It's challenging, too. Turns out that finding tiny whining spacecraft against a starfield backdrop is hard (let alone hitting the damned things!), but the tight controls and authentic feel of Factor 5's game make finally nailing that wily TIE worth the effort.
Other games have come close, but Rogue Leader is still the benchmark for flight-based Star Wars games on consoles. Given the chance, we'd jump on an HD re-release faster than a mynock on a power cable. Red Five standing by.
Had it been released now, Luigi's Mansion would arguably be lauded for the charming and affectionate genre parody it is and its short length would arguably be an asset in an era when we have more games than time to play them.
As a launch game for GameCube, though, it wasn't what gamers were expecting in 2002 after the genre-defining Super Mario 64 launched Nintendo's previous console.
It took a while to be appreciated after the initial bafflement that it wasn't a Mario platformer, but after a 3DS sequel (not to mention the HD remaster ) and the excellent Luigi's Mansion 3 on Switch, it's safe to say the original has since received the appropriate levels of love, and it still plays beautifully.
If there was a positive to Dreamcast's untimely demise, it was that other consoles benefited from Sega's misfortune. A port of the Dreamcast original, Skies of Arcadia Legends was made by Sega studio Overworks, a starry team of Sega veterans, and was billed as a 'director's cut' of the turn-based JRPG.
With minor improvements across the board, Skies of Arcadia made exploration a central part of the gameplay as opposed to other games in the genre and fans have been calling for a modern remaster of air pirate Vyse's adventures for a long time, although it's failed to materialise.
Until it does, the GameCube is the best way to revisit Arcadia.
While debate forever rages as to whether the N64 entry or its Sega-developed GameCube sequel is better, we can all agree that both games are rather special in their own right.
F-Zero GX 's story mode helps paint a picture of the 'F-universe' and those cutscenes featuring Captain Falcon and the gang sure add some pizzazz. The series also certainly never looked better than on GameCube.
The breakneck speed and brutal difficulty might put some people off, but racing doesn't get much purer than this, and seeing as this was the last full-blown retail entry from the franchise to come to a home console, this is still arguably the hottest take on F-Zero going. Track it down.
Often considered to be the weakest entry in the Prime trilogy, Metroid Prime 2: Echoes nevertheless boasts the same brand of explorative first-person action that made the first game such a success, although with an increased difficulty and lacklustre multiplayer mode which took the shine off it for some players.
We'd recommend playing it on Wii with the added bonus of pointer controls if the difficulty is an issue, but however you play, this sequel is still an incredibly good game.
The first home console Fire Emblem to be released in the West — and only the third to be localised — GameCube's Path of Radiance introduced us to Ike, leader of the Greil Mercenaries and rocker of a blue barnet.
The game was the first in the series to feature fully 3D graphics, and features (in our opinion ) the strongest story of any game in the series.
Ike would go on to join the fight in Super Smash Bros. Brawl and gain notoriety there before returning in the Wii sequel to this game, Radiant Dawn. Unfortunately, this luminary pair of home-console Emblems aren't too easy to find physically these days, with both of them still exclusive to their original hardware and fetching eye-watering prices on the secondhand market.
By modern standards, Path of Radiance is lacking somewhat when it comes to presentation, but how we'd love to be able to play it anew without having to crack out the 'Cube! Good news that it'll soon be easily accessible on Switch 2, then. We like Ike.
It's arguable that this series really came into its own in a portable context with the wonderful Animal Crossing: Wild World on Nintendo DS, but the N64 original nailed most of the systems first time out and this GameCube port of that Japan-only release introduced Animal Crossing 's pleasant real-time village antics to the west.
It's a series that you play a little bit every day and that's much more easily accomplished on a handheld system which you can whip out on the bus or take on your lunch break. It's hard to return to a village tied to a home console these days, but then again it's hard to return to any previous entry once you've become accustomed to the myriad quality-of-life improvements of the next.
We'll always have the memories, though, and this first taste of village life was sweet.
Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem is a brilliant psychological horror game that blends Resident Evil -style survival horror with Lovecraftian Old World magick and an era-hopping historical narrative to create something quite unique and only available on GameCube.
It may take you a while to get into its spellcasting and unusual mix of styles (and that may be the reason second-hand copies cost mere pennies for so many years), but once it gets under your skin it's a hard game to shake.
The fourth wall-breaking sanity effects always steal the column inches, but the ambitious, dread-soaked story deserves just as much recognition, and whether you're a hardcore horror aficionado or a novice that needs a walkthrough with the lights on, we recommend playing this any which way you can.
Some believe that your favourite Mario Kart game depends on which one you played first, or which you've played the most in multiplayer. This can lead to much contentious debate, but we have wonderful memories of Mario Kart: Double Dash!!
While not overflowing with new ideas, the racers were presented as gorgeous fully 3D models for the first time, the two-driver gimmick was extremely satisfying and introduced a new layer of strategy as you switched characters and juggled items, and it has some all-time great courses, including DK Mountain (ah, that little shortcut at the end!) and perennial favourite Baby Park, the hilariously hectic mini-loop.
It might lack a certain je ne sais quoi if you're devoted to other entries in the series, but this remains a chaotic karting classic in our book. We love it .
Removing the 30-day time limit that so irked players in the first game, Pikmin 2 expands on the original in every way, creating a larger adventure with more of everything you liked before, plus a host of extra modes (including a surprisingly addictive two-player component).
Wingman Louie joined Captain Olimar this time around and the game also introduced White and Purple Pikmin, expanding the puzzling possibilities and the options available to you as the diminutive spacemen and their plant-based charges ran around gardens fighting beasties and collecting tasty-looking fruit, discarded objects, and ship pieces.
Some players might miss the tight focus of the original, but this is an excellent sequel and absolutely worth digging up.
The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess took the series back to an art style closer to Ocarina of Time, albeit a little earthier and benefiting from the power of the 'Cube.
For many fans, it was the 'realistic' Zelda they'd been pining for after Nintendo took a left turn with The Wind Waker's cel-shading, and although it didn't quite strike all the right notes, it still features some breathtaking dungeons, memorably oddball characters, and a unique atmosphere.
Setting a precedent that Nintendo would later repeat with Breath of the Wild, Twilight Princess straddled generations, bookending the GameCube and launching the Wii with some added waggle and widescreen.
We'd recommend Wii U's HD remaster over this, but if you happen to have a copy of the (now very expensive) GameCube disc to hand, TP still delivers.
There's a reason that to this day Super Smash Bros. Melee has a dedicated hardcore following in the fighter community. It wasn't just one of the best multiplayer GameCube games, it's an all-time great across all platforms.
Fans will say it's tighter, faster, and requires more skill than other entries. They'll point to it being far more entertaining to watch than its successors, down to this faster pace. They'll point out its better balance. All compelling arguments for why this remains one of the most popular GameCube games of all time.
More broadly, though, it's a brilliant local multiplayer brawler that sanded the rough edges off the N64 original, added a metric ton of content, and — yes — feels the most balanced of all entries in the series before the roster ballooned.
Smash would continue to grow from here on out, but there's an elegance and purity to the Nintendo GameCube iteration that makes it worth revisiting if you're knee-deep in Ultimate and want to try a different flavour of superstar brawling.
'Ura Zelda' - an expanded 'Second Quest' version of The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time with remixed dungeon elements and other minor alterations - was planned for the ill-fated 64DD console, but thanks to that system's commercial failure, it got shelved.
Fortunately, GameCube owners would get the chance to play it on this special disc that was available as a pre-order bonus with The Wind Waker (and was actually packaged in that game's box in some regions).
There's not much to say beyond the fact that it gave fans the chance to play previously-unreleased Zelda content, so it's no wonder it ranks so highly in GameCube owners' memories.
A variation of the Master Quest was later made available in Grezzo's Ocarina port on 3DS , but this is the only way to play it with those classic N64 visuals (albeit with the resolution doubled on GameCube compared to the 64-bit original).
A promotional disc that was bundled with hardware or made available in a variety of ways to GameCube players across the globe, it's hard to argue with the quality of the games on offer here.
It contains the original Legend of Zelda and Zelda II for NES as well as the N64 entries Ocarina of Time and Majora's Mask.
The emulation of the latter two wasn't perfect, but as a means of playing past Zeldas on your shiny new GameCube for the pleasing entry price of $0, it was a very fine collection indeed.
Resident Evil 4 was a watershed moment for survival horror Capcom's series.
Shedding the genre-defining fixed-camera gameplay of the previous titles, it traded a little of that survival horror for a boatload of tight, tense action and not only revitalised the series, but set the blueprint for a decade of third-person actions games. So brilliant was RE4 that it's taken until relatively recently for the series to escape its shadow.
The game was designed with Nintendo's hardware in mind and despite going on to appear on practically every other home console produced since the GameCube, the original system is still one of the best places to play it, with the GameCube controller marrying the design perfectly (although the recent Switch version isn't bad, either).
The series has had its ups and downs like any other, but it's hard to argue that RE4 isn't the best it's ever been.
Given the 'Cel-da' controversy that blighted the game at its initial reveal, it's fitting that The Wind Waker has come to be so loved and admired over time.
Where other games of the era struggle under the weight of modern high-definition scrutiny, Toon Link's maiden voyage looks almost as fresh as the day we first set out from Outset Isle to discover what had happened to the Hyrule we once knew.
It's not without flaws (and the HD remake on Wii U addressed many of them) but thinking back, we don't dwell on the repetitive wind conducting, the infamous Triforce shard hunt, or Tingle's sea chart extortion. No, it's the rainbow colours of the tempestuous ocean, the breezy panpipes of Dragon Roost, and the salty self-reflection our voyages brought about that stick in the memory.
Beneath the surface, it's very much a continuation of the 3D Zelda template laid down in Ocarina of Time, but there's undeniable magic in The Wind Waker, and despite its imperfections, it's still one of our very favourites of the series.
Metroid Prime is the kind of game that people say 'shouldn't' have worked. Despite finding the 2D heart of both the Mario and Zelda franchises and transplanting them into 3D, somehow there was extreme scepticism that it could also be done with the Metroid series as well.
Perhaps it was because second-party studio Retro Studios was at the helm rather than Shigeru Miyamoto and his band of wizards at Nintendo HQ, but Retro managed to produce one of the finest games on the system, or indeed any system.
The design, extraordinary atmosphere and sense of exploration and progression of the 2D games all transfer incredibly well into a first-person shooter and while the Wii version might have added the IR pointer control scheme of Metroid Prime 3: Corruption , there's still something to be said for experiencing the original using the controller it was designed for.
With Metroid Prime 4 in development for Switch, now is a great time to rediscover the original and what made it so great — and with the sublime Metroid Prime Remastered now available, it's never been easier.
The power of GameCube enabled greater fidelity of its paper-based art style than the original, but otherwise Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door stuck closely to the original's blueprint.
It's a wonderfully colourful adventure packed with clever callbacks to the portly plumber's history and the same irreverent spirit which makes so many Mario RPGs refreshingly different from the mascot's platformers. Where other entries have dropped the ball in an area or two, Thousand-Year Door gets everything right; plot, writing, battles, presentation - the lot.
Prices for a GameCube disc have skyrocketed in recent years and given the quality, it's not hard to see why. Treasure your copy if you've got one, and perhaps lend it to a trusted friend who never visited the town of Rogueport.
And if you don't have a copy or a GameCube? Well, that's what the Switch version's for!
That wraps up our pick of the best GameCube games of all time!
Nintendo GameCube FAQ
Whew! Well done for reading this far! To finish things up we'll answer some of the most common questions our readers have about the Nintendo GameCube.
When was the GameCube console released?
Your own particular GameCube release date depended very much on which region of the world you lived in at the time.
Unfortunately, those of us in Europe had to wait almost eight months longer than those in Japan to get our hands on Nintendo's latest hardware!
Here's when the GameCube released in all three of the major gaming regions back in 2001 / 2002:
Japan: September 14th 2001
US: November 18th 2001
Europe: May 3rd 2002
How many GameCube games are there?
According to Wikipedia’s list of GameCube games , a total of 651 Nintendo GameCube games were released during the console’s entire lifespan.
There’s some variation in the number of releases between the Europe, Japan and US territories, but you'll find all GameCube games listed by region on that page.
What were the best multiplayer GameCube games?
The Nintendo GameCube was a fantastically portable system (it even had a little handle for easy transportation), and so it should come as no surprise to learn it was supported by some equally fantastic multiplayer games. Just pick it up, take it to your pal's house and play.
Here's our pick of the best multiplayer GameCube games that made it into this article. Just scroll up if you'd like more detail on each one - we’ve included the rankings to help you find them nice and quickly.
#49 - WarioWare, Inc: Mega Party Game$!
#30 - TimeSplitters Future Perfect
#27 - TimeSplitters 2
#16 - Mario Kart: Double Dash!!
#6 - Super Smash Bros. Melee
Are there any good four-player GameCube games?
Need a GameCube game to entertain four players in particular? These are the titles that we recommend for the largest multiplayer sessions supported by the console:
#49 - WarioWare, Inc: Mega Party Game$!
#27 - TimeSplitters 2
#16 - Mario Kart: Double Dash!!
#6 - Super Smash Bros. Melee
What are the best GameCube exclusive games?
If we're talking about the best GameCube exclusive games that only ever came out on this particular console, we'd pick the following from this collection:
#16 - Mario Kart: Double Dash!!
#14 - Animal Crossing
#12- F-Zero GX
#9 - Eternal Darkness
If, on the other hand, you're interested in GameCube games that were exclusive at the time, but then were also released on subsequent Nintendo consoles...
#1 - Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door
#2 - Metroid Prime
#3 - The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker
#5 - The Legend of Zelda: Collector's Edition
#6 - Super Smash Bros: Mele
In other words, the first five entries from our list of top GameCube games, minus Resident Evil! That's the power of Nintendo's game design magic for you.
Where can you buy GameCube games?
If you’ve dusted off your old Nintendo GameCube and you’re looking for some original boxed games, your best bet is to head to an online marketplace like eBay or Facebook Marketplace.
There you’ll find thriving communities of collectors, but just be ready to pay a premium for some of the rarer or the most popular GameCube games.
Alternatively you can try your local gaming stores for second-hand stock, although this is increasingly difficult to come by as time goes by.
How big are GameCube games?
As you’d expect, the size of an individual Nintendo GameCube game varies greatly between individual titles.
In terms of physical media capacity though, Nintendo chose to release its GameCube console games using the mini-DVD technology.
That puts a maximum file size limit of 1.4 Gigabytes on any given game.
How can I add a game to this article?
Disagree with the ranking? Well, you can do something about it by searching for your favourite games in the box below and voting for them instead!
Note. In order for games to become eligible, they need a minimum of 50 User Ratings in total. Don't forget that you can browse all GameCube games in our massive database too
Until then, check out our Hardware Classics feature on the GameCube for a brief history of the console and then crack out the Wavebirds and enjoy some of the beauties on this list.