Early Gamecube Breakdown: Hardware Special @ Gaming Target

Written by Kyle Williams on January 17, 2001

Special: mmhhh...candy in my lunch-box

The year 2000 has come and gone. Sony's PS2 was (as predicted) the must-have system of the holiday season, Sega continued to support their wildly popular Dreamcast, and Nintendo's 64-bit system has seen it's last new year. However, 2001 looks to be the real year of excitement for video game fans. Sony should finally be able to get PS2s to the drooling masses, Microsoft will release their enigmatic Xbox, and Nintendo will debut both the Game Boy Advance and GameCube. "What is this GameCube," you might ask? Well, let's take a look...

Simply put, the Nintendo GameCube is the latest and greatest of the Nintendo Home Entertainment Systems. The cube itself looks strangely like a trendy little handbag, but it is what's inside that counts. The system boasts a 405MHz IBM PowerPC microprocessor ('Gekko'), a dedicated 202.5MHz graphics chip ('Flipper'), and a custom 16-bit sound processor. Nintendo is providing developers with a dedicated 24MB of IT-SRAM to the Flipper graphics chip and a secondary cache implemented in the Gekko. We will again be seeing the memory card, this time at 4MB (half of the standard PS2 memory card). There is also a planned adapter that will increase the memory card storage to 64MB. Nintendo is also planning ahead and providing three expansion ports on the underside of the console: two serial ports and a high speed parallel port.

Nintendo is sticking with the four-controller port layout that they used on the N64, but is drastically changing the controller itself. At first glance, the GameCube controller resembles the Playstation's Dual Shock, and in fact, shares some of the same features. Like the Sony controller, the Nintendo controller now features two analog sticks and built-in rumble support and the memory card slot has been moved to the console. The controller itself is fleshed out with a directional pad, multiple underside analog triggers, and five more buttons on the face: Start, A, B, X, and Y. Along with the typical corded controller that we have all come to know and love, Nintendo is also working on a wireless version of the controller that they are calling the Wavebird. The wireless version looks structurally identical to the wired version with about a 10-meter range. On an interesting note, the Game Boy Advance will be able to plug into the controller port as well, providing each player with a private color screen. This should turn out to be especially useful for applications such as multiplayer card games.

The big question that is on every gamer's mind is, "What is Nintendo doing about networking?" All we can say for sure is, "Something." It is a known fact that Nintendo is producing both a low-bandwidth 56k modem and a broadband adapter, either of which can plug into one of the serial expansion ports. It is unsure, however, as to how Nintendo plans to support the network hardware and when they plan to ship it. It would be nice to see the network hardware available at launch, with a NintendoNet launching at the same time, perhaps with Mario Kart online released to support it. That is probably a long shot, but you can bet that Nintendo is cooking something up, and just the idea of being able to play Perfect Dark 2 against four (or even 64) of your friends around the world is enough to sell a million systems. We just need to hope that Nintendo's broadband network plans don't go the way of the 64DD.

Any and all of this could change between now and later this year when the system ships in Japan, but I wouldn't be to worried about that. Anything that is changed between now and then is sure to only improve on the overall product. Nintendo is known for taking what works and improving on it, and it looks like they are going to do it again.

We, as those that play the video games, know that as impressive as hardware may be, it doesn't mean anything without great software to support it (remember the Jaguar?). Tomorrow we will take a brief look at some of the games that we can pretty much count on to secure the GameCube a foothold in the industry. Until then, go save the world...