Luigi's Mansion and the audio delights to be had on a surround sound system are everywhere. I can't wait to get a taste of Rogue Leader's positional support, even what limited tricks Luigi had going for it were nicely done.

On physical notes it can't be said enough how odd the size of the system is... it's downright tiny and until you see it in person it is hard to really grasp the size in real terms. Thankfully, though the system may be small, it does carry a fair deal of heft to it... which immediately makes you feel a little more at ease about it not being as fragile as its appearance may originally make you assume.

That moves on to the game disks. Wow, they're tiny little things... and 1.5 GB of data? Sheesh. One touch I really liked was that to get the disk out of the system the piece that holds the disk in place can be pressed down to pop it out cleanly for you. I always did hate pulling at my disk in my Dreamcast, it's a detail but something I could appreciate having done it another way.

I think to close on these system impressions another impressive feature is the comparative lack of noise coming from the system. I love my Dreamcast but damn is it noisy when it accesses the disk. With the GameCube I can hear some noise but honestly only because I'm trying to listen for it. If I were just playing with some buds I don't think anyone would know the thing was even operating as the small sounds it makes are quite minimal. I suppose the related issue in that area is access time and so far all I can say is that compared to other disk-based systems it is darned quick. Maybe 3-5 seconds tops for a delay to load a level... though most of the time loads are nicely covered up with something going on. Thankfully nothing as bad as in the old PSX days where just loading a different page of a menu would give you delays.

In the end when it comes to the impressions of the system hardware itself all that can be said is that Nintendo seems to have done everything in their power to deliver an impressive, affordable, and capable platform for developers to share their visions on. They seem to be very aware of the frustrations disk-based systems have caused in the past and it appears they have addressed those issues as well as anyone could have hoped. Look for more impressions in the coming week.

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Genre
Developer Nintendo

Worldwide Releases

na: GameCube
Release Nov 18, 2001

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