Platform: Nintendo GameCube

Nintendo had once patented and developed a prototype motion controller for the GameCube; this controller went so far into development that game developer Factor 5 experimented with them for potential use in their launch titles.

The Brazilian release of the Nintendo GameCube has special code that patches a crash glitch that can only be found in NBA Courtside 2002. This patch does not exist in any other version of the hardware.

The GameCube is unusual for its era in that early models carried an output socket for digital audio and video at a time when competing consoles exclusively outputted analog signals. The digital out port was used by the GameCube's component and D-Terminal cables to support both higher audiovisual fidelity and the ability to play games using progressive scan rather than traditional interlaced video. Because the format used, component video, is still analog, the cables required a proprietary digital-to-analog converter chip, meaning that third parties were unable to manufacture their own versions.

The component and D-Terminal cables were sold exclusively through Nintendo's website before being quickly discontinued due to a lack of demand, as few commercial televisions at the time supported component video; additionally, later models of the GameCube remove the digital out port entirely. However, the cables' high demand on secondhand markets resulted in fans creating adapters for the digital out port, using the raw signal to make the console compatible with digital HDMI cables.

At Spaceworld 2000 during the unveiling of the GameCube, there were five models that came from backstage each one holding a uniquely colored GameCube, the hot pink color never seeing an official release. Each GameCube featured a small window cut into the jewel (black circular disk atop the GameCube) allowing for the player to see the disk and disk tray. These prototypes do not actually function as they were made just to be shown at Spaceworld 2000.

At Spaceworld 2000, Shigeru Miyamoto showed off a prototype for the GameCube controller. The most glaring difference between this controller and the final design are the color and shape of three buttons:
• The A button being blue, like the Z button rather than green, but keeping it's circular shape.
• The B button being green, like the final A button rather than red, and bean shaped like the X and Y buttons rather than circular.
• The start button being red like the final B button as well as being bulbous and protruding as compared to the final start button being flat, grey, and made of rubber.

An accompanying tech demo used assets from Luigi's Mansion including one of the basic ghosts which reacted differently depending on what button was used:
• Using the A, B, X, and Y buttons made it spit out the corresponding letter
• Stretching for the L button and squishing for the R button
• Emitting a slower version of Boo's laugh for the Z button
• Emitting a normal ghost noise for the control stick
• Changing orientation for the C-stick
• Emitting sounds similar to that of Pikmin for any of the D-pad directions

The inclusion of the Pikmin noises makes sense as Luigi's Mansion contained a trailer for Pikmin upon release.

Although the GameCube Controller itself was well beloved by fans, head of Platinum Games (and former Capcom dev) Atsushi Inaba said it was actually quite frustrating to develop for for devs like him and he wasn't a big fan of it and it's layout and design.


Inaba, however still praised the system's software and hardware, saying that it was very easy to develop games for the console itself.

At Spaceworld 2000, it was announced that a version of the Gamecube Memory Card that would have expandable memory via an SD card would be released. However, this never came to fruition.

A similar device that allowed for the plugging in of an SD card into memory card slot was released alongside Dobutsu no Mori e+ in Japan, however this was only to take screenshots and did not allow for the saving of game data.

The original slogan for the GameCube, "The Nintendo Difference," was meant to distinguish Nintendo from its competitors as an entertainment company first and foremost.

According to former Nintendo president Hiroshi Yamauchi, the GameCube's cheap price was the result of Nintendo's perception that gamers cared only about the games themselves, and that game consoles were just pieces of hardware that were required to play the games. As a result, Nintendo decided to make the GameCube's price significantly lower than the competition's in order to make the former's titles more accessible to consumers.

The GameCube was the first Nintendo console to lack a launch title that starred Mario as the protagonist.

The GameCube's BIOS menu has slow, seemingly random ambient background music. This background music, when sped up to nineteen times its normal speed, is actually the startup jingle for the Famicom Disk System, a Famicom add-on released by Nintendo in 1986.

Similarly, the background theme for the console's network configuration menu (only accessible via the game Homeland) is a slowed-down version of the theme for the Famicom Disk Writer, a kiosk used to distribute Famicom Disk System titles at a reduced price by writing them directly to the add-on's floppy disks.

There exists a GameCube Service Disk that was used by the Nintendo World Class Service to test and diagnose problems with the console and peripherals. It is assumed that once Nintendo retired the World Class Service, they took back the disks and destroyed them, which would explain why there are very few ever found.

This disk contains a fair amount of unused content, from unused sounds and unused test pictures to stereoscopic 3D test pictures.

The Panasonic Q was a version of the Nintendo GameCube that had the ability to play DVDs, audio CDs, and MP3s. The console ceased production after two years and only sold 100,000 units. One cause of the console's failure was that it was actually cheaper to buy a GameCube and a DVD Player separately.

Before it was released, a tech demo for the Gamecube was developed which featured an explorable version of Princess Peach's castle. This demo was later leaked online.

There is a microscopic image of a Dolphin within a computer chip inside the GameCube, referencing the GameCube's codename during development.

There are two hidden alternate start-up sounds which can play after you power-up the console. The first one features a squeaking sound and a child's laughter, which plays when you have a controller in port 1 with the "Z" button hold down as you power-up. The second is of Japanese instruments played which activates via the same method but instead with four controllers.

The soft reflections used for the GameCube's startup animation and menu are the same texture file that Ocarina of Time and Majora's Mask use for shiny items.

The working title for the GameCube was the Dolphin. As a result, many games from the GameCube era reference this, such as Super Mario Sunshine's setting being in the shape of a dolphin (the island is also named Isle Delfino; "Delfino" is Italian for "Dolphin") and Captain Olimar's ship in Pikmin being named the S.S. Dolphin. The GPU of the machine is named "Flipper", another reference to the console's codename.

The GameCube controller's design possibly originated from a prototype controller for the Virtual Boy. They were both purple, and had a similar shape.

A tech demo developed by Shigeru Miyamoto over a number of years titled "Mario 128" was shown off at Nintendo's Spaceworld 2000 trade show and was designed to showcase the GameCube's ability to utilize multiple AIs. The demo featured 128 Marios dismantling a pseudo-8 bit Mario sprite composed of several blocks by picking up and carrying them away. This project had a tumultuous development cycle with little to no details coming out over the years until 2007 when he revealed at a GDC Keynote that some parts of the project were utilized in two games he produced in the 2000s. The general concept and some other parts of Mario 128 were developed into Pikmin after Miyamoto asked his team to create an entirely new game that would be nothing like a sequel to a Mario game. As for the second game, the ability to warp the terrain seen in the tech demo as well as "different sizes of spherical items" influenced the free-form gravity and ability to walk around entire planets in Super Mario Galaxy.