If you’ve never heard of Eternal Darkness: Sanity’s Requiem, I don’t blame you. A rerelease announcement during a Nintendo Direct would break the internet. It’s a finely crafted adventure filled with memorable characters, an excellent story, and ironclad RPG mechanics. The RPG wasn’t just a high point for Paper Mario, but for Nintendo as a whole. When it comes to older titles, fans are especially ardent about the GameCube’s Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door. The Switch’s Paper Mario: The Origami King was a charming enough adventure, but it didn’t necessarily reach the creative heights of previous entries. Since then, the series has fallen off as it tries to court a more casual market. Its early games were tight RPGs that provided real challenge for players who wanted a tougher Mario experience. The Paper Mario series is a sore spot for fans. Considering how many Wii U games have come to Switch, is it too much to ask that the Wind Waker remaster sails over next? Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door In fact, you can’t play most 3D Zelda games on the system outside of Skyward Sword and Breath of the Wild.

Nintendo gave the game a slick HD remaster in the Wii U days, adding some second-screen menu controls, but you can’t play it on Switch. Luckily, the peanut gallery was wrong, as Wind Waker is still the best-looking Zelda game out there. Its cel-shaded art style caused an uproar as gamers demanded realistic graphics. When it was first announced, Wind Waker was instantly polarizing. How are we supposed to catch up on the trilogy if there’s no way to play it easily? The Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker And that’s especially weird considering that Metroid Prime 4 will release on the console eventually. While Metroid Prime and its sequels were ported to the Wii (and available on the Wii U), none of those games are available on Switch. Not only that, it revolutionized the first-person shooter genre by creating a game that was more focused on platforming and investigation. It effectively resurrected Metroid from the dead after it skipped the N64 and turned it into one of Nintendo’s flagship franchises. Metroid Prime is one of the most important Nintendo games of the past 20 years. The GameCube library goes so deep that it would need a double-stuffed Classic edition of the Switch to contain them all. I’ve put together a list of eight games that should come to Nintendo Switch, but know that this is only scratching the surface. But the total lack of GameCube love feels especially glaring considering how many standout gems the system produced. The system is lacking tons of classic games, from the Game Boy collection to the N64 libraries. It’s a bizarre decision, though one that’s par for the course for Nintendo. The best we’ve gotten so far is Super Mario Sunshine, which is no longer available on the system due to Super Mario 3D All-Stars‘ baffling timed sales window. So why is it impossible to play so many of those hits today? Try to find your favorite GameCube game on Switch today and you’ll come up short. It was a creative outpouring during what would become regarded as a golden era for gaming. Its library is a collection of big hits and hidden gems from Nintendo and third-party studios.

What makes the GameCube particularly memorable is its strong library of games. It helped modernize 3D games, taking us out of the awkward transitional era we got with the Nintendo 64 and PlayStation.

It may not have been a sales monster like the Wii or Switch, but it’s a console that stirs fond memories of the early 2000s for myself and many others. It feels like only yesterday that I was lugging the purple cube around to my friends’ houses by its handle. The Nintendo GameCube is now 20 years old.

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