Nintendo Okie

I’ve been thinking about the GameCube a lot lately.  Maybe y’all have noticed the articles we have been posting all week.  I wanted to use Con-soul Searching to talk about what the GameCube means to me.  I have already wrote about five games that I really love and later today I will share some of my favorite GameCube memories.  After all of that, what is left to talk about?  I could write about my favorite GameCube games as I focused earlier on five games that need more recognition, but that would just be the same article with different games.  Plus, everybody would probably get mad at me for finding a way to highlight ten games instead of just five.  As I tried to think of ideas, my mind kept going back to my last few years of college.  That’s when I discovered the GameCube and the majority of my favorite games for it.  Then I realized most of the consoles I own are like a time capsule for different parts of my life.

As I said, the GameCube always takes me back to college; specifically my time at Oklahoma State University.  My college education is actually spread over two different universities; OSU and Northern Oklahoma College (NOC).  I attended OSU from 2003 to 2006.  I knew the GameCube existed but never had the money to buy one.  College is expensive after all.  OSU is where I met Will and Peter; subsequently Josh as well.  A lot of how we became friends is from playing GameCube games together.  The Cube also represented an escape from all the stress of being a college student.  Shooting things in Resident Evil 4 or Metroid Prime was a great stress relief.  A lot of my time at OSU was centered around that little, game box.

Just as the Cube acts as a photo book of my later college life, the PlayStation does the same for my high school years.  I got my PSX during my freshman year.  It was the first new system I had received since my Game Boy.  Those years were a time of redefinition for my hobby.  You can imagine how behind the times I felt with only a NES, Game Boy and SNES in my room; and I had only acquired the SNES a month before the PlayStation.  There we so many great games I had missed out on; Final Fantasy, Super Mario World, anything on the Genesis that wasn’t Sonic 1 or 2.  It was my chance to dive into the big games of the time.  And so I did; Metal Gear Solid, Twisted Metal, Tekken, Crash Bandicoot, Need For Speed.  Not only did the PlayStation allow me to enjoy new video games again but it was also a catalyst for meeting my closest friends of the time.  One friendship started because of a Twisted Metal 2 code.

I remember carrying my Game Boy with me all the time in middle school.  I would play it while riding the bus and during lunch break.  One of those bus rides is where I loaned my copy of Metroid II out for a GB copy of Killer Instinct.  I didn’t get the game back till four years later by the way.  The first time I broke 500,000 points in Kirby’s Pinball Land was in the school gym.  I was so excited I jumped up and started dancing in front of everybody.  Needless to say they didn’t understand why I was so happy.

So many memories have come flooding back as I have been writing this article.  All thanks to Nintendo’s GameCube.  I owe a lot to the Cube, if nothing else then for one fact alone.  The GameCube is the console that made me realize I can own more than one system.  All my life I was subjected to the console wars in which I had to pick a system to side with.  It sounds silly now but it had been programmed into my brain since I was a child.  I bought a PS2 so I was left to feel like the GameCube was off limits.  After I started playing the Cube so much, I started to want one.  Then one day is just hit me.  I didn’t have to pick one side over the other, I could buy whatever I want.  Thanks to that revelation I don’t have to miss out on console exclusives because of some non-existent, trench warfare.

Who would have thought a whole life of playing games was actually a way to bookmark the years?  I guess I shouldn’t be surprised.  They call them console generations for a reason.  It’s kind of cool to think about video games maturing and growing right alongside me.  Little moments like these remind me how important video games are to me; not only as a hobby but also in how I define myself.  I suppose some would call me a nerd for saying that but I know anyone taking the time to read this article probably has some similar feelings.