I’m begging Nintendo to re-release some of their Gamecube lineup (or how trying to buy Gamecube games on eBay has driven me mad)

[Deleted member 17627]

Just saw a listing on eBay end for Thousand Year Door, which was essentially:

• Game not tested
• Lost manual and case
• Took a hammer to it one day that I was angry
• Used it as a cupholder sometimes
• I have 769 cats who all take turns scratching it every single day

And it still sold for like…$90.

How? How did things to be this bad?

Why is gaming this terrible of a hobby that companies refuse to re-release stuff that trying to play something that came out before 2006 feels impossible?

And an unrelated note, how do so many people treat their games like absolute garbage? How does your stuff get -this- damaged?

And that's the thing, you know? There's only a finite amount of working discs for these games, it's getting so hard to find copies that even function.

Rant aside, man, do I wish Nintendo would re-release some of their Gamecube library. I genuinely think that with Switch re-releases and the Wii virtual console on the Wii U eShop, that we have more Wii games having been re-released than Gamecube ones.

All that I can think of that have gotten re-releases are Sunshine, Luigi's Mansion, and the remake of Wind Waker.

I'm so exhausted, I just want to play some of these games.

 

[Patitoloco]

I remember going crazy as a kid trying to find MGS The Twin Snakes.

Never found it.

 

[ElectricBlanketFire]

We got Ikaruga too!

But yeah, it's maddening.

 

[Indelible]

I can see Nintendo remastering Fire Emblem Path of Radiance at some point, Gamecube prices have gotten out of control.

 

[Vulcano's Assistant]

I feel you. A month or so ago I had a huge crave to play Paper Mario TTYD after beating Mario + Rabbids.

 

[Liam Allen-Miller]

I feel you. Last time I played TTYD I most certainly did not buy it and I think I'd recommend that at this point. It's not like Nintendo is making money off of the sales anyhow so it's nothing more than antique collecting.

 

[Pokemaniac]

Seeing how Super Mario Sunshine performed on Switch before it got patched, even with it leveraging AoT recompilation, I have some doubts that the Switch CPU is really up to the task of more general GameCube emulation. It will probably have to wait for Switch 2 (which fortunately probably isn't too far off).

 

[dr.rocktopus]

Chibi Robo is the one that gets me the most. I remember passing on that game for $10 in store and now it's like $200 complete.

 

[Diarrhea Day-Lewis]

If they didn't do this for Wii U and Switch when they've had the capability to do it both times in just resigned to the fact that it will never happen.

 

[Bard]

Maybe next gen, but yeah, Nintendo is absurdly awful about their back catalogue outside of NES and SNES.

 

[Hayama Akito]

As someone who not only thinks exactly the same but also is from a poor third world country I'm totally done with retro collecting. I love videogames but I'm not interested in pay 200+ bucks for a game that it isn't even rare or obscure at all.

 

[Ottaro]

It was not a strong performing console so there just isn't as many game copies floating around. Factor in that those tiny discs were much less durable than cartridges, and... :(
The Gamecube section is always the saddest area of all my local used game shops.

I wish Nintendo would give Gamecube the Wii U treatment. Just port it all over.

 

[FooF]

I've been trying to find a copy of chibi-robo at a decent price for years and it's only gotten worse. might as well trade a limb for it at this point.

I hate trying to buy old games off of ebay as there condition is either miss labeled or the photos of it suck and you can't tell if there's damage, some times I take the gamble and it's always a losing situation.

Most of the time if I go to a store gamecube games and even ps3 game boxes look like shit most of the time these days. I'm sure the damage is from multiple people buying it and trading it back in so over time the boxes just end up looking like shit.

 

[Neiteio]

I wanna complete all three paths of Eternal Darkness again. I still have cherished childhood memories of my friends and I huddled in a basement on a hot summer day, our Big Gulps full of Slurpee and Subway sandwiches on the coffee table, playing Eternal Darkness. We were playing it back to back with the Resident Evil remake. What an amazing double feature of horror that was.

I remember when we went into the Roivas Estate's bathroom, saw the bathtub full of blood and screamed so hard we nearly flipped backwards off the couch, lol.

 

[SteveWinwood]

Just saw a listing on eBay end for Thousand Year Door, which was essentially:

• Game not tested
• Lost manual and case
• Took a hammer to it one day that I was angry
• Used it as a cupholder sometimes
• I have 769 cats who all take turns scratching it every single day

And it still sold for like…$90.

Click to shrink...

I remember going crazy as a kid trying to find MGS The Twin Snakes.

Never found it.

Click to shrink...

We got Ikaruga too!

But yeah, it's maddening.

Click to shrink...

Chibi Robo is the one that gets me the most. I remember passing on that game for $10 in store and now it's like $200 complete.

Click to shrink...

i own all of these games with cases and instruction books in very good condition

are you saying they are worth a bunch of money now

 

[L Thammy]

I will cosign your post if you add that Capcom should re-release Gotcha Force.

 

[Atom]

It's absolutely mindblowing how awfully people keep their stuff. I can understand a few scuffs, maybe a bent page or two in the manual, but the straight up fecal-furnaced ass-blasting some of these used games look like they got is wild.

But yeah the ways in which Sony and Nintendo treat their legacy catalogs is why I am almost exclusively a PC gamer at this point. At this point I usually just buy a cheap Japanese copy of any game I really want to play and live with that, but I'm also fortunate to have basically accumulated all the games I'd want to reasonably play already.

 

[Sumio Mondo]

Yup. eBay hunting is very much a luck based system with these legacy system's games. So many classics left behind.

 

[JershJopstin]

We are still at the point where there's just not enough performance there to emulate them en mass, as evidenced by Sunshine in 3D All-Stars. GameCube and Wii games need to be handled individually right now, even if they don't make use of analog triggers or motion controls, which completely changes the game in terms of cost analysis for Nintendo.

I think when they can release TTYD without actually putting in much effort to do so (though it does use a more difficult hardware feature to emulate), they will. But we're not there yet.

 

[UraMallas]

Man, I had pretty much all the bangers for GCN. I lived at Gamestop getting all the new releases in that era and I took care of my games. Traded them all in for an Xbox 360 because I was a broke college student. And while I had a great time with my 360, I feel like I could have made some serious money on GCN games had I known.

 

[Dragonyeuw]

Dolphin + gamecube controller adapter+ OG controller has me looking at my collection thinking 'well shit, if someone wants to give me $100+ for TTYD or Twin Snakes, they can have it'.

 

[infinitebento]

honestly i end up with better luck wandering into local pawn shops or game trading stores to find gamecube games for cheap vs ebay or anywhere else

emulators arent quite the same for me and i gave up hope on nintendo re-releasing a lot of older games so buying physical is the only solution.

 

[NuclearCake]

Seeing how Super Mario Sunshine performed on Switch before it got patched, even with it leveraging AoT recompilation, I have some doubts that the Switch CPU is really up to the task of more general GameCube emulation. It will probably have to wait for Switch 2 (which fortunately probably isn't too far off).

Click to shrink...

Even now when it is patched, it still has some frame pacing issues in the hub world that weren't there in the Gamecube version. It does seem like GC and Wii emulation is difficult for the Switch to pull off, while also having the games run in 1080p.

They could get around this by porting the games to Switch instead of just emulating them.

 

[L Thammy]

But yeah, there's a lot of stuff that I missed out at the time or want to play again. Not sure how Noise is doing nowadays - I think their website suggests that they're hiring - but Custom Robo could always do with more exposure.

Wii games even more so. There are a ton of games there which I feel could benefit from a system that has much more buy-in from the core audience.

 

[Atom]

We are still at the point where there's just not enough performance there to emulate them en mass, as evidenced by Sunshine in 3D All-Stars. GameCube and Wii games need to be handled individually right now, even if they don't make use of analog triggers or motion controls, which completely changes the game in terms of cost analysis for Nintendo.

I think when they can release TTYD without actually putting in much effort to do so (though it does use a more difficult hardware feature to emulate), they will. But we're not there yet.

Click to shrink...

Nothing about how nintendo has handled legacy content that they can assuredly emulate suggests this is something they would actually do. Nintendo doesn't care about accessibility of their older titles when they sell you new thing at full msrp, or dole titles out as part of a subscription service at a snails pace to keep you coming back.

It's disgusting that we went from Virtual Console to this.

Yeah, the condition of some things baffles me. Seems so trivial to just like... put stuff in a box when you're not using it. How does it get so gross?



What was off about Sunshine? It didn't set any high bar, but it ran the game at a stable framerate at a high res in widescreen, isn't that enough?

Click to shrink...

Some minor performance issues (some of which were due to hacked switches). Perfectly acceptable though (a fair bit better than stuff like Age of Calamity), but probably indicates that some personal attention is needed to make sure the games run okay.

 

[Noog]

During the Covid lockdown, I decided to replay Paper Mario TTYD and about halfway through the game, my GameCube told me the disc scratched and was unplayable. I was heartbroken and ebay prices were over $100 for just the disc.

I got very, very lucky a few weeks later and found a used GameCube lot with TTYD, Tak the Power of JuJu and a sports game for $65. If you look around enough, sometimes you'll get lucky

Story time aside, Nintendo's legacy is their best asset. Most of the best games they've ever made are in the past, and it sucks that so many of these games are inaccessible on their hyper successful console.

 

[Stopdoor]

Yeah, the condition of some things baffles me. Seems so trivial to just like... put stuff in a box when you're not using it. How does it get so gross?

We are still at the point where there's just not enough performance there to emulate them en mass, as evidenced by Sunshine in 3D All-Stars. GameCube and Wii games need to be handled individually right now, even if they don't make use of analog triggers or motion controls, which completely changes the game in terms of cost analysis for Nintendo.

I think when they can release TTYD without actually putting in much effort to do so (though it does use a more difficult hardware feature to emulate), they will. But we're not there yet.

Click to shrink...

What was off about Sunshine? It didn't set any high bar, but it ran the game at a stable framerate at a high res in widescreen, isn't that enough?

 

[L Thammy]

I wanna complete all three paths of Eternal Darkness again. I still have cherished childhood memories of my friends and I huddled in a basement on a hot summer day, our Big Gulps full of Slurpee and Subway sandwiches on the coffee table, playing Eternal Darkness. We were playing it back to back with the Resident Evil remake. What an amazing double feature of horror that was.

I remember when we went into the Roivas Estate's bathroom, saw the bathtub full of blood and screamed so hard we nearly flipped backwards off the couch, lol.

Click to shrink...

 

[supercommodore]

Was lucky enough to grab Skies of Arcadia Legends 5-6 years ago for £40 and recently Baten Kaitos for £40.

It is frustrating there isn't a VC version of most of these games. Getting the physical editions is either pure luck or paying up on eBay.

 

[Curler]

It mostly just surprises me how much people are willing to spend at these peak prices. I've always been a thrifty collector (with exceptions) for older consoles, and the fact that these prices are being driven up BECAUSE people out there are paying these amounts, surprises me the most. I just assume that people didn't know what the values were prior to last year and were just like "$100+? Sounds good, sure!!"

Nintendo does need to re-release a TON of legacy stuff. Would be nice to see more compilations get put out.

 

[TheDinoman]

Barring some ocassional re-releases/remasters (i.e Sunshine in 3D All-Stars, the Wind Waker/Twilight Princess remasters, etc), the best hope for the majority of the GCN library to ever see the light of day again is through a GCN NSO/VC service...neither of which is going to happen.

Shame.

 

[DinoBlaster]

What is up with the trend of game listings saying NOT TESTED. Is this a recent thing? Sounds like the seller is saying "idk maybe it still works"

 

[ErrorJustin]

I'm actually Ebaying my Gamecube collection now for this exact reason.

I really loved that era of Nintendo so it makes me a bit sad, but it's a gamble that Nintendo will eventually re-release these games in some form, eventually. I don't care to have them in their original iteration or original console.

$120+ for games like Chibi Robo is just too much to ignore.

 

[JershJopstin]

i own all of these games with cases and instruction books in very good condition

are you saying they are worth a bunch of money now

Click to shrink...

Most of them go between $80 and $120 depending on the day. And I don't mean the titles are individually in that range, complete in box they seem to fluctuate wildly within that. Except Ikaruga, which stays around $80, and Chibi Robo, which is $200+.

Together they're about $500 though yeah. Path of Radiance is another $200+ title if you own that.

 

[kimbo99]

Emulation my friend. Nintendo literally said that buying old games from a yard sale, is a means of playing their old titles. That gives me vibes that they aren't too keen on getting old titles on new hardware.

 

[SnazzyNaz]

I mean, if Nintendo isn't supplying a legitimate way to purchase the game and the only other purchasing option is buying second-hand copies for close to double the original MSRP then, you know, consider sailing the high seas? Theoretically of course.

 

[Curler]

What is up with the trend of game listings saying NOT TESTED. Is this a recent thing? Sounds like the seller is saying "idk maybe it still works"

Click to shrink...

Not everyone still owns the original system to test them on, especially if they are flippers that found them at a garage sale or whatever. The risk is there and they did add a disclaimer, at least.

 

[JustinH]

I remember going crazy as a kid trying to find MGS The Twin Snakes.

Never found it.

Click to shrink...

Man, I remember buying this for a friend way back when.
He preferred to play on PS2 and didn't have a Gamecube, so he gave it back to me. I told him it'd play on his Wii and "you're probably going to get the new Nintendo" (this was in early 2006) and he still didn't believe me and gave it back, lol.

I think I gave it to a friend's kid so he could trade it in at Gamestop like... back in late 2007(?).

I just learned I had a copy of Thousand Year Door a few months ago. I don't remember buying it, I don't think I ever played it, but it's a "Player's Choice" edit: "Best Seller" copy, so it's probably a "cheaper" version. Whomp Whomp...

 

[NeonBorealis]

Come on Sega, just re-release Skies of Arcadia Legends already. It's all I'm asking for.

I'd be content with a straight port.

 

[-shadow-]

GameCubes are such a mess to get these days, and I absolutely hate it :(

 

[PianoBlack]

The only system I truly regret selling. Sigh.

 

[Voyager]

Goddamn, I sold off most my collection last year. Fire Emblem, Cubivore, Chibi Robo, Eternal Darkness, Skies of Arcadia, Twins Snakes, resident Evil 2, 3, and Code Veronica. Others I'm probably forgetting. I still have a quite a few left. Makes me think I need to get to selling again…

 

[Version 3.0]

Whoo, that's a lot of questions. Let's see:

Just saw a listing on eBay end for Thousand Year Door, which was essentially:

• Game not tested
• Lost manual and case
• Took a hammer to it one day that I was angry
• Used it as a cupholder sometimes
• I have 769 cats who all take turns scratching it every single day

And it still sold for like…$90.

How? How did things to be this bad?

Click to shrink...

That's simple enough: supply and demand. The Gamecube and many of its games didn't sell particularly well. Since that time, though, Nintendo's had two huge resurgences (Wii and Switch), on the home console side. Their portables were always popular. So, it seems that there are more Nintendo fans trying to buy Gamecube stuff than owners selling it, leading to higher prices.

Why is gaming this terrible of a hobby that companies refuse to re-release stuff that trying to play something that came out before 2006 feels impossible?

Click to shrink...

This is undoubtedly complicated in many specific cases - who owns the rights, who has the assets, how much work would it be to make a game run on current hardware, would it sell enough to be worth it, etc.

In general, this is a pretty forward-looking industry. Sort of. What I mean is, it is far more interested in selling new games (even if they are all sequels) than old ones, probably due to the simple fact that new ones sell better.

And an unrelated note, how do so many people treat their games like absolute garbage? How does your stuff get -this- damaged?

Click to shrink...

I have never understood the why, being someone who took care of his stuff, even as a little kid. But what I can tell you is, it's incredibly common for people to live like animals. My own nephews, for whom I bought Gamecubes and Wiis, kept their game discs in a pile on the floor. A filthy, carpeted floor. Changing discs involved sliding them around, effectively sandpapering them in the process.

And that's the thing, you know? There's only a finite amount of working discs for these games, it's getting so hard to find copies that even function.

Rant aside, man, do I wish Nintendo would re-release some of their Gamecube library. I genuinely think that with Switch re-releases and the Wii virtual console on the Wii U eShop, that we have more Wii games having been re-released than Gamecube ones.

All that I can think of that have gotten re-releases are Sunshine, Luigi's Mansion, and the remake of Wind Waker.

I'm so exhausted, I just want to play some of these games.

Click to shrink...

If you just want to play them, not keep them, maybe buy one at a time and sell each one to pay for the next? Or, you know, there are non-original hardware possibilities (Dolphin).

But definitely don't wait for Nintendo to do anything. Maybe they will, someday, but they've shown no sign of it at all, so it's not likely to happen any time soon. And if the day ever arrived, they'd probably not go very deep into its library.

 

[JershJopstin]

Nothing about how nintendo has handled legacy content that they can assuredly emulate suggests this is something they would actually do. Nintendo doesn't care about accessibility of their older titles when they sell you new thing at full msrp, or dole titles out as part of a subscription service at a snails pace to keep you coming back.

It's disgusting that we went from Virtual Console to this.

Click to shrink...

I don't think Nintendo wants to remake TTYD; they'd frankly have done so already.

And let's not act like the VC pace was much better. They put out more consoles faster but that was about it.

What was off about Sunshine? It didn't set any high bar, but it ran the game at a stable framerate at a high res in widescreen, isn't that enough?

Click to shrink...

The framerate wasn't stable at launch and is still worse than OG hardware. It might seem fine, but Sunshine is not a particularly demanding game to emulate, and the approach they used (AoT recomplication) is already one that squeezes out more performance in exchange for being more tailored to the specific game that's running. I also believe it's CPU bound, so rendering at the original resolution wouldn't help.

It's might not be impossible, but it would require far more testing work and likely per-game optimizations to run acceptably. The effort they had to put in for 3D All-Stars - including a post-launch patch - is the issue, not how the final product turned out.

 

[Vito]

GameCube game prices are fucking stupid right now. Hopefully it gets better soon since I still need to get RE2 and RE3 for it and they are over 100 dollars each.

At least I have CVX.

 

[Capra]

It's criminal that Chibi Robo hasn't seen a rerelease outside the New Play Control version.

 

[demi]

When I get my Retrotink in, I'm probably gonna jump back in some Gamecube and never come back

Gamecube #1

 

[JustinH]

The only system I truly regret selling. Sigh.

Click to shrink...

I wish I still had one of my "early" ones, like the one I got at launch for their Digital Video port, or whatever it is. I have a newer one now without it.

I didn't sell any though, I had like 2 or 3 of them die on me when the disc drives just burnt out.

GameCube game prices are fucking stupid right now. Hopefully it gets better soon since I still need to get RE2 and RE3 for it and they are over 100 dollars each.

At least I have CVX.

Click to shrink...

Damn. Glad I got them when I did. This reminds me I need to play them with that special Dolphin so they run properly (I gotta find my Gamecube controller USB adapter first, though).

 

[JershJopstin]

Man, I remember buying this for a friend way back when.
He preferred to play on PS2 and didn't have a Gamecube, so he gave it back to me. I told him it'd play on his Wii and "you're probably going to get the new Nintendo" (this was in early 2006) and he still didn't believe me and gave it back, lol.

I think I gave it to a friend's kid so he could trade it in at Gamestop like... back in late 2007(?).

I just learned I had a copy of Thousand Year Door a few months ago. I don't remember buying it, I don't think I ever played it, but it's a "Player's Choice" edit: "Best Seller" copy, so it's probably a "cheaper" version. Whomp Whomp...

Click to shrink...

The price fluctuates and doesn't seem to correlate very strongly to which case you have. That exact version with the manual went for both $88 and $122 just yesterday on eBay.

 

[Atom]

I mean, if Nintendo isn't supplying a legitimate way to purchase the game and the only other purchasing option is buying second-hand copies for close to double the original MSRP then, you know, consider sailing the high seas? Theoretically of course.

Click to shrink...

Was about to do the "FWIW I think there's a rule here against advocating for piracy".

Completely unrelated, but there's always this gem of a GabeN quote:

We think there is a fundamental misconception about piracy. Piracy is almost always a service problem and not a pricing problem," he said. "If a pirate offers a product anywhere in the world, 24 x 7, purchasable from the convenience of your personal computer, and the legal provider says the product is region-locked, will come to your country 3 months after the US release, and can only be purchased at a brick and mortar store, then the pirate's service is more valuable.

Click to shrink...

I don't think Nintendo wants to remake TTYD; they'd frankly have done so already.

And let's not act like the VC pace was much better. They put out more consoles faster but that was about it.

Click to shrink...

Sorry I didn't mean to imply that they'd remake TTYD. They'll make a new Paper Mario, and that will be the one they want to sell you on, so I wouldn't expect them to make a likely generally regarded as 'better' version of the game easily accessible.

And while the VC was slow, it had more consoles and by the end of its lifetime you could play basically all of Nintendo's big first party games from the consoles it supported + a very large offering from third parties across home and handheld consoles up to the GBC/N64, and some even beyond that with GBA/DS. There's no reason why nintendo couldn't have brought all of that over to the Switch other than to dole it out again as part of a subscription and they deserve substantial criticism for this especially in comparison to what Microsoft was doing at the same time.