The GameCube console from 2001 is quite possibly one of Nintendo’s most underrated game systems of all-time. The GameCube console had games like The Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker, Mario Kart: Double Dash and Metroid Prime which were among some of the best games of the early 2000’s. Unfortunately, the GameCube console was considered to be a commercial failure mainly because it got crushed in terms of sales against the PlayStation 2 and Xbox. The GameCube console sold over 21 million units worldwide while the PlayStation 2 reached more than 155 million in sales. The original Xbox console sold slightly more than GameCube reaching around 24 million copies in sales. However, there are many who believe that bad timing was one the main things that hurt the success of the GameCube console during the early to mid 2000’s.

Some believe that GameCube could have shined more during the 90’s than it did during the 2000’s. GameCube was clearly a more superior game system than the N64 and seeing it released in ’96-’97 would have been a bigger deal opposed to 2001. In 1998, Sega had released the 128-bit Dreamcast console and despite it being more superior than PS1 and N64 in just about every way imaginable it ended up selling less than both systems. GameCube would have the potential to destroy the PS1 in sales but PlayStation had more popular third party video games during the mid to late 90’s. The PS1 featured the likes of Final Fantasy VII, Resident Evil 2, Tomb Raider, Tekken 3 along with high profile arcade fighting games produced by Capcom. Similar to Sega’s Dreamcast console Nintendo’s 64-bit console did not have enough high profile third-party titles to compete with Sony’s 32-bit PS1.