The Cube! (Nintendo GameCube)

Member Name: hackersuprciao

Product:	Nintendo GameCube
Date:	14/02/08 (180 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Nintendo titles are excellent.

Disadvantages: Not as many multiplatform games.

Overview
The Gamecube was created by games giant Nintendo and released to the public in 2002, the Nintendo Gamecube has been a sucess appealing to both the younger and older generations with remakes of it classic titles such as Mario, Zelda and Super Smash Brothers. I think the classic titles brought back to life sold me the GameCube but it also dissapointed me as some of the titles did not live up to expectations.

Looks and Design
The Nintendo Gamecube is not a bad looking console available in three different colours, purple, black or platinum. The console is in your chosen colour with a black circular insert in the lid which reads Nintendo Gamecube which is customisable, there are only three buttons open, power and reset, the buttons are in your chosen colour apart from the power button which is grey. The Nintendo logo is clearly visable engraved into the top of the lid and to help us take it everywhere we have a nice carry handle on the back. The amazing feature is the size of the game disks with a disk measuring 8cm in diameter. Overall better looking than the Xbox but the PlayStation 2 is definately the best looking.

Connectivity and Accessories
The Nintendo Gamecube features four controller ports so there is no need to buy a multitap if you have more than one friend, it also features two memory card slots which are easily acessable at the front of the console. On the back we have a power in socket and two connections for your TV the Analog Audio Video Output or the Digital Audio Video Output depending on which lead you have. The console also has three ports on its rear a Hi Speed port and two serial ports these are for online gaming but the Cube sadly never made it online so these will remain mostly unused. Accessories are easily available and come in all forms from memory cards, controllers, GBA link cable, steering wheels to bongo drums, yes you did read correctly bongos are used in the latest Nintendo exclusive Donkey Kong game! You can also purchase yourself an official wireless controller (Nintendo Wavebird) too which Xbox and PS2 dont offer.

Games Range
There is a large choice of games, you have the multi platform games which are for example Fifa 2005 but it is the Nintendo Exclusive titles you have to watch out for, only on these games is the full potential of the Gamecube unleashed and there are some truly awesome titles, Super Mario Sunshine, Mario Kart Double Dash and Resident Evil 4 to name just a few. Though the selection is big when you try and find yourself a racing game if you have Mario Kart you'll probably be out of luck.

Prices and Value For Money
Nintendo have cut the prices of the console significantly since release date, originally the Gamecube would set you back £200 (I paid £130) but now the console can be yours for around £15 on eBay (a bargain!) If you were thinking about an Xbox before the price cuts my advice would be the Xbox definately but as it is Nintendos machine just wins on account of price. Accessories are reasonably priced with an official controller costing £20 (£30 wireless) and a 4MB official memory card cosing £9.99 (those are the RRPs and you will probably find them much cheaper now).

So In The Box ?
In The box you get a Shiny Nintendo Gamecube, an official Nintendo Controller, AV lead, AV block and a power lead. You need two more things to get started with your cube a memory card and a game you can get packs which include all these in a good video game store such as Game.

Tech Specs (most people skip this techies read on)
The Cube is the second most powerful console on the market with:
MPU("Microprocessor Unit") Custom IBM Power PC "Gekko"
Manufacturing Process 0.18 micron IBM Copper Wire Technology
Clock Frequency 485 MHz
CPU Capacity 1125 Dmips (Dhrystone 2.1)
Internal Data Precision 32-bit Integer & 64-bit Floating-point
External Bus 1.3GB/second peak bandwidth (32-bit address space, 64-bit data bus 162 MHz clock)
Internal Cache L1: Instruction 32KB, Data 32KB (8 way}, L2: 256KB (2 way)

System LSI Custom ATI/Nintendo "Flipper"
Manufacturing Process 0.18 micron NEC Embedded DRAM Process
Clock Frequency 162 MHz
Embedded Frame Buffer Approx. 2MB, Sustainable Latency : 6.2ns (1T-SRAM)
Embedded Texture Cache Approx. 1MB, Sustainable Latency : 6.2ns (1T-SRAM)
Texture Read Bandwidth 10.4GB/second (Peak)
Main Memory Bandwidth 2.6GB/second (Peak)
Pixel Depth 24-bit Colour, 24-bit Z Buffer
Image Processing Functions Fog, Subpixel Anti-aliasing, 8 Hardware Lights, Alpha Blending, Virtual Texture Design, Multi-texturing, Bump Mapping, Environment Mapping, MIP Mapping, Bilinear Filtering, Trilinear Filtering, Anisotropic Filtering, Real-time Hardware Texture Decompression (S3TC), Real-time Decompression of Display List, HW 3-line Deflickering filter

The following sound related functions are all incorporated into the System LSI
Sound Processor Custom Macronix 16-bit DSP
Instruction Memory 8KB RAM + 8KB ROM
Data Memory 8KB RAM + 4KB ROM
Clock Frequency 81 MHz
Performance 64 simultaneous channels, ADPCM encoding
Sampling Frequency 48KHz

System Floating-point Arithmetic Capability 10.5 GFLOPS (Peak) (MPU, Geometry Engine, HW Lighting Total)
Real-world polygon 6 million to 12 million polygons/second (Peak) (Assuming actual game conditions with complex models, fully textured, fully lit, etc.)
System Memory 40MB
Main Memory 24 MB MoSys 1T-SRAM, Approx 10ns Sustainable Latency
A-Memory 16MB (81MHz DRAM)
Disc Drive CAV (Constant Angular Velocity) System
Average Access Time 128ms
Data Transfer Speed 16Mbps to 25Mbps
Media 3 inch NINTENDO GAMECUBE Disc based on Matsushita's Optical Disc Technology, approx 1.5GB Capacity
Input/Output Controller Port x4, Memory Card Slot x2, Analogue AV Output x1, Digital AV Output x1, High-Speed Serial Port x2, High-speed Parallel Port x1
Power Supply AC Adapter DC12V x 3.25A
Main Unit Dimensions 11.4cm (H) x 15cm (W) x 16cm ( D)

Phew!! Most people will find that hard to understand but those who do I dare you not to be impressed.

Customer Care
Nintendo supply the Gamecube with the standard 1 year warranty, I have never had any problems with mine and never heard of any problems either. Nintendo also do a wonderful scheme called the Stars program where you earn Nintendo Stars for each product you buy and when you buy enough you can reward yourself with Nintendo keyrings,hats, T-shirts or even a brand new game.

The Gamecube is a small quality console available for a budget price, my favourite game for the console has to be Super Smash Brothers the single player is fantastic and the muliplayer is phenomenal you cant not like this game. I also really like the customisable lid insert I have a glowing one ! A fun console for all the family and all the family friends for that matter!! Although I do really like this console and it does cry out to be loved by all the Cube is still the third best of the last generation of consoles, with the small games library really letting it down. It really is a very strong third, thanks to the awesome Nintendo titles, almost knocking Xbox down but not much will budge the behemoth that is the Halo franchise. Now that the Wii is out (if you can find one) my advice would be to get one of those as it is fully compatible with all Gamecube games, if your budget is lower and you cant afford the Wii definitely pick up a Cube. 4/5

Summary: A great console, if you missed out on the cube pick one up!