My favorite retro console to collect for, there are still several recognizable GameCube titles that remain missing from our collection.
Though my affinity for retro video games spans multiple generations and a wide range of both handheld and home consoles, it’s hard for any system to rival the personal impact the GameCube had on me as a child.
After initially receiving the console as a Christmas gift in 2003, I quickly fell in love with the system and many of its most iconic titles, with Luigi’s Mansion and Super Smash Bros. Melee serving as my introduction to what the system had to offer.
Over the course of the system’s lifespan, I played and owned several more of the titles that made the GameCube what it was – The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker, Mario Kart: Double Dash!!, Mario Superstar Baseball, Donkey Kong Jungle Beat and my favorite game for the console – Tales of Symphonia.
Even though the aforementioned games make up a good chunk of the most popular and renowned titles released for the system, there are still plenty that are conspicuous blind spots in our collection.
Much of this can be attributed to the allure of the GameCube itself. It may come as no surprise to any readers that my wife and I were far from alone when it came to pursuing a video game collection at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.
While the boom of retro video game collecting is a trend that impacted prices and game availability for essentially all old consoles, none were impacted quite as heavily as the GameCube, owing to a variety of factors. With the pandemic beginning at a time when many individuals who were children during the GameCube’s heyday were now adults with disposable income, it was Nintendo’s sixth-generation offering that took the brunt of price increases.
This turned games that were never more than their $50 price tag at release into true high-ticket items, with games such as the Mario Party installments, Pokémon XD: Gale of Darkness and Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door commanding north of $100 on the resale market.
Even for myself, the most expensive single game I’ve purchased as part of our collection was a complete-in-box copy of The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, a game that ran me $125 owing to the relative rarity of the GameCube port of the game.
Yet even ignoring the games that command the most money on the resale market, there are still a few titles I yearned for as a kid that are still missing from our collection. Beyond just crossing these games off of a checklist, these are titles I would absolutely play and enjoy today, and hope to add them to the library at some point soon.
Here’s a look at what we’re missing out on the most:
1. Super Mario Strikers
Released as part of a surge of Mario sports titles, Super Mario Strikers was part of a de facto trilogy of similar games released later in the GameCube’s lifespan, joining Mario Power Tennis and Mario Superstar Baseball.
The first soccer-inspired game of the Mario series, the game brings a fast-paced, high-energy twist to soccer with a typical roster of Mario characters and emphasis on the game’s multiplayer offerings.
Although Super Mario Strikers is lacking in single-player options similar to Mario Power Tennis, the introduction of a new sport to the series along with Mario-specific features such as on-field items and the ability to hit other characters on the field of play makes for a uniquely riveting multiplayer experience.
The game also inspired two sequels – Mario Strikers Charged for the Wii, released in July 2007, and Mario Strikers: Battle League, released for the Nintendo Switch in June 2022.
Notably, Super Mario Strikers was also the final Mario game to be released for the GameCube, hitting North American shelves on Dec. 5, 2005.
2. Animal Crossing
Though it’s hard to really grasp it in today’s video game landscape where Animal Crossing is one of the most recognizable and valuable brands across gaming, the series began stateside as a brand-new franchise with an eponymous release for the GameCube in September 2002.
The North American release of the game was comparitively delayed to the title’s debut in Japan, which was initially released as a Nintendo 64 game in April 2001 before a GameCube port reached the shelves in Japan in December of the same year.
While it took a while to reach North America, its immediate impact inspired what has now become one of Nintendo’s flagship video game series’.
A life simulation game in an entirely non-linear setting with a real-time clock, Animal Crossing pits the player in a village populated by other animals, with the player’s objective being to save money, interact with the community and improve the village over time.
Though open-ended, non-linear games are quite common in today’s gaming landscape, Animal Crossing was a true pioneer in this regard, combining an endless system of gameplay with real-time to allow players to build a simulated life for themselves in their village.
This pure form of video game escapism has inspired many prevalent titles today, while serving as a direct building block for the later games in the Animal Crossing series itself. Though I missed out on all of it as a kid, it would be amazing to go back and see where it all began a quarter-century later.
3. Kirby Air Ride
The lone release in the Kirby series for the GameCube, Kirby Air Ride brings a fun twist to both the racing genre that gained immense popularity at the turn of the century, as well as the Kirby series itself.
Released in October 2003, Kirby Air Ride is a relatively basic multiplayer racing game, with the player choosing between Kirby and one of his many multicolored clones to race through a set of tracks while using vehicles previously seen in other titles of the series.
Though the title was not renowned for its limited single-player offerings and limited simplicity, the game always appealed to me as a new way to experience the kart racing genre.
Growing up as a fanatic of the Mario Kart series and Crash Team Racing, getting a similar fantasy-driven racing game based off of a familiar series surely would have been a hit for me as a kid, but I can’t say that I was even aware of the existence of Kirby Air Ride around the time of its release.
The game went on to become one of the more sought-after first-party titles for the GameCube, a game I actually previously purchased in December 2020 before being forced to return the game due to it being a busted copy. Its influence and legacy was enough for a sequel, one released just over a month ago in the form of Kirby Air Riders for the Nintendo Switch 2.
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