Cult Classics: GameCube Comments by Keza MacDonald

I loved Harvest Moon, until I couldn't bear watering my vegetables one by one anymore. :(

Eternal Darkness is great, I think I even prefer it to Resi Evil 4.

Geist was one of my rentals from the other day, a really rather good game actually!

DK: Jungle Beat has to be one of the most underated GC games, IMHO its one of the best. I picked it up for $10 and it made the purchase of those damn Bongos for the frankly annoying Donky Konga suddenly worthwhile. Its notable that although the game was mostly ignored by the public, Nintendo clearly saw the quality when they unleashed its development team on Super Mario Galaxy.

I bought that harvest moon game (2nd hand) together with my Wii, but still haven't gotten round to play it once.

Hurrah for Geist. One of my favourite gamecube & adventure games.
What should be mentioned is that the first person shooting is considered bad because it's very, very easy.

Which I think is actually a good thing in an adventure game. Oh how I loathed adventure games where all of a sudden you'd be forced thrugh an action or stealth section as difficult as a game that is being sold on that premise.

Eternal Darkness features one of the scariest moments in videogaming history...

...Memory card formating scare.

Unfortunatly, I never saw to many of the low sanity hallucinations, as I was quite dillegent in keeping my stats reasonably full.

Chrystal Chronicles was a very nice game. A friend of mine had it and we played it once or twice. Shame it made playing together such a hassle though.

"The gamecube has no decent games" :-)

The ONE problem with eternal darkness (and it's a BIG one) -

UNSKIPPABLE OVER LONG CUTSCENES!

Every time you try to do the end of game bad guy (who is f-ing hard) you have to sit through a 10 minute long movie..

GAH!

I gave up - never did complete it

"...Jungle Beat actually makes you feel like a bloody great monkey..."
+1

Every single one of my DK:JB sessions has ended with body sweating, blood boiling and testosterone reaching critical heights :)

F-Zero GX was a terrific game, spent many nights with friends to beat those bloody Story Chapters (especially the infamous chapter 7). I actually finished all GP's on Master and the AX tracks definitely were a nice reward. One of the most underrated games of the last 5 years and it's a bloody crime that hardly anyone picked it up.

Harvest Moon: A Wondeful Life looked nice enough and started well, but the glaring flaws started to show really soon, and I ended up hating the bloody thing with a passion (and I never did manage to maltreat my poxy waste-of-space goat enough to kill it, the silly bastard thing).

Harvest Moon: Magical Melody is aces though and I'm still dipping back into it from time to time.

Amazing the difference a few piss-poor design decisions make to what are otherwise very similar games.

1080 Avalanche is an odd bird. Some great tracks, but so short, impressive avalanche mode that's barely used, and seems to have sucked in a lot of development effort, and very little in common with the zen-like calm of the original. But when it's good, it can be completely awesome.

Almost worth it just for the unlockable NES pad board, and the snowman's laconic quotes - "I think I landed on my dad".

Wow, shocked and ecstatically excited to see Giftpia make this list!

I wish that game would get a western re-release, just with subtitles. Leave all the original sound intact.

The irony with Giftpia is that it did get translated into English but never made it to release. It was shown at E3 to a very cool reception and Nintendo decided not to proceed with a Western release. A crying shame because it really is one of the most charming games ever made.

magical melody will be coming out on the wii the other day

Nice to see F-Zero GX and Ikaruga there... Two of the best game of the last generation but both incredibly difficult.

I returned to Eternal Darkness the other day. I've completed it twice before, and you'd think I'd be ready for the sanity effects, but...

...decided to take the first mission on without topping up my sanity. As soon as it was drained, I entered a room, got the "Please reconnect Gamecube Controller" sanity effect, and totally fell for it (possibly because I'd spent the day messing about with knackered old console hardware). Screaming and howling as whatshername stood there getting munched by the monsters, then *whoosh*... and I twigged what was going on.

Great, great game.

For everyone who doesnt yet know about Ikaruga:

Obs, very minor spoilers.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EGNSdcy-a...

This Cult Classics article is great! I would love to see one for Dreamcast, PS1 & 2, Xbox, hell... do 'em all! :)

I regret buying F-Zero. The way your race ended if you fell off a track was too punshining to be fun for me.

consignia + dermoth: The memory card one scared the crap out of me too. Also:

"Thankyou for playing episode 1 of Eternal Darkness. Look out for Episode 2 coming soon..."

"WHAT?!!!!!!!"

Me + the girlfiend. Hook, line, sinker, rod, copy of Angling Times.

The TV volume one also had her looking to see if she was sitting on the remote. I was too familiar with my TV's on screen display for that one though. :D

There'd better be some Odama luvvin in the third part or I'll cry. They will be silent, dignified man-tears, but tears none the less!

Eternal Darkness gave me a cold sweat.

1080, F-Zero, Jungle Beat, Eternal Darkness, Ikaruga are all legend. Reasonably priced on E-bay too, you could probably get 1080 for around the same price as the N64 version on Wii if you looked hard enough. Since Ikaruga is still around £20 and rumoured to be in development for X-box live, multiformatters might want to hold off. Get Jungle Beat though - it's one of those definitive gaming moments that will never be surpassed, like when you first played duck hunt.

Also waiting on Odama mention, proud owner of a copy. I'm guessing they'll also throw in Four Swords which was great. Geist was originally scheduled as an 8 player lan game, Nintendo reneged like the weasles they are. Never got a copy so I might look out for it now. It listed the developer as N-space, but I remember it as an in house Nintendo project. Anyone else think it came out from them or did Nintendo just have publishing rights like with Goldeneye?

Giftpia!! The game that no-one really knows a huge amount about other than it has possibly the greatest theme tune EVAR!!

especially now that the Wii will let you see it in sort-of-HD without your having to spend GBP 60 on the rare GameCube component cables.


Cube RGB cables are cheap as dirt, and as far as I know, better quality.

Ikaruga looks insane. I didn't think I liked these kind of games but I bought Gradius V and it has become one of my favorite PS2 games.

/wanders off to ebay to look for Ikaruga

What a bunch of awesome games, still got the majority of them, geist was great fun in multiplayer, playing as the ghost has its moments, definately needs a sequel. Jungle beat, f-zero, eternal darkness, ikaruga, all top tier games on the cube! 1080 was the better racing games, looked fantastic at the time as well!

@ macmurphy:

IIRC Geist was made in the same sort of setup with Nintendo as Eternal Darkness and Metroid Prime were.

And I could definatly go for a sequel. Not nearly enough first person adventure games. Maybe Free Radical is interested? They seem to be keen on pushing the boundries of their comfort zone.

Ahh, Ikaruga. Good memories, although I eventually chose to go hardcore on RE4 instead of this one.

Frolf! Ribbit King was ace. Hoorah.

At last, vindication for buying Ribbit King, now all I need to do is get around to playing it (looks at already large stack of titles waiting to be played)

these games are class
Frog Golf was completely barmy and I loved 1080 too.. The soundtrack rocked and from that I actually bought the Cauterize album!

Eternal Darkness is the f*cking best. It's the only GC game I've still kept as I love it too much.

The 'formating memory card' hallucination totally got me, I remember swearing very loudly.

Also, I once walked into a room to find I was surrounded by four zombies immediately. Assuming it was hallucination (similar ones had happened to me before) I happily let them munch me too death. Whoops!

The old double bluff.

Eternal Darkness was a little bit underdeveloped, from the technical POW, but its still one of the best games that I've played in the horror genre. Great story, fantastic atmosphere, and the madness mechanic is pure genius. Just try to stay always on the verge of getting mad, the game is much more funnier that way.

The irony with Giftpia is that it did get translated into English but never made it to release. It was shown at E3 to a very cool reception and Nintendo decided not to proceed with a Western release.

Whaaaaaat? Really? If true, I might just petition Nintendo for the next three months to get a release on Wii Ware.

Oh, and Jungle Beat is one of the best 2D platformers ever made.

What I read about Eternal Darkness sounded as if this was one of the very few games that actually is aware of being a game, in contrast to designers making a movie with gameplay in-between.

I so much want to play that. Would all Gamecube games play on a Wii, especially this one?

They all play on the Wii, so long as they're the same region. If not you'll need a Wii Freeloader from the Codejunkies website!

Geist wasn't great, but it was better than many places made out. I enjoyed it.

And F-Zero GX was the best racer of last gen and one of the greatest racers of all time. Consumed months of my life, especially the time trials against the world.

So what's next I wonder. There are almost 600 games in the West to choose from...

(and I should know, I own the complete US set!)

Thanks, Keza, then I just need to look for it.