Welcome to the new Planet GameCube. Excuse the dust...we're still setting a few things up. Hope you like what you see!

Welcome to Planet GameCube V2.0 beta!

Wipe your feet! The new pad is clean! Well cleaner. We’ve cleaned up the empty dew cans…and even scooped up Louie’s poop!

Seeing that the GameCube has hit the streets of North America, we felt it would be fitting to fire off our new design. This has been in the works for quite a while, and if it weren’t for our new artist Mike Kielas, and our Cold Fusion code master blaster webmaster supreme Justin Nation, and his trusty side kick Rick Powarups, we’d still be X-Box green. That just wouldn’t be right.

The more things change, the more they stay the same. The impending Nintendo GameCube launch gives me a nostalgic feeling felt only once before as the N64 debuted in 1996...

Before the Internet was beginning to turn from a hobbyist’s toy into the mass media platform of today, information spread at the speed of television and print. You watched live TV as news broke, you watched the 6 o’clock news for the day’s coverage, or you read all about it in the following day’s newspaper. The niche market of gaming, a shadow of what it is today, relied heavily on magazines and even some fanzines to curb their cravings for coverage, with few other outlets available to them.

With only Game Boy Advance until next Spring in Europe, can the GameCube successfully take away some of Playstation 2’s dominance?

With the US launch closer than ever, European gamers wait for Nintendo’s promise of a release date for the precious machine. Nothing has been revealed further than “Spring 2002” and will not be for a while to come.

A while ago there were rumours flying around that the GameCube will not be released until September of 2002. This was an attempt to explain Nintendo of Europe’s reluctance to provide a more specific timeframe and also to pressurise Nintendo of Europe into revealing the release. There have been no further details concerning this issue aside from the ever popular “Spring 2002” date.

GameCube is set to launch in North America in a little more than a week, and we’re here to help you get a GameCube efficiently. It’s been a long wait, so why be troubled with fighting with people?

When the N64 was released back in 1996, I was one of the first people in Milwaukee, Wisconsin to get my hands on a Nintendo 64. I pre-ordered my N64 at a Software Etc. about a year before release, and even though I was more than guaranteed a system at launch, I was prepared, and got my system early, and at suggested retail price. I’m not saying I’m a shopping expert, but with proper planning, you should be able to land a GameCube on launch day, or even early.

Nintendo’s official release date is November 18th. As you’ve probably noticed this happens to fall on a Sunday. According to our sources, most major retailers should be receiving their GameCube systems, and hardware as early as Wednesday the 14th. Could history repeat itself and the street date get broken again? Realize that Microsoft’s X-Box is due to release on the 15th. If one major chain store breaks the date, more could follow suit, as in 1996 when the N64 was released. If I remember correctly, it was a K-B Toy Store that began selling their N64’s on the 26th, 3 full days before the system was to be released. After that it was a domino effect, and stores all over the US had broken the street date for the N64. Gamers got their collective game on early. It was beautiful! This will probably happen once again.

Just how important is lasting/replay value to the gaming experience? What is it about some games that keeps us playing them for years to come? Jonny tackles these questions in his latest editorial.

Ya know, when I think back to the days of playing NES and SNES every single day, I can’t ever remember complaining that a game was too short, or that it didn’t have any replay value. Sure, I was younger then and more easily amused, and of course I didn’t have the years of experience and immense (ha) gaming skill that I do now, but something was still different in the games.

For one thing, most of them didn’t really try to tell a story. Developers seemed to assume that kids wanted fun, not depth, and so practically every game was what we today would consider arcade-style. That didn’t necessarily mean a Pac-Man game design, with almost infinite levels and beating the high score for a primary motivation; gosh, just look at Super Mario Bros. There are a very finite number of levels, and high scores aren’t even saved when you turn the game off, but certainly no one ever complained that SMB was too short or didn’t have enough replay value. It was so much fun that you wanted to play it again and again, even after beating it for the twentieth time. (Note that opinions didn’t really change when the game was re-released as SMB Deluxe for Game Boy Color over a dozen years later...)