Was the Gamecube really that disliked? I may be biased but I recall it being received pretty favourably (if not able to stand up to the PS2 juggernaut and XBOX's amazing online) and it was a mainstay of "beloved underrated console" discussion for ages alongside the Dreamcast.
Assorted things I personally remember:
- Super Mario Sunshine had mixed reception
- Zelda: Wind Waker was negatively received when it was unveiled because the bright and colorful cartoony tone clashed with everything that came before, plus it came out right when general western pop culture was in a place that was a polar opposite of bright and colorful
- no L button
- Animal Crossing was pretty popular, but among its own audience
- no Rockstar Games at all when they were at their peak
- no DDR at its peak aside from one full of Mario songs, nor any rhythm games except for a tiny selection that weren't very good
I see Gamecube spoken of well today, but the only two games that seem to have survived the ages as universally well-regarded are Smash Bros. Melee and Metroid Prime. Wind Waker seems to be well respected, too, except for the sailing. I don't know, I personally played Wind Waker for about an hour and hated it. Nice job sticking a zero-fun stealth section right at the beginning of the game that just sucks out whatever energy and motivation I had going in.
At the risk of going further off-topic it was very much maligned, there's a reason the PS2 and Xbox ate its lunch that generation, and it plus the Wii essentially cost Nintendo the graphics-obsessed gamer market, which worked out for them fine but also empowered Microsoft.
The only company who had a harder time during that console generation was Sega, who never tried again, it went so bad for them.
Yes, exactly. Gamecube, ironically, had some of the best graphics that generation, but it didn't matter at a time when realism was the big buzzword. Super Mario Sunshine looks terrific and graphically aged extremely well, but that game didn't feature textures where you could see every single little pore in a normal human's face, so nobody cared.
The common thread between Gamecube and the Star Wars prequel trilogy is that they both seem to be loved by zoomers, because they grew up with them. I only saw Episode 1 once, and I was still very young, but even I can't remember much about it. I must not have enjoyed it all that much, because I know I didn't care about Star Wars after that. It didn't completely put me off of the franchise, but I was no longer intrigued when I saw the logo, or heard news about Episode 2. In fact, I don't remember much hype about Episode 2 at all. I don't really remember anything about Episode 2. I don't remember any of my friends talking about it at the time, and I don't remember any specific advertisements. It just seemed to have come and gone.
So I decided to look up merch on Google Images for Episode 2, just to see if anything could jog my memory, and I found out that
only one tie-in game came out for it. It's a Game Boy Advance game that had very bad reviews. Game Informer, which is Gamestop's in-house advertisement magazine, gave it a 1/10. That's dismal. Nothing jogged my memory, by the way.
I think Episode 3 was the best received out of the originals, even though it boils down to yet another schlocky action movie. I don't remember a lot of discussion surrounding it, either, other than apprehension about the franchise going forward based on that corny NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO thing. That seemed to be the prime takeaway from that entire film.
Also, "NOOOOOOOOOO" being translated as "Do not want" on a bootleg copy floating around became a meme in and of itself:
Seeing people actually defend these and cope with excuses when others say they're bad is one of those situations that makes me feel like I did switch universes back in 2012. Like, the prequels weren't total cancer, but they weren't good movies, and there were times when you couldn't get away from people mocking Jar Jar Binks and NOOOOOOOOOOO online.
