I'm kind of big into hosting local multiplayer games. It never felt like it was easy enough to play them even as a kid, with all the stuff and people you need. I quickly realized early in university that desperately asking anyone, please, to bring their own controller and some games was usually a fool's errand. I mean, no one else even had a Nintendo DS with Contra 4 to co-op it. What's the point of it all?
So I've done some... practical... collecting over time.
Of course, I've completed my Mario Party collection. Super Mario Party is neat and all, but I mean there's literally 15+ other games full of fresh zany minigame goodness.
Oh yeah, what's that in the corner? Mario Party-e? I picked this up bundled with an e-reader a few years ago, in great shape. To be honest, it's not full of much depth and the e-reader is kind of a silly dud of a mechanic, but it's all about the novelty! I mean, it lets you play Waluigi's Reign.
But let's not stop there. Mario Party Advance is also maligned as a kind of lame Mario Party entry, without a real 4-player board game mode. But, in fact, Mario Party Advance was apparently packaged with a physical game board. You access a mode called "Bonus Board" from the main menu and then you use the Game Boy Advance to play pseudo minigames and roll the dice. Again, it's a neat novelty, it's pretty much a depthless dice-rolling game, but well...
Being the madman I am, I printed a copy off online and laminated it:
Being even madder, I play this in person using a Game Boy Player, with four people sharing a controller. Yes, this happened in real life.
On that note, unfortunately not my pics, but I also often host Mario Party 7 with its team based 8-player mode. Crazy to think there's only one 8-player Mario Party! I always make sure to hook up the GameCube microphone for maximum "wtf" from guests.
Of course, 8-player Mario Party pairs really well with 8-player Mario Kart (Double Dash). It's a shame this is the only GameCube LAN game worth the extra effort, and the only Mario Kart with 4-player splitscreen + LAN!
I get a lot of use out of my GameCubes. I mean, you can't really play 4-player Donkey Konga without four bongo drums. Not what's pictured here, but 4 people clapping out the Pokemon Theme Song is a decent goof.
Of course, we all know about Nintendo's weird GCN/GBA connectivity. No doubt I've got the cable and a GBA for Pac-Man Vs.
But really the grand kahuna of GameCube multiplayer is Zelda Four Swords Adventure right? I mean, I've got all I need for that. It's almost old news.
Of course, there's a lot more there. I mean, hasn't everyone looked at some multiplayer Game Boy Advance game and thought "how the heck do they expect me to play this game? I'd need to find four people who all have GBAs, a copy of every game, link cables, a whole wazoo of things." So really, what's the point of being adult if I didn't have four GBAs? Now I just reach into my bag of GBA carts and I'm living the dream. Like, have you played 4-player Kuru Kuru Kururin? F-Zero GX is cool and all, but have you played 4-player F-Zero Climax? Have you played the 4-player co-op metroidvania, Kirby and the Amazing Mirror? It's so rad. Blows my mind sometimes I need to grab this stuff all myself and no one is ever ready to just get down and play DK: King of Swing.
But I thought, why stop there? If I can make GBA games work, why not DS, or 3DS games? Like how rad would it be to play Zelda: Tri-Force Heroes or 8-player Steel Diver: Sub Wars in real life? And how would I be able to play those 3DS Mario Parties? I mean, the 3DSs were a bit expensive, but scrounging around for them over the last few years through used listings, it wasn't exactly impossible.
I mean, this is cool and all, I've hosted some riveting games of 8-player Diddy Kong Racing DS and Brain Age now, but it kind of sucks you can't hook a DS up to a TV like you can through the Game Boy Player. Unless uh, you send your 3DS to Japan to get modded. Now I can host DS games for spectators?? This is uh, definitely not extravagantly impractical. I mean though, have you lived unless you've spectated a Rocket Slime match on the big screen?
I mean, with all this setup, everyone's seen this hypothetical right? 4 GameCubes, Four Swords? Well, I could do that with my four player Game Boy games as well, eh? Just recently I picked up a 4K TV when I finally jumped into modern gaming, years late, and got obsessed with the idea that a 4K TV is four 1080p quadrants. There are boxes to do this sort of thing, right?
Well yeah uh, turns out there are. And now I'm playing four player Game Boy Advance games, splitscreen through GameCubes, output through a digital-out Carby convertor, on homebrew Game Boy Player software. And it's beautiful, lag-free, pixel perfect. I'm almost tearing up.
Oh yeah. That's actually only two GameCubes plugged in there, but in the future I'm thinking I could use this for some 8-player Mario Kart 8, 8-player Luigi's Mansion 3, 4-player Mario Maker 2 races, and 16-player (!?!) Halo through some Xbox setups (still considering the trade-off of quality/cost with Xbox One vs. 360 🤔, and we'll have to see how next-gen shakes out). But of course, this will take some more time if I can ever coordinate it with anyone else or accumulate it, lol. And really it would be done more justice on a bigger TV, haha.
Admittedly, it's a bit absurd at this point, but I mean, I could vacation to Paris or buy a car - or I could be the only one in the world to host splitscreen Kirby and the Amazing Mirror games on a single TV with spectators. Seems like an obvious choice, to be honest. Definitely not just trying to rationalize lol.
In a way this is just the tip of the iceberg, I could post some more stupid pics of way too many game controllers, but to dial it down, here's just a picture of people playing Let's Tap on the Wii, the game where I bring four tissue boxes, you put the Wii remote on the tissue box, and you then control the game by tapping the box. It's a riot.
So I've done some... practical... collecting over time.
Of course, I've completed my Mario Party collection. Super Mario Party is neat and all, but I mean there's literally 15+ other games full of fresh zany minigame goodness.
Oh yeah, what's that in the corner? Mario Party-e? I picked this up bundled with an e-reader a few years ago, in great shape. To be honest, it's not full of much depth and the e-reader is kind of a silly dud of a mechanic, but it's all about the novelty! I mean, it lets you play Waluigi's Reign.
But let's not stop there. Mario Party Advance is also maligned as a kind of lame Mario Party entry, without a real 4-player board game mode. But, in fact, Mario Party Advance was apparently packaged with a physical game board. You access a mode called "Bonus Board" from the main menu and then you use the Game Boy Advance to play pseudo minigames and roll the dice. Again, it's a neat novelty, it's pretty much a depthless dice-rolling game, but well...
Being the madman I am, I printed a copy off online and laminated it:
Being even madder, I play this in person using a Game Boy Player, with four people sharing a controller. Yes, this happened in real life.
On that note, unfortunately not my pics, but I also often host Mario Party 7 with its team based 8-player mode. Crazy to think there's only one 8-player Mario Party! I always make sure to hook up the GameCube microphone for maximum "wtf" from guests.
Of course, 8-player Mario Party pairs really well with 8-player Mario Kart (Double Dash). It's a shame this is the only GameCube LAN game worth the extra effort, and the only Mario Kart with 4-player splitscreen + LAN!
I get a lot of use out of my GameCubes. I mean, you can't really play 4-player Donkey Konga without four bongo drums. Not what's pictured here, but 4 people clapping out the Pokemon Theme Song is a decent goof.
Of course, we all know about Nintendo's weird GCN/GBA connectivity. No doubt I've got the cable and a GBA for Pac-Man Vs.
But really the grand kahuna of GameCube multiplayer is Zelda Four Swords Adventure right? I mean, I've got all I need for that. It's almost old news.
Of course, there's a lot more there. I mean, hasn't everyone looked at some multiplayer Game Boy Advance game and thought "how the heck do they expect me to play this game? I'd need to find four people who all have GBAs, a copy of every game, link cables, a whole wazoo of things." So really, what's the point of being adult if I didn't have four GBAs? Now I just reach into my bag of GBA carts and I'm living the dream. Like, have you played 4-player Kuru Kuru Kururin? F-Zero GX is cool and all, but have you played 4-player F-Zero Climax? Have you played the 4-player co-op metroidvania, Kirby and the Amazing Mirror? It's so rad. Blows my mind sometimes I need to grab this stuff all myself and no one is ever ready to just get down and play DK: King of Swing.
But I thought, why stop there? If I can make GBA games work, why not DS, or 3DS games? Like how rad would it be to play Zelda: Tri-Force Heroes or 8-player Steel Diver: Sub Wars in real life? And how would I be able to play those 3DS Mario Parties? I mean, the 3DSs were a bit expensive, but scrounging around for them over the last few years through used listings, it wasn't exactly impossible.
I mean, this is cool and all, I've hosted some riveting games of 8-player Diddy Kong Racing DS and Brain Age now, but it kind of sucks you can't hook a DS up to a TV like you can through the Game Boy Player. Unless uh, you send your 3DS to Japan to get modded. Now I can host DS games for spectators?? This is uh, definitely not extravagantly impractical. I mean though, have you lived unless you've spectated a Rocket Slime match on the big screen?
I mean, with all this setup, everyone's seen this hypothetical right? 4 GameCubes, Four Swords? Well, I could do that with my four player Game Boy games as well, eh? Just recently I picked up a 4K TV when I finally jumped into modern gaming, years late, and got obsessed with the idea that a 4K TV is four 1080p quadrants. There are boxes to do this sort of thing, right?
Well yeah uh, turns out there are. And now I'm playing four player Game Boy Advance games, splitscreen through GameCubes, output through a digital-out Carby convertor, on homebrew Game Boy Player software. And it's beautiful, lag-free, pixel perfect. I'm almost tearing up.
Oh yeah. That's actually only two GameCubes plugged in there, but in the future I'm thinking I could use this for some 8-player Mario Kart 8, 8-player Luigi's Mansion 3, 4-player Mario Maker 2 races, and 16-player (!?!) Halo through some Xbox setups (still considering the trade-off of quality/cost with Xbox One vs. 360 🤔, and we'll have to see how next-gen shakes out). But of course, this will take some more time if I can ever coordinate it with anyone else or accumulate it, lol. And really it would be done more justice on a bigger TV, haha.
Admittedly, it's a bit absurd at this point, but I mean, I could vacation to Paris or buy a car - or I could be the only one in the world to host splitscreen Kirby and the Amazing Mirror games on a single TV with spectators. Seems like an obvious choice, to be honest. Definitely not just trying to rationalize lol.
In a way this is just the tip of the iceberg, I could post some more stupid pics of way too many game controllers, but to dial it down, here's just a picture of people playing Let's Tap on the Wii, the game where I bring four tissue boxes, you put the Wii remote on the tissue box, and you then control the game by tapping the box. It's a riot.
Last edited:
