Our favorite system is two years old, so it’s time to look back at how well it’s performing and what it needs to improve upon before the next system is ready.

As of this writing, the Nintendo GameCube has been on the market for about two years in Japan and North America, and a few months less than that in Europe. Since it seems fairly certain that the next generation of consoles will be launched in 2005, when GameCube will be four years old, this seems like a good intermediate point to look back at how the system has performed so far in its life cycle.

I’ve looked at several topics pertaining to a console’s performance and given a letter grade to each one. Note that these grades are based on the American system of educational scoring, where A means "Excellent", B is "Good", C is "Average", D is "Poor", and F is "Failing". On with the progress report.