I was hoping you would chime in!!! I was origianally thinking GC but I wanted to see what others had to say. The kids games seem fun. I guess to me thats what its all about. I could care less for the blood and stuff like that. Fun, fun, fun! You have yet to steer me wrong!

Now i'm pissed we got you what we got you for xmas! haha. I wish i'd have known... i'd have gotten you guys a GC! But anyhow, there's plenty of adult games for the GC. PLENTY. People have mischaracterized it simply because the Nintendo classic license "kid" type games are so freaking GREAT they outshine all the others. I'll bring some games. PM me or email me what you end up getting so i know what to bring.

You can always bring back what you got me and get the GC.

I'm glad Loren chimed in with the poly count figures. Since his company actually writes games for these consoles, his word is authoritative.

We like our gamecube, but I haven't spent enough time around an Xbox to compare directly.

I can compare to Tod's PS2 though, and I have the following comparisons to make:

On the Gamecube, certain games (not all of them, but enough of them) have an anamorphic widescreen mode. Very few, if any, PS2 games have this that I've seen. This is really cool if you have a widescreen television.

The PS2 pushes fewer pixels to the screen than the Gamecube. The Gamecube renders all 480 lines to the screen, the PS2 renders only 240 lines. So gamecube games tend to appear higher-rez.

The reason people like me say that the Gamecube controller is better than the PS2 controller is because of the layout of the action buttons. On the gamecube, there is a large green A button and a small red B button. On the PS2, all the buttons are the same color, shape and size, so you're never sure which button you're supposed to press. When I play sports games on the PS2, I'm always passing when I mean to shoot, and shooting when I mean to pass. This never happens on the GameCube, there's no doubt about which button I'm supposed to press for any given action.

The PS2 has about a billion games available for it. The Gamecube has very few games available for it.

So, despite the technical superiority of the Gamecube hardware, the number of available games is an issue. Some developers are simply not bothering to write games for the Gamecube at all. So if you want to have the biggest selection of games, get the PS2.

However... There are plenty of good games for the Gamecube right now, and since the GC is so cheap, it's worth it just to get those really good games.

Specific games you MUST play on the GameCube:

- Super Monkey Ball 1. (SMB2 is nice, but I liked SMB1 better.)

- Star Wars: Rogue Squadron 2: Rogue Leader. The single best gaming experience I've ever had. You know the scene at the end of Return of the Jedi where the screen just EXPLODES with enemy ships? You actually play in that scene, with all the enemy ships and everything. This is where the poly counts of the gamecube really shine. You have to take out entire squadrons of fighters and bombers, then singlehandedly bring down two stardestroyers, the hard way. Absolutely mind-blowing.

I don't have Rogue Squadron 3 yet, I'm told it's good. I'll probably get it for Xmas...

Wish i could. already been shipped. I blame Kelly.

Always blame Kelly.

Thank you for the game suggestions Tony. I'll check them out.

Absolutely, Conker was a great game.

From what I saw on Rare's website, there will be a sequel to Conker. But alas, this is not the game I was referring to. I've never even played it.

The PS2 has about a billion games available for it. The Gamecube has very few games available for it.

Technically, if you count the entire library of Gameboy games (Gameboy, GB Color, and GBA) that are playable on the GC via the "Gameboy Player," the GC has the most games of any console in history

Technically, if you count the entire library of Gameboy games

Okay, but I didn't get a console system so I could play handheld games blown up to 40 inches wide.

Although it brings to mind another point... If piracy is your thing, I get the impression that it's fairly easy to pirate PS2 games with a DVD burner and the right hacks. Gamecube went with a disc format that was nonstandard in size so that it would be more difficult to pirate. I was impressed with their design decision in this regard, they got the best of both worlds: The disks were cheaper to reproduce than the old Nintendo 64 cartridges, could store a lot more data, but were nearly as difficult to pirate as the cartridges were.

gc is now able to boot games over an ethernet connection. streamed from a pc. very cool. but also very niche

Interesting point. heheh. If piracy is your thing then you want the x-box. I know way to many people that have filled their upgraded xbox drives with games. It's too easy with the x-box. I don't know of any piracy stuff going on with the GC... but i haven't looked. Anyone know if it's even possible? The network hacking stuff going on for it is very interesting though.

EDIT: ah, you answered my question Caleb. =]

gc is now able to boot games over an ethernet connection. streamed from a pc. very cool. but also very niche

I didn't know about this. Very interesting. I didn't even know there was an ethernet adaptor for the GC.

Actually, I'd be happy with just using an ethernet connection to store saved games. Those little memory cards aren't cheap, and every time I go to the store to get a new one, they're out of them.

hey, i do what i can

if i recall, those memory cards are a normal flash storage standard. i havent looked into it, but thats the word i remember from the days around the gc release.

Yeah, I think they're just Compact Flash. But in a proprietary form factor with a proprietary connector.

tony, this might be of interest to you

google cache of a review, as lik-sang is blocked here at work

a place to buy

Cool, that's pretty neat!

Also, I see that the prices for the memory cards themselves has gone down considerably from when we first got the 'cube.

GameCube

Multiple reasons, one being innovative and different games. Case in point would be Super Smash Bros. Awesome 4 player "fighting" game, that is not anywhere close to Tekken in how they play. The controls are very easy to learn, but still annow for enough specific control for some interestign moves. And, it is pretty kid safe, while being fun for adults too. It gets more play time on my system then Soul Calibur 2 does.

And no, the GameCube isn't kid oreinted. Nintendo just manages to release some games fun for all ages. But there are Rated M games that are also a blast. Eternal Darkness is a must have. Better then any Resident Evil game, for the way it also screws with you while you play the game.

The XBox has quite a few games I can also get for my PC, or that have very similar titles on the other consoles. I will pick keyboard and mouse any day over the XBox controller for games like Halo. I do own one for one game though, that being Steel Battalion.

PS2. It has a good selection of games, but I just haven't justified the cost yet. Quantity to me just means way to many games I will want to buy and play, and my GameCube already has several games I still need to beat.

I still think that Gran Turismo is the PS's raison d'etre. Even more so once GT4 comes out. And the new steering wheel, which will supposedly have a shifter and 2.5 turns lock to lock.

But I didn't realize that GCs were so cheap these days. At $100 I may have to get one.

I do own one for one game though, that being Steel Battalion.

Ditto on that one. I bought SB before I even bought an Xbox. The only reason I got the Xbox was for that game.
The Xbox is great, and I've got a lot of entertainment out of it with other games as well.

Picking just one system is tough for me, there are pros and cons to each of them, and I honestly can't think of a reason why (or why not) to get one over the other. Sure, you all have made valid arguments for going with a certain system, but I think it really comes down to the type of "gamer" the intended party is.

As for myself, I'll be picking up a GC and a PS2 sometime in the next few months. There are just too many games that I want to play that are spread out over all three systems, and I would rather not be limited.

And no, the GameCube isn't kid oriented.

That's true today. But when I first bought the Gamecube, their entire selection of games was all kids games except for Rogue Leader and one jetski game.

Part of that perception comes from the fact that Nintendo consoles are the only place you can get the Maro and Luigi games. At Gamecube launch, Nintendo made sure that their cash cows were all lined up to come out of the gate, and their cash cows were all kids games. It took a while for more adult-oriented games to come out for the Gamecube, but now there is a good selection of them. Still not as many as PS2, but a good selection nonetheless.

I will pick keyboard and mouse any day over the XBox controller for games like Halo

Agreed. I CAN NOT do FPSes on console, other than Metroid for some reason. I get sick playing Halo, which has never happened to me with any FPS. Does anyone know if it's possible to hook up a mouse and keyboard to the XBox? I know we can on our Dev Stations, but i would love to play Halo with a mouse.

Does anyone know if it's possible to hook up a mouse and keyboard to the XBox?

I specifically asked one of the Halo developers that exact question at E3 that year.

His answer was: Even if there were a hardware mouse you could buy for the Xbox (there wasn't one at that time), the game itself would need to be specifically coded to take advantage of that control input. And Halo isn't.

Except for Phantasy Star Online, Microsoft specificially disallows keyboard/mice input devices to be used with games on the XBox.

Something to do with wanting the XBox to not becone a PC.

Though, there are PS2 titles, like Half Life, that allow a normal USB keyboard and mouse to be used. The USB ports on a PS2 don't make me think of it as a PC.

The XBox controller ports are all USB. The memory cards are USB mass storage devices with a special ID. Some people have hacked cables to fit a USB memory key into the controllers. Look at the Mega X-Key as an example.

I'm aware of that, and I actually own a Mega X-Key. Microsoft will not allow a game to be published with support for a keyboard though. Well, at least this was what I was told when asking at E3. Phantasy Star Online is the exception to the rule.

Sorry. It was for the general thread and wasn't specifically aimed at you

I heard that they don't want any games to have mouse/keyboard support as well. PSO was an exception as you need it to play.

If anybody wants to give it a try then get or make the adapter for the Mega X-Key. You can then plug a standard USB keyboard in and see if it'll do anyway. Unlikely it will though but you never know.

You can then plug a standard USB keyboard in and see if it'll do anyway.

Worked for me, but only because I had Linux installed on my XBox. It has no effect in any game I have tried. Based on the fact that the controller needs a driver if plugged into a PC tells me they went with USB only for the protocal standard, and didn't use any normal profiles.

The XBox controller is actually a hacked HID class item. The main changes are that the interface class ID and subclass ID have been changed to 'X' and 'B' respectively. There are a couple of other minor changes but the changed class ID means you need another driver to support it under a normal computer.

It's basically a reasonably quick and simple way of Microsoft ensuring that you don't use XBox controllers on a PC and cheap PC controllers on a XBox.

for a good coder, it should be possible to write something that patches the xbe, or replaces it and calls it later, that sends keyboard presses as joystick buttons. and mouse movement as an analog stick. you would be limited to six digital buttons though. and not many games allow you to fully map the buttons. stupid games