The GameCube may not have been as successful as Nintendo had hoped, but it still managed to host more than a few of the greatest titles ever. Remakes of games like The Wind Waker, Metroid Prime, Luigi’s Mansion, and more have managed to share the system’s understated legacy with subsequent generations of players, but there are so many more that are slowly being lost to time.
It is, of course, easy to forget a game that had all the makings of a smash hit but just didn’t quite hit the mark, or that players loved but for whatever reason never received another entry. It’s easy to imagine that some of these games might be looked at differently if they got the remake treatment that all-time greats usually do…
10 The Legend of Zelda: Four Swords Adventures
The Legend of Zelda: Four Swords Adventures is an odd entry in Nintendo’s crown jewel franchise. The top-down co-op adventure is a sequel to a mini-game from the Game Boy Advance port of A Link to the Past. That’s a strange origin story for any game, let alone one in the Zelda franchise.
The game is in fact just as fun as it sounds and so is getting to see the A Link to the Past art style through a GameCube graphic lens. The only issue is that it uses the Game Boy Advance link cable, meaning you need four link cables and four Game Boy Advances to enjoy it as intended. A Switch remake might be able to remedy those issues so this otherwise awesome game can be appreciated by today’s fans.
9 Geist: Worthy Of A Second Glance
Endeavors in genre-bending are always going to be considered ambitious and that’s because it’s pretty easy to miss the mark and wind up with something underwhelming. That was more or less the fate of n-Space’s Geist, released in 2005.
This part FPS, part puzzle-solving, part action-adventure game functioned on a pretty fun and creative mechanic: possession. Players control the disembodied soul of bioweapons expert John Raimi, hopping in and out of enemies, animals, and even inanimate objects on their journey to reconnect with Raimi’s corporeal form. Geist was daring enough to try and reimagine the FPS and give players a deeper experience while doing so. The result did not quite reach the heights n-Space envisioned for it, but an HD remake just might.
8 Star Fox Adventures: A Brave Attempt That Crashed And Burned
The Star Fox franchise has yet to provide fans with a truly worthy follow-up to Star Fox 64, a disappointing trend that began early in the GameCube era with Star Fox Adventures. The idea of letting Fox out of the cockpit and sending him out on a Zelda-like adventure was a bold one that could have really broadened the horizons of the franchise, but clunky controls and repetitive gameplay ultimately left fans flat.
It’s easy to imagine a world where a game like this could be a ton of fun, so why not clean up those controls in a remake?
7 Viewtiful Joe: Weird, Fun, And Tragically Forgotten
It’s fairly shocking that Viewtiful Joe hasn’t found its way into some kind of remake by now. Capcom’s mayhem-packed yet razor-sharp beat ‘em up offered GameCube owners a captivating new character and an intriguing new world brought to life with some of the coolest cel-shaded graphics in the system’s history.
But while Viewtiful Joe may have been considered a winner by both fans and critics, there was one considerable flaw: it was hard. Very hard. Like, throw your GameCube in a swimming pool and weep while it sinks to the bottom of the deep end hard. A remake might offer older gamers a chance at redemption and newer ones a serious challenge. Plus, Joe would e the perfect Super Smash Bros. addition.
6 Cubivore: Survival Of The Fittest
Once in a good while a game concept is so quirky and unusual that it leaves players with a number of questions (and maybe even concerns) about the minds from which it was born. Cubivore: Survival of the Fittest is one of those games.
Players take control of a geometrically-simple little critter that must fight, eat, and mate its way to the top of the food chain. Cubivore got plenty of things right and was loved enough to have become one of the hardest GameCube entries to track down but there wasn’t quite enough there to really pique the interest of the masses. An HD remake might inspire a change of heart, though, and at the very least reduce the cost of those crazy pricey original copies.
5 Kirby Air Ride
Many fans absolutely loved Kirby Air Ride when it was released in 2003, so why would Nintendo just leave it on the shelf for all these years? Perhaps they feel like Mario Kart is plenty of kart racer for one company and another one would be overkill? If so, they were wrong. The world can always use more kart racers.
The breakneck speed and jubilant pandemonium of Kirby Air Ride mixed with the simplicity of its controls (players didn’t even have to accelerate!) made it almost too fun, yet at times these very same things could make it utterly frustrating. Regardless, fans would no doubt gobble up a remake in a heartbeat.
4 P.N. 03: Guns And Grooving
A shooter crossed with a dancing game? Actually, at a time when Dance Dance Revolution was peaking in popularity, this concept honestly didn’t sound as strange as it does now in the hands of a company like Capcom it had a chance at being a massive hit.
P.N. 03 was definitely not a massive hit, but it didn’t go totally unappreciated, and some fans quite enjoyed the dancing-while-doing-battle mechanics. With today’s motion controls this one could probably win over a lot more hearts than it did back in 2003.
3 Eternal Darkness: Sanity’s Requiem
It’s safe to say that Eternal Darkness: Sanity’s Requiem is a certified GameCube classic and therefore doesn’t necessarily fall under the category of “flawed” but it can also be said that, much like many other games that are around a few decades old, its visuals haven’t aged quite as gracefully as, say, The Wind Waker.
That’s typically the catch when a game goes for realism over stylized graphics, but the good news is that a simple HD remake could be all this masterpiece needs to reclaim its former glory.
2 Custom Robo: The Franchise That Should Have Been
This exciting action RPG was one of five titles under the Custom Robo name and the first to find its way to North American shores. Custom Robo’s gameplay was centered around holosseums: virtual arenas in which customizable robots battled it out, earning players new weapons and parts to upgrade their machine fighters with.
The customization aspect was bold, but it didn’t quite deliver all that it promised. In today’s world of potentially-perpetual free updates, it’s easy to see how a remake (or maybe even a new entry) on its word and gives players a boundless supply of reasons to keep battling.
1 Odama: Probably Even Weirder Than You Imagine
Everybody loves a good voice-controlled pinball/real-time strategy crossover set in feudal Japan, right?
Okay, so maybe the concept was a little avant-garde for a 2006 audience, but maybe today’s gamers have refined their palates enough to take in whatever it is that Odama was trying to deliver back then. Reviewers didn’t know what to make of it at the time, but most didn’t hate it, and many players found it compelling in spite of its unforgiving difficulty and the wonkiness of the GameCube Microphone mechanics. An HD remake might be able to hone it into the weirdo masterpiece it almost was.