Hello, everyone.  I see you’ve come to read the Duck’s very first post on United We Game.  Well, for my first post, I thought I would start by discussing the pros and cons of a very nice generation of consoles, the time period that gave us Nintendo’s GameCube, Sony’s un-creatively named PlayStation 2, and Microsoft’s first video game console, the XBox.  Each console has good and bad qualities, and I felt like going over them, in three parts, with one post per console.

Just so you know, my favorite of all three is my darling PS2.  It is a wonderful console, and I’ve spent countless hours playing its delightful games, while it watched me gleefully with its little green and blue lights.  So you may think parts of these posts are a bit biased towards the PS2, but I assure you, dear readers, they are not.  Because my viewpoints aren’t opinions.  They’re facts.  Facts can’t be biased.

First off, I’m discussing the Cube.  Being a Nintendo fan, this was my first console of that generation, and I did enjoy it greatly.  I love Nintendo games.  They are fun, and they are duck-friendly.  You see, the duck prefers games with minimal swearing, booze, or other naughty stuff, so Nintendo games are pretty good in that respect.  So the GameCube allowed me to continue having years of good, clean fun with Nintendo’s newest (newest at the time) set of games.  I had such great times with the Cube, I even bought a second one when my first started to act up (I think it didn’t fare as well during the last move as it did the previous ones, poor dear).  And so, I shall summarize what makes me happy and what makes me sad about the GameCube.

Pros

• It’s so cute.  It’s a little cube!  Are you kidding me?  How adorable is that?  It may be the cutest machine in the universe!
• It has some great games.  Like I said, I like Nintendo games, and the Cube didn’t disappoint.  You get such classics as “Mario”, “The Legend of Zelda”, “Star Fox”, and “Metroid”, sequels to newer series, such as a new “Super Smash Bros.” and a new “Paper Mario”, and even a new series, “Pikmin”.  Fun, guilt-free times.
• It was also the most affordable console.
• It’s pretty quiet.  Except, after that move.  When it would occasionally make snapping noises….  What in the Mushroom Kingdom was going on in there?
• Since you can open the disk thingy with it off, I feel safe leaving disks in.  With consoles with disk trays, I feel like I should take the disk out whenever I’m done playing (what if something happens to it; you’ll never get the disk out, it’s trapped for eternity, eternity, I say!), but not with the Cube.  And I like keeping my disks in pristine condition, so the less handling, the better.
• It’s pretty well-made.  Like I said, it worked quite nicely for years before that move.
• And this doesn’t really matter, but I can find a good use for that handle.  It’s good for carrying the Cube…to another location to make room for a PS2.

Cons

• The GameCube has the worst graphics of the three.  I pretty much thought the graphics looked fine, but it had to be mentioned.
• Tiny memory cards.  I had to have tons of memory cards to fit all my files, then, I lose files because I forget which cards had what.  Just “Animal Crossing” alone wouldn’t even fit on the smaller size memory cards.  I tried.  And I failed.  Stupid tiny memory cards!
• Tiny disks.  I didn’t have an issue, but I hear that damage to these disks that wouldn’t affect a regular disk will hurt these because they’re so little.  Darn baby disks!
• Did anyone else have trouble getting the disks out of the case?  I did.  You have to practically fold the disk in half to get it out.
• And it’s weird to use.  You can’t switch disks when it’s on.  You can’t get to the options, like to change the time or manage your memory cards, unless you do things like turn it on with no disk in or hold a button down while it’s turning on.  If you want to do such things later on, you can’t.  You just can’t.

So that’s my thoughts on the GameCube.  A pretty fun console that’s great for people who like the classic Nintendo games and games that are a bit more family-friendly.  Some may be bothered by the graphics being the worst of the three consoles, but that’s not what bothered me.  What bothered me was that it was strange to use.  Why must it be so hard to change time?  Why?  I just wanted to change the date in “Animal Crossing” because I’m too impatient to wait for Christmas the old-fashioned way!  Is that so wrong?

Part two will discuss the hefty, but powerful XBox.  Stay tuned.

The DuckCube