A Cube of Wonder

Written by Daniel Ekman on September 07, 2000

A Cube of Wonder: The story of the mythical toaster

Well, well... I think that almost all of us Nintendo fans have at some point in our lives doubted if "Dolphin" would deliver. More than a year ago when I first heard its codename announced from the floor at E3 I started wondering, "Why doesn't Nintendo show us anything, PS2 will kill it!" Of course, Nintendo showed us the Gekko chip, told us some specs and gave us promises about a brighter future, but nothing really concrete; nothing that one could feel would be "it" in the future of gaming.

No, Nintendo left us in the dark, stumbling, wondering. I for one wanted to desperately believe in Nintendo's superiority, but somewhere far back in my mind I had my doubts... I had fears about Sony taking over the whole gaming scene, making Nintendo squiggle in a corner chipping for air like a fish stranded on a deserted beach. Naturally, I still told all of my friends that Nintendo would show everyone who was the best, and I said that Nintendo would make all the clouds of doubt dissipate in front of our eyes in the near future. However, as no announcement came, the dark voices in the back of my head started to grow in ferocity, making it ever harder to ignore them. Still, I persisted.

I looked for new tidbits of information about the new console for several weeks, which turned into several months of browsing the Internet and phoning companies. When I found something I cheered audibly, and when some bad news about any other console leaked out I also cried out joyfully. Nevertheless, the voices grew even stronger... why? Well, the scraps of information weren't really so much to be happy about - it was just me wanting them to be great scraps and so my mind made them great - and also the bad news about, for example, PS2 wasn't really that bad... and when I heard about PS2's Emotion Engine, that Final Fantasy was in the works - and not only one version - and when I saw the footage from MGS2 shown at this year's E3 while at the same time hearing nothing about the Dolphin, I thought that Nintendo was in deep trouble.

OK, I'll admit that of course the company would survive - given all the loyal consumers and the enormous success of the GB and its follow-ups - but what I did care about the most the days after E3 was if the company's next console would deliver the goods. I heard about all of those cool games being made for PS2, all of those developers signing contracts with Sony, and when I put my ear to the ground trying to make out the sound of Nintendo's cavalry... there was no sound to be heard.

I was going insane. Fortunately, the remedy was close at hand; Space World looked like it'd be the place where Nintendo would show the world its console in all its glory, spill all the beans and wow us with the new Mario. People would have the opportunity to guide characters through brilliant games on the next-generation console and I couldn't be happier about it. Then it happened: Nintendo announced it wouldn't have any playable Dolphin software at the show. In a message to the public Nintendo announced that Dolphin would be showed on the 24th of August at the pre-show event. When the company further announced that it would share the dedicated hour to Dolphin and GBA information, most people figured that the Dolphin would get a whooping 5 minutes or so on stage...

Boom! The door closed on my sanity and everything went black. I spiraled down towards oblivion, with no guardrails and no flashy helmet packed with fluffy-poodle-wool that could help to soften my fall. I felt betrayed... hadn't Nintendo just promised some weeks before that they would in fact have playable demos at Space World? I didn't know what to do, and as the desperate soul that I was, I sought comfort in my mother's arms (yes, I did travel 250 kilometers just to reach her). As luck would have it, my mother knows everything about the videogames industry and told me - while rocking the cradle I lay in - that Nintendo would be the winner; Nintendo was the company with the innovativeness and the foresight to make games that people would crave in the future; Nintendo was the company that I had trusted for the last 14 years of my life, the company that had made the games that I so cherished...

After the visit to my mother I was resurrected, hence starting to hope again. And, when the 24th of August sneaked upon us, I was ready for whatever was to come.

I wasn't able to attend Space World, hence sitting in front of my computer browsing almost every site covering the event. The first thing I learned was the console's name: Nintendo GAMECUBE. After an initial shock I got used to the name, but then I saw the picture. What I saw was a microwave in mini format, and it took me a while to realize that this really was the new Nintendo console. However, it didn't stop there, but pictures of the controller soon followed... I was now trembling on my chair; could Nintendo really have messed this up? After closer inspection of the controller, though, I found out that it was mostly the color that disturbed me, and after having seen a silver controller, a black, and also a gold one I was quite happy. Well, that "happy" was nothing compared to what I soon became; the first pictures rolled out. My jaw dropped to the floor but soon I understood that this wasn't in-game graphics. Hah, that was what I thought. Soon I read that it was in fact real-time graphics and that GameCube had no problems whatsoever handling it. What the hell, I thought. That was when the movies arrived.

BOOM! The movies damped down like thunder fists from heaven and I almost lost my footing. I wasn't at the show in person, but it didn't really matter; when I saw the first movies of software running on GameCube... I almost fell out of my chair. At first I just thought, "Well, this looks really good," but then Link came rushing in with sword in hand. The following battle sequence between him and Ganondorf is the most saliva-inducing thing I've ever witnessed. If you also throw into the mix that one was shown glimpses of Samus Aran, a Star Wars game up and running, a real-time Luigi sequence with all the effects known to man applied without any slowdown, and several other clips with famous franchises, then you can begin to wonder just how much you want this thing in your home, and in your home right now.

I had been utterly unprepared for such a showing. Everything about it screamed, "Nintendo is back, and back with a vengeance!" so much that my head vibrated. I don't care that Nintendo told us that it wasn't necessarily footage from actual games in development; I know what the company is cooking, and it doesn't smell bad, not bad at all. Just imagine the superb games that'll be coming out in the future for the console that we all will hopefully come to cherish and love, imagine what it'll be like clashing swords with Ganondorf and riding the waves with your jet-ski in Wave Race. I don't think that words can correctly encapsulate the feeling of longing that I have... Call me a psycho, or call me Nintendo Crazy.