3rd parties didn't fill the gaps during the GCN days and all of a sudden the GameCube is so popular for what ever reason on these boards.
3rd Parties released a lot of games for the GCN in its first three years. We got a ton of support during that time. Nintendo's problem is they didn't know how to market their system. They chose to go one route and the masses did not follow.
The reason why the GCN is popular around here is not because the system was successful. Far from it. I remember that there were constant complaints about how Nintendo was selling the system wrong and they needed to do more marketing and all that stuff. What was not complained about were the games that they released. Yes there were some droughts (including the normal one at the end of the console's lifecycle). But 90% of the Nintendo games were well received around here. The Wii has the opposite. The marketing was amazing. They sold that system to people who never picked up video games in their lives. The problem with the Wii was that people around here were not enjoying the games like past systems. So, they look fondly at the GCN because they don't remember complaining about those games.
My personal opinion was that I enjoyed the GCN more but mainly because I believe the controller to be the greatest controller of all time. So any game that I could play with that controller, I would do it. It's the only way I played Brawl or Mario Kart. Give me a pro controller for the Wii U designed like the GCN controller and I would buy 12 of them (over a long period of time as I can't afford that many at once

).