The Nintendo GameCube (ニンテンドーゲームキューブ, Nintendō GēmuKyūbu), often abbreviated GCN, is a gaming console released by Nintendo in 2001. It is Nintendo's fourth home video game console and is part of the sixth generation console era. It is the successor to the Nintendo 64 and predecessor to Nintendo's Wii.
Its successor, the Wii, is backward compatible with the GameCube; capable of playing all of its games and accepting its controllers and memory cards. Various Wii fighting games have allowed the use of a GameCube Controller as a way to have a more traditional way to play.
The Nintendo GameCube is the first Nintendo console to use optical discs as its primary storage medium, after several aborted forays by Nintendo in disc-based storage media. In contrast with the GameCube's competing consoles, the Xbox and PlayStation 2, the GameCube uses miniDVD-based discs instead of full-size DVDs. As a result, it does not have the DVD-Video playback functionality of the Xbox and PlayStation 2 nor the audio CD playback ability of previous consoles that used full-sized optical discs.
In addition, the GameCube also introduced a variety of connectivity options to Nintendo consoles, and was the first Nintendo console to officially support online play. The GameCube was at one point online compatible by using a GameCube Modem Adapter or Broadband Adapter, though the only four games that had an online component were Homeland, Phantasy Star Online Episode I & II, Phantasy Star Online Episode I & II Plus and Phantasy Star Online Episode III: C.A.R.D. Revolution. This online play was ended as of April 2007, but LAN gameplay is still available for the three titles that originally supported it: Mario Kart Double Dash!!, 1080° Avalanche and Kirby Air Ride. A third-party PC application called Warp Pipe allows online play of these three games by tunneling the network traffic through a computer and across the Internet, though this is not supported by Nintendo. The GameCube also allowed for connectivity to the contemporary Game Boy Advance to access exclusive features of certain games.
Tony Hawk games released on the GameCube[]
- Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3
- Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 4
- Tony Hawk's Underground
- Tony Hawk's Underground 2
- Tony Hawk's American Wasteland