The GameCube Archives

Star Fox: Assault U.S. Release Date: February 14, 2005 The GameCube Archives Score: 7.5/10 Star Fox's 2002 GameCube debut, Star Fox Adventures , received considerable flak for being called "Star Fox," and not containing a plethora of space battles. Indeed, the game is not a third-person spacecraft shooter, but a streamlined, on-foot 3-D adventure game, with several brief, tacked on space-shooter segments. On the grounds that a Star Fox game is supposed to contain...not a whole lot of ground, Star Fox Adventures is a great failure. On the grounds of Star Fox Adventures simply being a video game, it is pretty good. No matter to the masses, though... Star Fox Adventures was predominately dismissed as not a real Star Fox game (fair enough, unless one considers the game's protagonist is Star Fox), and a Zelda knock-off (fair enough, if one considers the only criteria for "Zelda knock-off" as a 3rd person game not called Zelda, where you do stuff). Fans of ...

Star Fox Adventures U.S. Release Date: September 23, 2002 The GameCube Archives Score: 8.0/10 I remember telling someone in the late 90's, "I'll take Nintendo and Rare over Sony and Squaresoft." I said this from a place of deep, Nintendo-fan pain, as I tried to console myself for the fact that the company who had  once made so many treasured games for Nintendo was then working exclusively for Sony. The only relief from this pain was the fact that Rare, a video game developer who seemed to pump out awesome titles such as Goldeneye and Banjo Kazooie like clockwork, was exclusive to Nintendo. And then, in the strange new world of post 9/11, they weren't. Nintendo sold Rare to Microsoft. Star Fox Adventures would be Rare's first game for the Nintendo GameCube...and their last game for Nintendo. Who needs development studios, anyway, amirite? And yet, shockingly, this isn't the only controversy surrounding Star Fox Adventures . The game actually b...

Animal Crossing U.S. Release Date: September 15, 2002 The GameCube Archives Score: 9.2/10.0 When I decided to dedicate a blog to GameCube reviews, and to refocus my retro gaming more on this poor square system I have long neglected, it was easy to decide which game I would tackle first--the one I was still playing. Admittedly, before last year, I hadn't touched Animal Crossing since 2003. My town data from that original file was long ago mysteriously erased, presumably by my sister's now ex-stepsons.  However, my son's Animal Crossing curiosity was recently piqued by Super Smash Bros. for Wii U, which features a character from Animal Crossing as an available fighter, as well as a game stage focused on the Animal Crossing world.  Eventually, I responded to his "What's Animal Crossing?" queries by dusting off my poor, forgotten GameCube, and popping in the old Animal Crossing miniDVD. More than a year later, we are still playing it. Animal Crossing is the ...

As far as inanimate objects go, there aren't many things I love more than video games. I'll never forget being woken up from a childhood nap early one afternoon by the bloops and bleeps of my father's Atari 2600. I knew as soon as I saw him taking out the colorful bricks of Breakout that I had found my thing. As the 2600 waned, I asked for a Nintendo, saved my money a few years later for a Super Nintendo, bought my cousin's recently released Nintendo 64 a few years after that. While I remained loyal to Nintendo, I vastly enjoyed Sega's output (I've got all their systems but the Saturn), and even enjoyed some Playstation. I waited in line on November 17th, 2001, til midnight at the Siegen Lane Wal-Mart, to buy the new Nintendo GameCube on release night (I also went on a ten-mile hike and saw Monsters, Inc. in the theater earlier that day--it was an all-time great one!). However, something strange happened to me during the George W Bush administration--for a shor...