Cult Classics: GameCube

Did you read parts one and two? Shame on you! Whatever your answer. In our final selection of Cult Classics for GameCube, Keza touches on all the most influential genres: real-time pinball strategy, asymmetrical team-based '80s arcade games, rhythm shooters, and duck-based top-down aviation puzzling.

Lost Kingdoms 1 and 2

• Developer: From Software
• Release: 2002 and 2003

These two, like Baten Kaitos, are card-battling games, but they don't bring as much polish and aesthetic flair to the genre as Namco's effort. Their world is neither as gorgeous nor as distinctive as Baten Kaitos', but the card battling is probably very slightly better, and certainly more accessible. If you're into your Magic or card-battling in general, you'll probably force your way through this game's faults to enjoy it now that it's not GBP 40 of your money, and the multiplayer card-battling actually tips these two games into the realm of 'recommended' instead of leaving it to lurk with the rest of the losers in the 'average' zone.

What we said: "Entertaining though Lost Kingdoms can be when it's raising two fingers to RPG convention, it's still blighted by conventional RPG problems."

Luigi's Mansion

• Developer: Nintendo
• Release: 2001

Okay, this isn't really a cult classic. It was a GameCube launch title and sold plenty (well, by GameCube standards). But it feels like a cult game - a strange, offbeat, interesting diversion, an experiment, a ten-hour (if that), humorous novella of a game. Nintendo's excuse for delivering such an oddity for a console launch in place of a Mario or a Zelda was that it was adapting to the times, that it was going to release smaller games more often instead of annual big hits - unfortunately, that turned out to be a bit of a lie, but Luigi's Mansion is at least an interesting product of that philosophy.

Nintendo really is good at making games that work with their technology. Luigi's Mansion is so intrinsically GameCube; it's one of about six games that ever bothered to use the pressure-sensitive shoulder buttons properly, and like Wind Waker, it has a graphical style that works perfectly happily within the limits of its technology. It will never look dated. Playing this through again, you realise that Luigi's Mansion was far from the lazy cobbled-together launch title that many disappointed, Mario-hungry fans labelled it. It is carefully and cleverly designed to maintain tension and atmosphere, closing off the mansion tantalisingly, much like Peach's Castle in Mario 64. It's a funny, endearing, innovative game, full of slapstick scares and little fan-pleasing in-jokes. It deserves so much more love than it gets.

What we said: "Luigi's Mansion is a delightful little game, instantly appealing to anybody with more than a passing interest in its heritage."

Odama

• Developer: Vivarium
• Release: 2006

Odama might be brilliant. I'm not sure that anyone on earth could really make their mind up about it. It's certainly the most intricately fascinating game that the Cube ever had, with its elaborate rules and strategies, most of which you ended up discovering by accident. There's little point trying to explain how Odama's mix of pinball, military strategy and Japanese philosophy works - instead, it's better to say that if you like interesting games, Odama is a must-have. It's so detailed and so weird, and there's nothing else remotely like it in the world.

What we said: "If you care about games rather than simply caring about which games are good, you'll want to play it."

Kururin Squash

• Developer: 8ing
• Release: 2004 (Japan only)

You are a duck in a helicopter, but don't let that worry you too much, because Kuruin Squash - like its GBA launch title predecessor, Kuru Kuru Kururin - is in all practical senses a maze game where you manouevre a spinning bar past obstacles while trying not to let it touch anything (see, no need to be frightened). It's over in no time at all, but it's completely captivating until it is, thanks to cute, amazingly smooth graphics and inventive level design. At the time we moaned that it gave it all up a bit too easily, which it does, but that hardly matters now; if you get the chance to buy it, just do.

What we said: "It'll captivate you for as long as it lasts, but don't be surprised if it then spins off onto a shelf with only a duck in a helicopter's chance of ever returning to the fore."

Pac-Man Vs.

• Developer: Nintendo
• Release: 2003

Pac-Man Versus is the best ordinary, non-co-operative multiplayer game on the Cube, and practically nobody's played it - partly because it only came free with R-bloody-Racing and Pac-Man World 2, and partly because it needs a Game Boy Advance link cable. But nowadays neither of these things is a problem, because GBAs are everywhere and Pac-Man World 2 can be had for less than a fiver. Hurray! Pac-Man Versus is an inspired idea. Designed by Shigeru Miyamoto, it takes good old-fashioned Pac-Man and simply makes it multiplayer. One player controls Pac-Man on the GBA screen, running around nibbling pills, and the other three players control ghosts on the maze on the TV screen. Thing is, ghosts have a limited field of vision, so you can only see Pac-Man if he comes within range, at which point complete and utter chaos breaks out as the ghost players start yelling instructions at each other and the Pac Man player tries desperately to run the hell away. Every time anyone catches the slightest glimpse of Pac-Man there's a mad, screaming rush to catch him, and whenever someone does, there's a massive 'Aaaaaaargh!' from every other player before the controllers are switched around and the whole thing starts again. The GBA link-up really did have its moments.

What we said: 6/10, but only because you had to buy R:Racing to play it at the time. Can probably be revised upwards considerably now.

P.N.03

• Developer: Capcom
• Release: 2003

P.N.03 is kind of like a rhythm-action third-person shooter. Or a bit like The Club. Or Space Channel 5 with guns. It's balletic and difficult, and quite old-fashioned, putting you in a series of futuristic rooms with a sequence of enemies to destroy with a mixture of guns, dancing and special moves. What's interesting about it? The clean, minimalist style, the purposefully restrictive control and the rhythm and flow of the shooting. It's almost a 3D transposition of the traditional 2D vertical shooter, in addition to all those other things I just compared it to. It's worth hunting down if, as Tom said back in '03, you're patient, dextrous and in need of something new.

What we said: "Perhaps what's missing is a little inventiveness beyond that initial spark of genius."

Skies of Arcadia Legends

• Developer: Overworks
• Release: 2003

Skies of Arcadia filled the same hole in the GameCube's line-up as it did in the Dreamcast's: the one shaped like an epic, modern-yet-traditional JRPG. And yet Skies of Arcadia is completely unique in that role. It's set in a bright and unexplored world, wide open to your pirate protagonist and his party, filled with floating islands to be discovered in your own airship. There's no over-serious, near-mute main character, no distressingly involved back-story, no taking itself very seriously at all, in fact. Skies of Arcadia is exuberant, likeable, funny and a bit camp, as well as deep and involving and incredibly long-lived. It was genuinely exciting to play - you put up with the random battles because you wanted to get back out into the airship and go exploring the next unknown world. Its story was a mix of swashbuckling and politics, taking you and your party to the end of the known world and back. The sense of significance in its story doesn't feel self-imposed, as is so often the case with JRPGs, but instead you feel like the world is your own, and the sense of urgency and excitement and adventure that involves you in the game is also your own, genuine, not orchestrated by laboured set-pieces and clunky epic dialogue.

What we said: "If you're looking for an enjoyable but fairly traditional RPG with a cracking storyline and likeable characters, Skies of Arcadia Legends comes about as highly recommended as any game can."

Star Fox Adventures

• Developer: Rare
• Release: 2002

Was this terrible? In retrospect, yes, probably. But what's so interesting about Star Fox Adventures is why it's not a great game. Everything about it says that it should be: superb developer, exciting new platform, incredible graphics, well-loved but little-known characters just waiting to be creatively fleshed-out, built on a Zelda template straight from Nintendo itself. It's so weird that this game ended up such a completely unimaginative, repetitive, oddly sterile epic adventure, with so much filler packing out its sumptuously rendered world. I remember, at the time, wondering how on earth this could have fallen so short of Rare's previous achievements, and nobody really seems to know. It's a definite curiosity piece, this - its weird and unique blandness is interesting enough to make it worth playing for a Cube historian.

What we said: "Acky wah blah di blah gah GENERAL SCALES!" That rather sums things up.

The Legend of Zelda: Four Swords Adventure

• Developer: Nintendo
• Release: 2004

This fantastic, inspired game is easily the most under-played and under-appreciated Zelda title ever. Why? Because you had to spend in the area of seven hundred pounds to play it, once you've taken into account the game, the four GBAs, GameCube, four special GBP 15 cables and television big enough and pretty enough to show you Four Swords in all its sumptuous 2D glory. As we've said before, Four Swords looks and plays like a series Best Of, melding superb, sharp Link to the Past graphics with gorgeous GameCube effects, and making the whole experience something to share with friends. If you're not a Zelda fan, it's probably not worth the bother getting all the equipment together four years later. If you are, oh my goodness do it now. You and three excitable friends will be switching between GBA screen and TV screen with synchronised Kraftwerk-esque head movements and bickering over the Fire Rod in no time.

What we said: "A genuine step forwards for multiplayer gaming, wrought from some of the best single-player game design ever put out to pasture."

Bloody Roar: Primal Fury

• Developer: 8ting
• Release: 2002

Ask a critic and they'll tell you that Bloody Roar was pretty average. Ask anyone starved for multiplayer action in the first few months of the GameCube's European release, and they'll tell you it was brilliant. Bloody Roar is a fully and unashamedly ridiculous beat-'em-up wherein every fighter can turn into a different animal for massive damage, and this particular instalment in the series was a GameCube exclusive. It's great because it actually looks and feels like you're hurting things, and because it's silly enough for everyone to play (although I'm told by people who are better at beat-'em-ups than I am that the fighting system has surprising depth). The fighters are big, heavy and violent, and the combat is just simple enough to allow both beginner button-mashers and practiced players to rip things apart with animal force. There are few more raucous, amusing and satisfying Cube multiplayer moments than transforming into a massive tiger and ripping someone's head off.

What we said: Not reviewed. What were they doing when the GameCube was released?

Bomberman Generations

• Developer: Hudson Soft
• Release: 2002

This rarely went back in its box over the course of the five years that my GameCube was on permanent standby under the telly, and is the only really superb Cube multiplayer game that didn't require half a grand's worth of Nintendo hardware to play. Unlike preceding Bombermans, the single-player wasn't rubbish either. Generations is one of the only modern Bomberman games to find the exact correct balance for multiplayer - no item is redundant, no game option is unalterable, and no Saturday night for a long time was complete without a good few matches on this. Not many GameCube owners seemed to have it, either, following the streak of poor N64 titles. It's well worth seeking out.

What we said: Never reviewed. Cocks.