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In celebration of the GameCube’s 20th anniversary, we’re republishing this reader-ranked list of the Top 50 GameCube games ever.
Remember, this is a dynamic list that can still be affected by Nintendo Life User Ratings even now. If you’ve yet to rate your GameCube collection on our games database, simply search for your chosen game via the search bar below (or click on the star ratings via the list itself) and get rating to have your say and influence the order below. Enjoy!
The Nintendo GameCube launched in Japan in September 2001 and a couple of months later in North America. Unlucky Europeans wouldn’t get their hands on it until the following year, but the wait was worth it for one of the best-looking video game consoles of all time. The NGC (sorry, GCN) is a beautiful, compact piece of kit.
Eschewing the jack-of-all-trades direction of its contemporaries, the console concentrated on doing just one thing well: playing games. Its striking indigo colour, big chunky ‘A’ button, cute little discs and infamous carry handle ultimately worked against it in an era of sleek, all-in-one multimedia machines, but it was a powerful little box of tricks that played host to a fabulous library of games. This was the last time Nintendo put itself in direct competition with Sony and Microsoft in pure spec terms before changing tack with the Wii.
We asked Nintendo Life readers to rate their favourite GameCube games, and the result is the list of 50 games you see below. The ranking is formed entirely from each game’s user rating in the Nintendo Life Games database. However, unlike other static lists, this one constantly evolve to reflect ratings from Nintendo Life users, so you can still participate.
We’ve done this for a growing number of Nintendo consoles, so if you’re interested be sure to check out the best Nintendo DS games, the best 3DS games, the best Game Boy games and even the 50 best Switch games — each and every one a fluid list that can change over time. Try rating the games in them, too!
If there’s a game bubbling under the top 50 that you’d like to rate, feel free to find it using the search tool below and give it a score out of 10. That’s enough waffling, though. Let’s dive in and see your picks for the all-time 50 best GameCube games…
Note. In order for games to become eligible, they need a minimum of 50 User Ratings in total.
Publisher: Activision / Developer: Neversoft
Giving you the ability to create a custom skater and go on a narrative journey, for the first time in the series you don’t play as Tony or any of his pro friends. Instead, you meet him on your own journey, impress him with your skills, and get involved in the THUG life.
It all sounds a bit old hat nowadays — every sports game has a ‘rise-and-fall’ story tacked on these days — but Tony Hawk’s Underground was exciting back in 2003 and we look back on it fondly.
Publisher: Nintendo / Developer: Nintendo EAD
A collaborative adventure in the Legend of Zelda mould was something many had dreamt of for a long time, and the Four Swords part of the GBA port of A Link to the Past made the jump to the TV screen here in Four Swords Adventures. There’s a single player game in there, but the real meat of the experience involved each of the four players hooking their own GBA to the GameCube with the requisite link cable and controlling their Link in a screen-hopping adventure long before Nintendo went asymmetric with the Wii U gamepad. It’s a brilliant co-op Zelda game hampered only by the fact that it required so much kit to function.
Publisher: Nintendo / Developer: Nintendo EAD
Mario’s run of hit after hit after hit is rather incredible when you think about it. The expectations each new mainline entry creates are astronomically high and we’re continually gobsmacked that, more often than not, those expectations are surpassed.
Available to play on Switch if you have a copy of Super Mario 3D All-Stars, Super Mario Sunshine is a great game with some undeniably unpolished elements when compared to the rest of the plumber’s stellar oeuvre. No, as a direct sequel to Super Mario 64, it is not the genre defining classic everyone was hoping for, but with the passing of time we can look back and appreciate the many things that Sunshine does superbly. The joyful, bouncing Isle Delfino theme alone makes it worth revisiting, and if you’ve skipped this entry in Mario’s back catalogue, don’t let its reputation put you off. The Sunshine Defence Force may be overcompensating a tad — it’s certainly got its flaws — but at the very least, it’s still very good in our eyes.
Publisher: Nintendo / Developer: Next Level Games
Proving that there’s little that the portly plumber can’t turn his hand (or foot) to, Next Level Games’ Mario Smash Football (or Super Mario Strikers in the US) offered solid soccer action in a colourful package with Mushroom Kingdom residents brightening up the beautiful game and adding a little flair and excitement to proceedings – no nil-nil draws here! The polar opposite of the simulation-style that ‘proper’ football games were going for, this is a fast-paced five-a-side frenzy that did well enough to get a similarly satisfying sequel on Wii.
Publisher: Nintendo / Developer: Nintendo R&D1
A remake of the GBA game WarioWare, Inc: Mega Microgames!, this home console version added multiplayer to an already brilliantly unhinged concept of microgames that mashes together tiny tasks with a time limit to produce a hectic, hilarious experience. It feels like R&D1 were unchained and allowed to vent their bursting creativity, channelling it into a game without being encumbered by the usual Nintendo ‘polish’ everyone expects, which gives this game (and the wider series) a remarkable and unique feeling of freshness.
Publisher: Nintendo / Developer: skip
Chibi-Robo is difficult to describe because it doesn’t neatly fit into any particular category or genre. It’s part-platformer, part-adventure, part-amiable helper game which mixes in elements of Toy Story as you work to help the Sanderson family solve their everyday problems. The eponymous altruistic robot himself is a charming little chap who’s starred in several games since this GameCube introduction (and he also has the most devastatingly cute amiibo imaginable), but he’s never quite reached the heights of his debut here. Lovely.
Publisher: Capcom / Developer: Capcom
Squeezing RE2 onto N64 required a Herculean effort, but this is essentially a port of the PlayStation version with very little in the way of bells and whistles. The greatness of the base game shines, of course, and arguably makes it worthy of placement here, but anyone expecting a REmake-style overhaul was left sorely disappointed by this barebones version. Resident Evil 2 is a great game, though, however threadbare the presentation.
Publisher: Nintendo / Developer: Namco
The first and only sequel to Baten Kaitos: Eternal Wings and the Lost Ocean, this offered some gameplay tweaks but didn’t fundamentally alter the base experience from the first game. It was released in 2006 when the ailing GameCube was on the very last of its last legs and the developers made the decision not to move it to the upcoming Wii. With hindsight, that was an obvious error – Baten Kaitos Origins would have inevitably got more attention than it found at the time on the purple box. Interestingly, it was one of the first games localised by 8-4, the localisation house who would go on to work with Nintendo on the excellent Fire Emblem: Awakening and Xenoblade Chronicles X, among others.
Publisher: Atari / Developer: Treasure
The GameCube version of this masterpiece shooter will cost you an arm and a leg these days, and with the Switch version of Ikaruga offering extra benefits like portability and the ability to twist your Switch and play in Tate mode, it’s hard to justify splashing so much cash just to get it on a cute GameCube disc. If you still own it from back in the day, though, Treasure’s seminal shmup is indeed something to treasure forever. Still hard as nails, though.
Publisher: Capcom / Developer: Capcom
Coming from Clover Studio, Capcom’s starry development team behind the likes of Okami and God Hand with members who would go on to form PlatinumGames, this sequel continues movie-obsessed Joe’s story as he becomes a superhero and teams up with his girlfriend, Sexy Silvia, to defend humanity from an alien invasion. Very similar to the first game, it oozes style and energy from every pore, although it lacks a co-op multiplayer mode you might expect from a sequel. Still a belter, though.
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