Similar to me tbh. I got the GameCube was I was in Elementary school. My parents had gotten all the consoles, but it wasn't exactly like that. My older brother monopolized the PS2, and we had to beg him to play it or play it when he was at work. The Xbox and GameCube were in my room because my older brother didn't care much about those systems outside of Smash for GameCube and Fable for Xbox. Though my personal story for the GameCube was that it didn't have a lot of must have games that I wanted to keep. My library was:

• Smash
• Mario Sunshine
• Mario Kart
• Metroid Prime
• Luigi's Mansion
• Zelda Wind Waker
• Zelda Twilight Princess
• Mario Party 5 and 6
• Star Fox Adventure and Assault
• Sonic Mega Collection
• Spongebob the Movie game

Honestly, it was a solid library according to most people here. However, the games just didn't really appeal to me that much. I had a cousin who couldn't really afford a lot of games, so I'd just give him the games I didn't like. I gave away Mario Sunshine, Mario Kart, Metroid Prime, Luigi's Mansion, Starfox Adventure, and Zelda Wind Waker. Luckily for him, he had the Smash Bros. Bundle. This left me with Spongebob, Sonic Mega Collection, Starfox Assault, Twilight Princess (that I mostly played on the Wii), Smash, and both Mario Party games. Safe to say, the GameCube wasn't my favorite console.

I never understood the people who would worship it on forums years later. Maybe it was their first Nintendo console? Maybe it because they really hated the Wii, so GameCube was extra propped up? I just don't understand how the GameCube was better than the NES, SNES, Switch, etc. Like that console was full of droughts and have minimum third party support.

The U.S. wasn't ready for a purple console. And that controller was... different...

AMAZING library though.

Reputation

During the Sega Genesis vs Nintendo SNES console wars, Sega basically put out propaganda that Nintendo was the console for kids while Sega was the console for adults. Sound familiar? It's smart propaganda on Sega's end that is still stuck with Nintendo to this day. Sony pretty much just did the same thing Sega did in that regard. However, Nintendo didn't make it hard for them either. They released a purple system that looked like a lunch box. They released Zelda Wind Waker, instead of a game with an art style similar to Zelda Ocarina of Time or Majora's Mask.

Third Party

Sure Nintendo had some great first party games, and decent third party support, but it wasn't much compared to Sony's third party support. Sure Nintendo fans remember having fun with Metal Gear Solid, Soul Calibur, Resident Evil, Eternal Darkness, Beyond Good and Evil, etc. However, they forget that the GameCube missed out on: GTA, Final Fantasy, Kingdom Hearts, Tekken, sports games, Devil May Cry, Mortal Kombat, plus more games and backwards compatibility with the PS1. Sure people can have rose tinted glasses about the GameCube all they want. Sure the GameCube had Mario Kart, Mario Sunshine, Metroid, Pikman, Star Fox, etc. However, more people wanted to play Grand Theft Auto and Madden, as opposed to play Star Fox and Metroid. More people wanted to play Final Fantasy and Gran Turismo than Super Smash Bros and Mario Sunshine. That was the actual reality. But the rose tinted glasses that this forum has is cute.

The GC dumped on the PS2 in performance and even matched or exceeded the Xbox in some aspects. The weakest was the PS2 by far.

Not as many third parties were committed, didn't play DVDs, discs held about 1.5GB game data instead of 8GB so this seemed limited, and the controller didn't look like it would work well with a lot of games.

There was a lot of momentum behind PS and not so much behind N64, so gamers thought that the GameCube would not get as many games during the whole generation with soured developer relationships Nintendo had over proprietary formats and not letting developers use low level code in their games. These were huge complaints developers had with N64.