Continuing last week’s look at the 5 must play exclusives for the Gamecube.
Donkey Konga
This is a music game series that includes songs like the DK rap and the Pokemon them to play, do I need to bother making much more of an argument for the game?
If there’s one thing that Nintendo have proven themselves great at it’s taking some weird idea or concept and turning into a super fun game case in point long before the Guitar Hero & Rock Band plastic instrument craze swept the world Nintendo had their own go at it and thus the DK bongos were born.
The bongos have the two pads to hit either separately or together and also contains a built in microphone to be able to detect claps. It doesn’t sound complicated and that’s because it isn’t, but that simplicity is what makes it so easy to draw somebody in and get them to have a go, in fact the first time I played it was on a demo unit at Toys R Us as a child and that quick go was enough to sell me on it.
They key to any music game is unsurprisingly the music, I’ve already mentioned that it has Nintendo songs in the soundtrack, however that’s not all the soundtrack it has a bit of a mix of songs but something that shouldn’t come as a shock for Nintendo fans is that it is a decidedly family friendly choice of songs, you aren’t going to find anything like Slayer in the soundtrack. But there is some variety to the song choice, in fact I always found it strange but interesting that you’d have something like All the Small Things by Blink 182 alongside classical pieces of music.
The bongos may not have had a long life; only seeing 2 Donkey Konga games (3 in Japan) and a platformer game, but they are a sturdy piece of kit and a lot of fun in you can get your hands on some.
F-Zero GX
Here’s my impression of me if I was in a real life F-Zero vehicle: “AAHHHHHHHHHH!!!!” While Mario Kart might be Nintendo’s flagship racing series for good reason, it does not hold a candle to F-Zero in terms of speed and intensity in a way designed to appeal to a more hardcore audience.
And hardcore is definitely the correct way to describe it, GX is one of the best games that I know I’ll never beat, its story mode is notoriously difficult and I think getting a couple of chapters through it is the best I’ll do. Races are brutal the other racers give no quarter forcing you to push yourself against a constant sense of risk; if you fall off the track or your vehicle explodes that’s it game over and this is all happening during a constant intense sense of speed that puts even other futuristic racing games.
The other thing that wows me about the game is how technically impressive it is, that extreme sense of speed I’ve mentioned is pulled off at a constant 60 FPS with 30 racers on a track at once, and it feels like this is the first F-Zero game to pull this off without having to make sacrifices to do it; the original on the SNES had to utilise Mode 7 to do a kind of pseudo 3D, then with X on the N64 they made the jump to 3D while impressively also having 30 racers at 60FPS but to manage this the tracks were basically built in barren voids. GX does not have this problem with the increased power of the Gamecube they manage to have plenty of background detail that cause the tracks to have their own personalities making them feel unique and distinct from each other, this game is probably the one that pushed the Gamecube hardware the most.
Unfortunately we haven’t had a new F-Zero since as Miyamoto doesn’t want to do a new one until he has some innovation to change and “improve” it. Which is ironic because despite their prior history this game was actually given to Sega to develop and it ended up as the best game in the series, maybe the series should just fully be passed to Sega so we can get a new one.
Star Fox Assault
If there’s one thing this list has shown me it’s that I take issue with Miyamoto nowadays; for Paper Mario he stripped out a lot of its personality to make it more like the main series but with a gimmick, he won’t make a new F-Zero until he has a new gimmick, and he’s a large of part of why Star Fox Zero just ended up as Star Fox 64 with a controller gimmick. Now full disclosure I’m one of the weirdos who actually didn’t mind Zero’s controls for the most part but what really frustrates is that Star Fox Assault made changes and improvements to move the series forward that instead of being built on were just ignored and forgotten.
I’m not going to pretend it’s Shakespeare but the biggest leap forward for this Star Fox game is the writing, There’s story & character development, events of previous games have actually had an impact and the universe no longer feels static. The main way it does this is that Andross is not the main enemy (I believe this is the only game in the series that does this) a new species is introduced called the Aparoid which are insect race that assimilate other species and tech (think of the Borg from Star Trek and you have a decent idea). By changing the status quo characters can be approached in different ways for example take Star Wolf there’s times when you fight against the rival group while others where you team up against a common enemy something which is not possible in previous games where you are on opposite sides.
As I mentioned there’s an impact of previous games as if time actually moves in the Star Fox universe, Andross is not the enemy because you’ve already beaten him, Krystal is now part of the team following Adventures and Peppy is no longer on the front lines dog fighting as his age catches up with him.The characters have grown and changed from the events they’ve been through. The game also takes a more linear approach compared to the branching paths of previous games this is combined with cutscenes and conversations that actually have characters animated and expressive in a way three squares on a screen just doesn’t manage. It’s strange to think but this might actually be a Star Fox game you can get interested in for the story.
The gameplay has 2 main parts there’s the usual Airwing flying sections that maintain the quality Star Fox is known for, but the other half is ground combat which is where a lot of the divided opinion of the game comes from. Before anything else if you are going to play the game change the settings to the dual stick control option for the ground sections I have no idea why this wasn’t the default but it will definitely improve your experience. Now I’m not going to lie the Airwing sections are better and I would prefer more of them in exchange for less ground sections, but I don’t think it’s nearly as bad as people make out Fox moves and handles pretty quickly and there is a combo tracker for chaining kills together in a short period that gives it a fun & frantic albeit simple style.
Even though it was rough around the edges I’ve got a real soft spot for Star Fox Assault, if somebody had took the ideas from it and further developed the gameplay I think there could have been a new contender for best Star Fox game, which is why Zero disappointed me so much it tried so much to be like what 64 was that it didn’t stand out and raised the question of why not just play 64, even if it had its detractors Assault stood out in a way that makes it worth checking out for any Star Fox fans.
Thank you to anybody who’s checked out my first attempts at writing, I’ve got a real soft spot for the Gamecube and given Nintendo’s reluctance to port Gamecube games could probably even do another of these lists in the future
The David E Gamery 