The GameCube may not have been as successful asNintendohad hoped, but it still managed to host more than a few of the greatest titles ever. Remakes of games likeThe Wind Waker,Metroid Prime,Luigi’s Mansion, and morehave managed to share the system’s understated legacy with subsequent generations of players, but there are so many more that are slowly being lost to time.
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It is, of course, easy to forget a game that had all the makings of a smash hit but just didn’t quite hit the mark, or that players loved but for whatever reason never received another entry. It’s easy to imagine that some of these games might be looked at differently if they got the remake treatment that all-time greats usually do…
10The Legend of Zelda: Four Swords Adventures
The Legend of Zelda: Four Swords Adventuresis an odd entry in Nintendo’s crown jewel franchise. The top-down co-op adventure is a sequel to a mini-game from theGame Boy Advance portofA Link to the Past. That’s a strange origin story for any game, let alone one in the Zelda franchise.
The game is in fact just as fun as it sounds and so is getting to see theA Link to the Pastart style through a GameCube graphic lens. The only issue is that it uses the Game Boy Advance link cable, meaning you need four link cables and four Game Boy Advances to enjoy it as intended. A Switch remake might be able to remedy those issues so this otherwise awesome game can be appreciated by today’s fans.
9Geist: Worthy Of A Second Glance
Endeavors in genre-bending are always going to be considered ambitious and that’s because it’s pretty easy to miss the mark and wind up with something underwhelming. That was more or less the fate of n-Space’sGeist,released in 2005.
This part FPS, part puzzle-solving, part action-adventure game functioned on a pretty fun and creative mechanic: possession. Players control the disembodied soul of bioweapons expert John Raimi, hopping in and out of enemies, animals, and even inanimate objects on their journey to reconnect with Raimi’s corporeal form.Geistwas daring enough to try and reimagine the FPS and give players a deeper experience while doing so. The result did not quite reach the heights n-Space envisioned for it, but an HD remake just might.
8Star Fox Adventures: A Brave Attempt That Crashed And Burned
TheStar Foxfranchise has yet to provide fans with a truly worthy follow-up toStar Fox 64,a disappointing trend that began early in the GameCube era withStar Fox Adventures.The idea of letting Fox out of the cockpit and sending him out on aZelda-like adventure was a bold one that could have really broadened the horizons of the franchise, but clunky controls and repetitive gameplay ultimately left fans flat.
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It’s easy to imagine a world where a game like this could be a ton of fun, so why not clean up those controls in a remake?
7Viewtiful Joe: Weird, Fun, And Tragically Forgotten
It’s fairly shocking thatViewtiful Joehasn’t found its way into some kind of remake by now. Capcom’s mayhem-packed yet razor-sharp beat ‘em up offered GameCube owners a captivating new character and an intriguing new world brought to life with some of the coolest cel-shaded graphics in the system’s history.
But whileViewtiful Joemay have been considered a winner by both fans and critics, there was one considerable flaw: it was hard. Very hard. Like, throw your GameCube in a swimming pool and weep while it sinks to the bottom of the deep end hard. A remake might offer older gamers a chance at redemption and newer ones a serious challenge. Plus, Joe would e the perfectSuper Smash Bros.addition.
6Cubivore: Survival Of The Fittest
Once in a good whilea game concept is so quirky and unusualthat it leaves players with a number of questions (and maybe even concerns) about the minds from which it was born.Cubivore: Survival of the Fittestis one of those games.
Players take control of a geometrically-simple little critter that must fight, eat, and mate its way to the top of the food chain.Cubivoregot plenty of things right and was loved enough to have become one of the hardest GameCube entries to track down but there wasn’t quite enough there to really pique the interest of the masses. An HD remake might inspire a change of heart, though, and at the very least reduce the cost of those crazy pricey original copies.
5Kirby Air Ride
Many fans absolutely lovedKirby Air Ridewhen it was released in 2003, so why would Nintendo just leave it on the shelf for all these years? Perhaps they feel likeMario Kartis plenty of kart racer for one company and another one would be overkill? If so, they were wrong. The world can always usemore kart racers.
The breakneck speed and jubilant pandemonium ofKirby Air Ridemixed with the simplicity of its controls (players didn’t even have to accelerate!) made it almosttoofun, yet at times these very same things could make it utterly frustrating. Regardless, fans would no doubt gobble up a remake in a heartbeat.
4P.N. 03: Guns And Grooving
A shooter crossed with a dancing game? Actually, at a time whenDance Dance Revolutionwas peaking in popularity, this concept honestly didn’t sound as strange as it does now in the handsof a company like Capcomit had a chance at being a massive hit.
P.N. 03was definitely not a massive hit, but it didn’t go totally unappreciated, and some fans quite enjoyed the dancing-while-doing-battle mechanics. With today’s motion controls this one could probably win over a lot more hearts than it did back in 2003.
3Eternal Darkness: Sanity’s Requiem
It’s safe to say thatEternal Darkness: Sanity’s Requiemis a certified GameCube classic and therefore doesn’t necessarily fall under the category of “flawed” but it can also be said that, much like many other games that are around a few decades old, its visuals haven’t aged quite as gracefully as, say,The Wind Waker.
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That’s typically the catch when a game goes for realism over stylized graphics, but the good news is that a simple HD remake could be all this masterpiece needs to reclaim its former glory.
2Custom Robo: The Franchise That Should Have Been
Thisexciting action RPGwas one of five titles under theCustom Roboname and the first to find its way to North American shores.Custom Robo’s gameplaywas centered around holosseums: virtual arenas in which customizable robots battled it out, earning players new weapons and parts to upgrade their machine fighters with.
The customization aspect was bold, but it didn’t quite deliver all that it promised. In today’s world of potentially-perpetual free updates, it’s easy to see how a remake (or maybe even a new entry) on its word and gives players a boundless supply of reasons to keep battling.
1Odama: Probably Even Weirder Than You Imagine
Everybody loves a good voice-controlled pinball/real-time strategy crossover set in feudal Japan, right?
Okay, so maybe the concept was a little avant-garde for a 2006 audience, but maybe today’s gamers have refined their palates enough to take in whatever it is thatOdamawas trying to deliver back then. Reviewers didn’t know what to make of it at the time, but most didn’t hate it, and many players found it compelling in spite of its unforgiving difficulty and the wonkiness of the GameCube Microphone mechanics. An HD remake might be able to hone it into the weirdo masterpiece it almost was.
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