On the N64 I assumed that Nintendo was pretty much the same company they had been in the NES and SNES years only they had completely shot themselves in the foot by sticking with cartridges. This one huge mistake had handcuffed the N64 so severely that all the problems on the system appeared to be directly related to it. The weak third party support, the expensive game prices, the long game droughts, the lack of fashionable elements of the time like FMV and red book audio - all of those were directly caused by the cartridges. But Nintendo still made awesome games. They were the best videogame developer in the world, bar none, and the fact that the system was still quite popular despite its shortcomings demonstrated that. I figured if they had gone with CDs the train would have just kept rolling from the SNES days. It was all just one mistake and on the Cube they would bounce back.
But that's not what happened and on the Cube I found out that Nintendo at some point had turned into clueless fuddy-duddies who could and would **** up anything. Well this was the company that released the Virtual Boy and going with cartridges was an insanely stupid idea that I saw a mile away when I was just some 14 year old kid who doesn't run a multi-million dollar videogame company. The sad truth is that sticking with cartridges was such an easily avoidable mistake that it should have clued me in that whatever company would make such a decision had something wrong going on upstairs.
So I found the Gamecube years very frustrating as Nintendo just botched their way to near irrelevance. The real core of the problem was that their attitude was such like they never acknowledged that the N64 had problems. It was like "we're Nintendo so people will just buy it, right?" Now I would take the Cube over the Wii any day but what's frustrating is that Nintendo's whole approach to the Wii is largely based on the Cube's failure. They lost the traditional market with the N64, completely botched their comeback attempt and then gave up like it was all hopeless the whole time and now they're a company I largely dislike. The Gamecube was their chance to bounce back and for things to return to normal and instead it's really when everything completely derailed.
And one thing that really annoying is that when the Cube wasn't out yet and I was getting hyped up about it I was hyped about realistic Zelda, Dinosaur Planet, Perfect Dark and Too Human. Zelda turned into a cartoon and realistic Zelda came out so late that it was a Wii launch title, Dino Planet turned into Star Fox and then Rare was gone so I got no PD and Too Human didn't show up until Nintendo and SK parted ways and ended up being crap. I really thought Nintendo had the titles in place to compete and they systematically gutted it all away. From its first reveal the Cube really generated a lot of optimism but I found that was just sucked out of me as time went on. Go back and make a few slightly different decisions from 2000 to 2002 and Nintendo's whole history would be different and no one would be concerned about Wii U sales.
The Gamecube is a good system with good games but it could have been way better. Though unlike the Wii it was still a time where I was legitimately excited for almost every major first party release. And the Metroid Prime and Pikmin games are as good as any N64 classic.