An NOA rep at the Star Fox Adventures display told me today that only three games are running on actual, final GameCube hardware here at the show. Not surprisingly, they are arguably the best-looking games: Luigi's Mansion, Rogue Leader, and Pikmin. The other games are running on incomplete development kits, though the units in surround-sound booths have mock GC units for interface purposes.

This revelation, if true (I'm working on confirming it further through other NOA people) explains some quirks in the other games. Smash Bros. has about five seconds of load time before battles, Star Fox Adventures pauses every now and then for seemingly no reason, and Wave Race's backgrounds look very filtered. The fact that these games look so good on incomplete hardware is amazing, and it also gives us some assurance that any glitches or technical annoyances in these demos will not be an issue when they're finally released.