Nintendo GameCube

Nintendo GameCube

Nintendo GameCube Specifications

CPU: IBM "Gekko" PowerPC
CPU Speed: 487 MHz
CPU Level-1 Cache: 64 KB
CPU Level-2 Cache: 256 KB
CPU Arithmetic Logic Unit: 32-bit
CPU Floating-point Unit: 64-bit
System RAM: 43 MB
GPU: ATI "Flipper" GPU
GPU Speed: 8.6 GFLOPS
GPU Memory: 3MB (2MB Z-Buffer + 1 MB texture cache)
GPU Resolutions: 640×480 interlaced (480i) @ 60Hz | 640×480 Progressive Scan (480p) @ 60 Hz (NTSC Only) | 768×576 interlaced (576i) @ 50 Hz (PAL Only)

The Nintendo Gamecube marked Nintendo’s 5th entry into the home Video game console market. It was Nintendo’s first move into using optical media as its primary storage. However instead of using the standard full-sized disc’s, Nintendo chose to use miniDVD, excluding the console from being able to play standard DVD’s or audio CD’s due to the smaller size. This made it lack a feature its two competitors of the time, the Xbox and the Playstation 2, and that is simply to also be able to act as a DVD player. While a simple feature, it did add an extra element to a consumers decision on what console to buy, especially during a period where DVD players were costly.

The system had the ability to expand its hardware functionality via a port on the bottom of the console. This would only ever end up being used for the consoles Broardband Adapter which gave the console its network functionality, and also the Game Boy Player which allowed Game Boy games to be played on the TV with a GameCube controller.

While the GameCube was praised for having an extensive library of high-quality games, the console failed to gain the sales that its main competitors did. At the end of its lifetime, the Game Cube managed to make 21.74 million sales, falling short by 3 million sales to Microsofts newcomer, the Xbox. However both fell painfully short of the Playstation 2’s 155 million sales.

Despite the GameCube’s shortfall in sales, it still left a legacy thanks to its high quality games.

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Nintendo GameCube Emulators

Dolphin Thumbnail

Dolphin successfully emulates almost every single game available on both the Nintendo Game Cube and the Nintendo Wii. It is the only Nintendo Wii emulator available and the best GameCube emulator one will be able to find, proving successful where many others fell flat.

GCube Thumbnail

GCube is an open source emulator for the GameCube, unlike most emulators it didn’t strive to be compatible with all games. But instead it was developed with the main purpose of running at least one commercial game fully emulated.

Dolwin Thumbnail

Dolwin is the first ever GameCube emulator to be publicly released. it is open source and written in C. However sadly development stalled in 2005 and not a single new release has been seen since.

Gekko Thumbnail

Gekko is an experimental emulator written purely in C/C++ to try and achieve the best portability possible. The original core was originally written for x86 Windows systems and managed to boot many commercial games .

SuperGCube Thumbnail

SuperGCube is the continuation of the open source emulator GCube. However it made a decision to make it solely a windows project. The decision to continue the source code of GCube was made due to the original code base.

WhineCube Thumbnail

WhineCube was part of a string of GameCube emulators for Windows written in C++. Though in comparison to its competitors, the emulator was never able to run any commercial games. However it could still run some.

GCEmu Thumbnail

GCEmu is a extremely incomplete emulator that was more designed as a proof of concept to show what is actually achievable. Its aim was to show that emulation of the GameCube.