GoKawiil
Tech News
Nintendo's ongoing "Customer Appreciation" sale, running through September 26th, has dropped the digital price of Metroid Prime Remastered for Switch and Switch 2 to $27.99 at Amazon, Best Buy, and Walmart, down from a physical retail price of about $42. The sale also includes the Metroid Prime 1-3: A Visual Retrospective hardcover book, cut from $49.99 to $28.50 at Amazon and Walmart.
A new open-source project has produced a complete, byte-identical decompilation of the November 2004 debug prototype of Resident Evil 4 for GameCube, covering the main executable and all 114 overlay modules. The repository includes roughly 555,000 lines of reconstructed C/C++ code and 33,000 lines of headers, but no original game assets or disc data—users must supply their own dumped disc images to build and verify the match.
Engadget writers reflected on beloved GameCube games as the console marks its 25th anniversary, highlighting titles such as The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess. One writer argued the GameCube version, with Link's original left-handed orientation, is the definitive edition compared to the mirrored Wii release built for motion controls.
A retrospective analysis compares the PlayStation 2 and Nintendo GameCube, noting the PS2 sold 160 million units globally versus the GameCube's 21.7 million, even though the GameCube was technically more powerful. The piece attributes PS2's dominance to broader adult-oriented marketing, DVD playback functionality, backward compatibility, and a massive library of nearly 4,500 titles compared to the GameCube's more limited third-party support.
A team of developers has completed a full decompilation of Super Smash Bros Melee, converting Nintendo's 2001 GameCube fighter into readable C code that compiles into a binary identical to the original main.dol. The project, hosted on the doldecomp/melee GitHub page, took over six years and reportedly used OpenAI's Astra to help finish the work.
Volunteer programmers have completed a 100% decompilation of Super Smash Bros Melee, according to the decomp.dev database, meaning the GameCube game's original code has been fully reverse-engineered. It joins other decompiled titles like Twilight Princess, Pikmin, and Animal Crossing, giving developers a legal path to build unofficial ports without using Nintendo's copyrighted code.
A comparison of the two leading retro emulators finds that Dolphin, which handles GameCube games, is generally considered more accurate and easier to run than PCSX2, the PS2 emulator, despite PCSX2 covering a slightly larger percentage of its console's library. Both are free, open-source tools available on Windows, macOS and Linux, with Dolphin also supporting Android, and neither requires top-end graphics hardware to run games at 4K/60fps.
A retrospective look back at Nintendo's GameCube console highlights how it became the company's second worst-selling system ever, moving just 21.74 million units. The analysis points to a limited game library, heavy dependence on first-party titles, and the omission of DVD playback as key factors behind its poor commercial performance.
Hobbyist developers have successfully ported Windows NT 4.0 to Nintendo's GameCube console, building on groundwork laid by a project called Entii for Workcubes hosted on GitHub. The feat was recently showcased in a video by Jiga Tech, demonstrating the modding process used to get Microsoft's decades-old operating system running on the aging Nintendo hardware.
As the GameCube marks its 25th anniversary, its distinctive controller remains widely praised despite Nintendo trying newer input designs across later consoles. Every Nintendo home console since has officially supported the GameCube pad, and Nintendo has re-released it in multiple editions, including for use with Switch.
A retrospective analysis argues that Nintendo's worst-performing console wasn't the GameCube or Wii U, but the Virtual Boy, a mid-1990s system that was discontinued in less than a year and sold far fewer units than either of those later machines. Despite its poor reception at launch, the piece notes a recent resurgence has made the Virtual Boy more accessible to try today than it has been in decades.
The Panasonic Q combined a GameCube with a DVD and CD player in one chassis, but the two functions operated as separate systems rather than a true integration—game audio stayed on standard analog output while home theater features like Dolby Digital and DTS applied only to movie playback. Users had to manually toggle between gaming and DVD modes with a hardware switch, and the console shipped with matching Panasonic-branded controller and remote. Today, original units sell for well over $1,000 due to their rarity and collector interest.