Nintendo Okie

It’s GameCube Week here at Nintendo Okie so the staff is celebrating the life of that system. I’m here today to talk about some of my favorite memories of the GameCube. There are so many different things that I remember about that system, and it actually holds a special place in my life because of the events surrounding it. I’ll talk about some of my favorite games for the system in another article, this one is just to specifically tell you all about some things that happened while I owned the GameCube. I think you’ll find that most of my memories of that system revolve around my family in someway.

I actually didn’t buy a GameCube on launch day. It wasn’t until just after Christmas that I actually was able to get one. I can remember going to Toys ‘R Us with my wife to pick it up. We’d been married just over 9 months at that time and she was 8 months pregnant with our youngest daughter. I bought a black system and picked up a copy of Luigi’s Mansion and Rogue Squadron II: Rogue Leader, both of which are fantastic games that I still play to this day.

I took the system home and hooked it up to the TV in our bedroom, which sat on a table next to the bed and immediately popped in Luigi’s Mansion. Little did I know what was to come for me and my history with that game. I took my time playing through it, playing only an hour or so a day. A few days after picking it up was January 7th, 2002. I was sitting in the room, late that evening playing Luigi’s Mansion, but shut it off to watch a little bit of Monday Night RAW. I went to sleep, but my wife was downstairs with her mom and grandmother. I would be awakened a few hours later to the news that we were having a baby. So I remember those days and Luigi’s Mansion very fondly. I’m sure that’s partly why I hold such a special place for that game, but it also was a great game that was highly underrated.

The next year, Christmas 2003, was the year I got Mario Kart: Double Dash from my grandfather as a Christmas present. He also bought me what would become my favorite video game controller of all time, the Wavebird. I can remember opening the package and popping it in. I put some fresh batteries in the Wavebird and began my trek through those 16 new tracks. This also was the real beginning to the time I would spend playing games with my kids. It was the first real game we had that they could play along and feel like they were accomplishing something. My oldest daughter and I got really good at coordinating our movements on the karts to take out the other racers. That year really started the tradition in our family of Mario Kart marathons, which continue to this day, only the game has changed.

Fast forward one more year to 2004 and the release of a couple of games that I have fond memories of. The first was Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door. This was the first game in the Mario RPG series that I played, and fell in love with the franchise instantly. I’ve gone back since to play them all, but TTYD is still my favorite. This memory involves my parents sending me the game for Christmas that year. They were living in Florida at the time and weren’t able to make it to Oklahoma for the holidays, so they sent everyone’s presents to our house. They arrived a week early with this and a copy of Madden NFL 2005, which I’ll talk about in a few minutes. They gave us strict instructions to not open anything until Christmas Day, but you know that didn’t work. I popped open that game and played through the whole game in about four days when I wrapped the game up and put it under the Christmas tree.

The last memory I want to talk about deals with my oldest son (my third child), though he doesn’t remember any of this. It was around that time he was still a baby and we’d have to get up in the middle of the night to give him a bottle and put him back to bed. Well, it generally took between 30 minutes and an hour to do that (or at least when I did it). So I would put Madden in the GameCube, grab the controller and sit it next to me while I gave him a bottle. When he finished I would put him up on my shoulder and grab the Wavebird while he was going back to sleep and play through a game of Madden with him while we were sitting in the rocking chair. I managed to get through a number of seasons doing this every night with him.

So there are just a few of my most fond memories of the GameCube. It’s a system that holds a special place in my life, no matter how it performed commercially or critically. I really like the GameCube a lot. It’s one of my favorite systems and I wouldn’t trade any of these experiences for anything. It was a system that started a lot of fond memories and traditions for my family and has been there since the beginning of our little family.

Now you’ve heard some of my favorite memories so why don’t you tell us some of yours? Send your memories of the GameCube or tell us about some of your favorite games for the system. You can email them to gamecube10th@nintendo-okie.com. We’re going to feature all of your thoughts and comments in an article at the end of the week.