Your Gaming System of Choice

I spend most of my time now gaming on PC, I haven't ventured into the console arena for some time, although that may change if I decide to buy a Switch 2. Whilst "PC" would technically be my answer to this prompt I'm going to assume people actually want me to pick a console so I'm going with the Nintendo GameCube.

The console itself was not released in Europe until May 2002, it was released just 3 days before my 14th birthday and became the first console I ever got on launch day as my parents had asked me what I wanted and it was close enough to pick it up right away. I chose black for mine rather than the purple hue that became a Nintendo hallmark for a time. I also opted to swap out Luigi's Mansion for Sonic Adventure 2 Battle as I didn't think at the time I would actually like Luigi's Mansion, but knew I would like Sonic Adventure 2 having previously played it on Dreamcast.

The GameCube is probably the console I owned the most games for over the years, it came along at a perfect time, at a reasonable price point, and with the UK economy on the rise after the previous decade of stagnation. It's also one of the few "old" consoles that I have held onto, the rest I have parted ways with over the years. I didn't see the sense of keeping them in a box in a cupboard never to be played so other people got use out of them.

My personal highlights from the GameCube era include Super Mario Sunshine, Super Smash Bros Melee, The Simpsons Road Rage, and a few others that I didn't end up playing until many years later when I was at University and owned a Wii which was basically a squashed down GameCube repackaged that had backward compatibility with GameCube titles.

I would eventually come to own Luigi's Mansion and fell in love with that series of games, I'm still glad I made the choice to swap it for Sonic though because I got more gameplay out of it in the long run. This however proved to be a recurring theme, as some of the most influential titles for the platform like Paper Mario were games I didn't come to play until many years later long after the GameCube had been retired. This was a lesson I also learned with the original Xbox which we will get to eventually in this list.