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[Geometric-Crusher]

t's not worth playing third-party games on the GC. All the ones I've played run and look worse than the PS2 version for example.

Capcom vs Snk 2 the controller is not suitable for fighting games.
Tomb Raider Legend lacks lighting, post-processing, and shadow effects and appears to run at 20 fps.
No Need for Speed game runs or looks better. Geometry, particles, reflections, and textures are missing. Without enemy cars on the track, the frame rate is good, but if there are two or more cars, it's not great. NFS Most Wanted was the worst; all graphical features were downgraded.
Although Red Faction 2 was later released with some improvements, it also looks worse overall.
No open-world game runs or looks better. It lacks geometry, particles, reflections, and the textures are very poor.

Only Sonic Heroes a RenderWare game miraculously runs at 60 fps and looks much better than the PS2 version. This is strange, since more advanced games run better on the PS2. I can only conclude that Sega wanted to make the PS2 version worse .

Did you play many third-party games on the GameCube ?

 

[The Cockatrice]

 

[TintoConCasera]

So you didn't play Resident Evil 4 nor Tales of Symphonia?

 

[roosnam1980]

thread will be flooded by resident evil 4 fans

 

[cireza]

Exclusives efforts were the highlight of the console. SEGA made a respectable effort as well. Sonic games, Shadow, Riders were fine. PSO 1&2 was great with split screen too. Skies of Arcadia and Sonic Adventure 2 were good.

Also I remember playing both Budokai games and they were fine. Mortal Kombat games too. Wasn't Splinter Cell okay ? Also Prince of Persia games ? Battle Stadium DON was okay. Soul Calibur 2 also good.

This console was okay for multiplatform games. OP is wrong overall.

 

[NeverYouMind]

There are a number of games that use the hardware better but often it comes down to the low size mini discs. Resident Evil 4, Tales of Symphonia, and Prince of Persia: Sands of Time are notably better on GC.

 

[daxgame]

Hmm. any particular reason why you did not check tales of symphonia, killer 7 or resident evil 4? because there are quite a few examples where the difference is pretty big.

But going by your name description, I think I know why.

 

[PlayStaytion]

t's not worth playing third-party games on the GC. All the ones I've played run and look worse than the PS2 version for example.

Capcom vs Snk 2 the controller is not suitable for fighting games.
Tomb Raider Legend lacks lighting, post-processing, and shadow effects and appears to run at 20 fps.
No Need for Speed game runs or looks better. Geometry, particles, reflections, and textures are missing. Without enemy cars on the track, the frame rate is good, but if there are two or more cars, it's not great. NFS Most Wanted was the worst; all graphical features were downgraded.
Although Red Faction 2 was later released with some improvements, it also looks worse overall.
No open-world game runs or looks better. It lacks geometry, particles, reflections, and the textures are very poor.

Only Sonic Heroes a RenderWare game miraculously runs at 60 fps and looks much better than the PS2 version. This is strange, since more advanced games run better on the PS2. I can only conclude that Sega wanted to make the PS2 version worse .

Did you play many third-party games on the GameCube ?

RE4 og looked way better than any s that I've ever seen before on GC. Nintendo surely know their s when they aim for it.

 

[Geometric-Crusher]

Splinter Cell releases are better.

no way

 

[adamsapple]

thread will be flooded by resident evil 4 fans

It is *the* defining game of the cube.

 

[NeverYouMind]

no way

Mostly due to resolution and lack of bloom. They are still lesser versions relative to Xbox and PC.

 

[roosnam1980]

It is *the* defining game of the cube.

understandable , the console didnt have much going for it.

 

[6502]

They were fine and a significant improvement from the support given on N64. There are lazy ports, or those based on the ps2 which don't push the system. But anyone trying to max out the GC - especially where GC was the target system inevitably got better results than were possible on PS2.

 

[deriks]

I remember NFS: Underground running better on GC than others

Graphics looked kinda washed out thou, but ran better

 

[SScorpio]

The Gamecube's GPU was roughly 60% of the power of an Xbox's GPU. It was a fixed pipeline and lacked vertex and pixel shaders which is what made the Xbox cutting edge even compared to current PCs of that era.

It just sad Nintendo went the route they did with the Wii doing a slight iteration of the Gamecube. The Wii's GPU was only about 1.5x as powerful as the GC and still a fixed pipeline. So performance wise was at the level of the Xbox, but still lacking shaders.

Storage space really held the GC back. And it was also the generation were Nintendo had to repair their relationships with 3rd parties. With the NES and SNES, they bullied third parties. So many fled to the PSX rather than making expensive carts for the N64. They did get some support, but that went away after it became clear just how much better the PS2 was selling as it sold 7.5x more units than the GC.

 

[El Muerto]

I remember playing True Crime Streets of New York on GC and it ran like ass. Saw my friend play it on his PS2 and it looked so much better.

 

[Baemono]

They did get some support, but that went away after it became clear just how much better the PS2 was selling as it sold 7.5x more units than the GC.

the PS2 sold its amount before the GC launched and after the Wii's career was over though. And I guess if the Wii wasn't at a similar power level than the PS2, the latter would've not sold as many units as it did (aka 50+ million after the launch of the PS3, until 2013)

 

[Geometric-Crusher]

There are lazy ports, or those based on the ps2 which don't push the system. But anyone trying to max out the GC - especially where GC was the target system inevitably got better results than were possible on PS2.

funny I thought it was because of the mini dvd and that whole low polygon count thing.

 

[SScorpio]

the PS2 sold its amount before the GC launched and after the Wii's career was over though. And I guess if the Wii wasn't at a similar power level than the PS2, the latter would've not sold as many units as it did (aka 50+ million after the launch of the PS3, until 2013)

The GC was released one year after the PS2 and the PS2's first year was supply constrained. It's not really the total number of consoles sold at any moment, but how much software people are buying with new releases. And the PS2 dwarfed the GC in that aspect. People forget that RE4 was announced as an exclusive to the GC. But it ended up being ported and sold many more copies than the GC original, there was just too much money on the table to not do it.

The GC like the Xbox also kept getting 3rd party ports throughout its life so it wasn't outright abandoned. We'll also never know how things would have turned out if the Wii was a more powerful system. The PS2 kept getting support as there were over 100 million potential customers for a new game release. You also had the $99 PSTwo system making it an extremely budget friendly option when you factor in the absolutely huge number of $5-10 used games that were available.

 

[Physiognomonics]

Probably. Yet RE4 was better on GC and no PS2 games looked as good as Rogue Leader game.

PS2 had more memory and DVD storage which was a big benefit for 3rd parties. But ultimately the better hardware, for me, was GC, but it was harder because of more complex memory system (and less of it), and lack of DVD.

 

[tr1p1ex]

NHL Hitz on GC was fun. 2003 iirc.

Viewtiful Joe.

And the 3rd party games others have mentioned.

Not sure what the point is. I guess if you want to play random slop from back in the day then the PS2 is the place to play it?

But the rule of thumb has always been that 3rd party games are best on the most popular system.

 

[DreamcastSkies]

This was the general consensus at the time: GameCube controller was designed for 1st party titles and 3rd party games often felt better on PS2/Xbox controllers. 3rd party GameCube games didn't sell as well as 1st party titles. 3rd party GameCube games started to release months after they released on PS2/Xbox and often looked/felt inferior to those versions and then 3rd parties acted frustrated at supporting the GameCube while games underperformed on it.

Nintendo had to carve their own path. The Wii/DS were brilliant.

 

[Geometric-Crusher]

Probably. Yet RE4 was better on GC and no PS2 games looked as good as Rogue Leader game.

PS2 had more memory and DVD storage which was a big benefit for 3rd parties. But ultimately the better hardware, for me, was GC, but it was harder because of more complex memory system (and less of it), and lack of DVD.

cpu and gpu was weaker too
in short all the internal components of the console are one step below.

 

[6502]

funny I thought it was because of the mini dvd and that whole low polygon count thing.

How those polys were counted differed in the media releases, Sony would have you believe it was a magnitude stronger than Gamecube, it was opposite in reality.
The mini dvd may have cut back sound or cgi quality in very dense single disc games (I can't think of any examples though) but there are plenty of showcases demonstrating the GC superior performance (from Launch titles like Wave Race and Star Wars to later games like RE4 etc); plus there were loads of multidisc games.
There will be benefits to each system when there are different architectures, but anyone around at the time who wasn't blind accepts xbox>gc>ps2>dc

 

[tr1p1ex]

minidiscs were more responsive. That's one reason Nintendo went with them. Piracy maybe another.

GC also had the faster lower latency RAM.

DVDs had the storage advantage which was beneficial to cutscene lovers. And they had the price advantage as well.

 

[Alexios]

Hmm. any particular reason why you did not check tales of symphonia, killer 7 or resident evil 4? because there are quite a few examples where the difference is pretty big.

But going by your name description, I think I know why.

Viewtiful Joe, Star Wars Bounty Hunter, Beyond Good and Evil, Soulcalibur II, Sands of Time as mentioned and likely many more. Great exclusives/firsts on top so a worthwhile system with more great games than most people got to play back in the day (with attach rates of less than 10:1 at best)

 

[Holammer]

Sounds like a topic for Digital Foundry Retro video. Compare some of the better known third parties on PS2, Xbox & GC.
The GC like the N64 was an embarrassing flop so maybe some devs did not bring their A-game and wanted to focus on polishing the more important PS2 version, for a console with an x8 higher install base.

 

[Physiognomonics]

minidiscs were more responsive. That's one reason Nintendo went with them. Piracy maybe another.

GC also had the faster lower latency RAM.

DVDs had the storage advantage which was beneficial to cutscene lovers. And they had the price advantage as well.

I don't think this has never been useful for GC. Many thought it would (I remember it well) but eventually it didn't matter. That's why now they all use GDDR for CPU & GPU, because lower latency doesn't matter a lot for a console.

But yes minidiscs were awesome, also in PSP

 

[kevboard]

there are 2 types of GameCube third party games

type 1 are proper ports or (timed) exclusives, that completely leave the PS2 in the dust.
see Time Splitters 2, Resident Evil 4, Killer 7, Dragonball Z Budokai.

and type 2 are quick and dirty ports based on the PS2 versions, often haphazardly compressed down to fit on the Mini DVDs, and not properly adjusted to use the hardware.
these are most Ubisoft games, most EA games, and tons of late gen titles.


almost all multiplat ports however have a controller issue, because it has 3 fewer buttons and a totally idiotic button layout... as well as awful triggers

 

[Fbh]

I just hope they don't port RE4 over to PS2, so Shinji Mikami doesn't have to cut off his head

 

[Crayon]

If switch has 3rd party support more like GameCube that would be a good thing.

 

[Magic Carpet]

Never owned a Game Cube, Wii-U was my first Nintendo console, that wasn't a Gamebo/DS.
I hear about the Game Cube all my life and looking at youtues of the games I'm honestly glad I missed out on that console.

 

[SScorpio]

Never owned a Game Cube, Wii-U was my first Nintendo console, that wasn't a Gamebo/DS.
I hear about the Game Cube all my life and looking at youtues of the games I'm honestly glad I missed out on that console.

It had Mario Sunshine, Metroid Prime 1 & 2, Zelda Windwaker and Twilight Princess, and umm... umm... You can see the problem, it was in the middle of Nintendo's drought era. It did have some great 3rd parties like Rogue Squadron 2/3, RE4, Viewtiful Joe, Monkey Ball, etc.

I'd suggest modding your Wii U. You can natively run Gamecube games on it as it's an upgraded Wii which in turn was an upgraded Gamecube. So you already experiencing a lot of the Gamecube DNA. It wasn't a bad system, it just didn't have anywhere near the support of the PS2. But that thing dwarfed the Dreamcast, GameCube, and Xbox's total sales combined.

cpu and gpu was weaker too
in short all the internal components of the console are one step below.

The PS2 was less powerful than the GameCube and Xbox. But its graphics architecture let you achieve insane fillrates and pull some effects that you would otherwise see until the 360/PS3 era. Just look at what MGS2 is able to pull off. The Xbox couldn't properly reproduce the rain in the beginning tanker level, and there were other cinematic effects that were done via post processing which were also absent in the Xbox and PC ports.

 

[Knightime_X]

Laughs in Resident Evil 4, Soul Calibur 2, Viewtiful Joe 1 and 2

 

[cireza]

other cinematic effects

Effects are the cool shit you do after you have mastered all the basics. Which is not the case of the PS2 with its awful picture, ugly textures and aliasing.

The GC on the other hand pulled everything that really matters superbly well. SEGA and Namco were involved in its conception and it shows. By far the best piece of hardware Nintendo ever released.

 

[Zacfoldor]

Re4 more zombies my man.

 

[Geometric-Crusher]

The PS2 was less powerful than the GameCube

can you prove it?

 

[Unknown?]

GC was the last time Nintendo got 3rd party ports on par with the other guys.

 

[SScorpio]

can you prove it?

If you don't believe that's true what proof could I provide that hasn't been mainstream for the past 20+ years? Look at head to head comparisons of 3rd party games that released on the three consoles and the GC versions were normally very close in look to the Xbox versions with the PS2 versions tailing behind.

Raw performance the GC's GPU was 13GFLOPS while the PS2 was 6.2GFLOPS. The PS2 just had higher memory bandwidth that let it pull off effects that the GC and Xbox had built into their more modern GPUs but it was rare the extra work was put into place outside of a handful of games.

 

[kevboard]

can you prove it?

...uh...
its had twice the raw GPU power.

yes the PS2 had some tricks up its sleeves that others couldn't copy and games would need major adjustments when ported due to them, the main one being that it could just blast transparent textures on the screen like it was nothing, but in raw GPU power the GC was 2x as powerful and the Xbox more than 3x.

the CPU side is harder to compare, but there as well, the GameCube had a CPU clocked twice as fast.

 

[Deerock71]

can you prove it?

Honest to God...did you wake up in a horse stable with blurred vision and a terrible headache? Based on this thread, how do you know the internet even exists?

 

[Geometric-Crusher]

...uh...
its had twice the raw GPU power.

At that time, consoles were cpu-based, the flops metric doesn't apply in the same way as it does today
just think of rasterization and effects as a better metric.

 

[RagnarokIV]

Are you still trying to be the village idiot and doubling down on the Nintendo suck vibe? Cashing in on the tag?
Nobody will give you gold, try again as a normal member.

 

[Griffon]

Hey... I was gonna rush to defend the Gamecube... then I remembered some games... FF12, GoW2, Kingdom Hearts 2, Tekken 4/5, all looked and played amazingly. Better than any Gamecube counterpart really.

Yes Resident Evil looked better on GC, but that's about it.
One could add Zelda TP to the argument, but honestly the PS2 had better models, environments and textures in games like KH2 and FF12.


I think the general impression is that the PS2 was harder to make look good. Lesser renowned games had interlacing/flicker/filtering issues on CRTs that looked real bad when compared to your default cleaner Gamecube picture. But that doesn't affects the best PS2 developers who quickly found solutions to those issues.

 

[kevboard]

At that time, consoles were cpu-based, the flops metric doesn't apply in the same way as it does today

the GameCube beats the PS2 in basically every aspect... except 1

CPU: 485mhz vs 295mhz

GPU: 13 GFLOPS vs 6.2 GFLOPS

Memory size: 43MB vs 36MB
although the GC memory was split into multiple pools with specific usecases, while the PS2's was only split between CPU and framebuffer basically.
it's also hard to compare due to the texture compression tech used by the Gamecube, which in practice multiplied the amount and size of textures you could use massively compared to the PS2... which had to use 4MB without any decent compression to increase the texture resolution and diversity.

that is easily seen in RE4 btw. where Capcom had to massively reduce texture quality and variety, as well as reducing the variety of the general assets like trees.


Memory Bandwidth: THIS is where the PS2 gets interesting. because you can't really give it a simple GB/s number. the PS2 is designed to just fill the screen with layers upon layers of textures.
with a pixel fillrate of 1.2 Gigapixels and a famebuffer bandwidth of 38GB/s, stuff like Metal Gear Solid 2 was almost impossible to do on other hardware at the time without severe adjustments to some of the effects, especially in the tanker mission.

for comparison the GC only had a pixel fillrate of 0.648 Gigapixels and a framebuffer bandwidth of 18GB/s

so this scene from MGS2 would have brought the GameCube to its knees without redoing all the rain effects and framebuffer effects:

the Xbox was barely able to bruteforce MGS2, and ran slightly worse still. so even the by far most powerful system of that gen couldn't keep up with the sheer amount of transparencies, screen effects and layers of texture thrown on screen at once.
...

but on the other hand, this scene from RE4 was literally impossible on PS2, without an insane amount of asset variety reduction, polygon reductions, texture quality reduction and texture variety reduction:

 

[Geometric-Crusher]

I think the general impression is that the PS2 was harder to make look good. Lesser renowned games had interlacing/flicker/filtering issues on CRTs that looked real bad when compared to your default cleaner Gamecube picture. But that doesn't affects the best PS2 developers who quickly found solutions to those issues.

PS2 is not a console for developers with average qualifications, Burnout 1 for example despite having more technology than the Gamecube version looks worse but in 2002 the PS2 received support for progressive scan, Burnout 2 looks incredible.
A GameCube game worth comparing is RE0 and RE1, both are 480i games, and pre-rendered at 30fps, both have 10,000 polygon characters, Onimusha 1 and Onimusha 2 have the same resolution and character metrics but the PS2 hardware does 60fps.