Nintendo GameCube Marks 25th Anniversary, Once Dismissed as a Flop Now Recalled Fondly

The Nintendo GameCube is marking its 25th anniversary this week, according to a retrospective published by The Guardian's culture desk. The console was first released in Japan in September 2001, with a European launch following in May 2002, the article notes.

The Guardian piece, written from a first-person perspective by a writer who described the GameCube as the first console they ever purchased with their own money, recounts saving up money and vouchers to pre-order the machine at a branch of the electronics retailer Currys as a 13-year-old.

According to the article, the GameCube sold significantly fewer units than its contemporaries, the Xbox and the PlayStation 2, despite being described in the piece as a "surprisingly powerful" machine. The Guardian writer notes that had it not been for the commercial struggles of the later Wii U console—which reportedly led to the first unprofitable periods in Nintendo's history as a games company around 2012—the GameCube would likely be remembered as Nintendo's biggest commercial failure aside from the 1995 Virtual Boy.

The article describes the console's distinctive design, characterized as a "squat, colourful" purple cube, alongside its unusual controller. That controller was built around a large green A button and smaller analogue sticks, which the writer says gave the device "a hint of Fisher-Price about it."

Despite its commercial underperformance relative to rivals at the time, the Guardian piece states the GameCube is now looked back on with what it calls "misty-eyed reverence" by those who owned or played it, a shift the article contrasts with the console's original hype as a potential threat to the PlayStation and its subsequent characterization as a market flop.

The Guardian article is a first-person retrospective rather than a straight news report, and does not cite independent sales figures or company statements beyond the writer's own account and characterizations.