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GameCube Hits the Street
boozie writes: "Reports began surfacing yesterday afternoon concerning GameCube goods beginning to trickle into the hands of Japanese consumers...Today we received the first pictures of the finished unit and its associated packaging as sold to a store employee in Tokyo."
Nintendo Site: http://www.nintendo.com/systems/gcn/gcn_overview.j sp
= Disassembled+Gamecube&inc=gcopen.inc
Disassembled GameCube: http://www.lik-sang.com/catalog/master.php?navbar
Info on GameCube Console from GameCube Central: http://tomoeslab.virtualave.net/consoleinfo.html
The official launch date is 14.september.2k1
For those that think the GameCube is too directed at kids, you should know that from know on it will be only system that gets the Resident Evil/Biohazard series of games.
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Movies: http://www.capcom.co.jp/bio/publish/images/index.
Info: http://cube.ign.com/news/38266.html
Here's some release dates for GC
Luigi's Mansion and Wave Race: Blue Storm: Sept. 14 along with the release of the system.
Pikmin is going to be released on Oct. 26
SSBM is going ot be released in November 2001...
Does it go on forever?
It will be $199.95 upon release in the US. That includes the main unit and one controller. I may have read that it also comes with a memory card, but I'm not sure about that.
http://cube.ign.com/news/35091.html
It's pretty much tradition that a console launches in the country that designed it. (I doub t it's a voltage issue.) One reason I think is because game hardware companies need to gear their software and other stuff towards a different market when they launch in another country.
It's the same for the MS Xbox, it'll launch here before Japan. MS has a whole team dedicated to just the Japanese launch. I know they are making different controllers to suit the "Japanese style of play" and I'm assuming they'll have different launch titles as well.
It's not "there's always someone better than you", it's "there's alway someone more HARDCORE than you."
I've played around with the Game Cube dev kit a bit, and if the controllers I used were any indication people over ten years of age will have trouble holding these things. They're SO small and lacking in substance. I imagine this will be like the Game Boy Advance in that you MUST buy a peripheral (new controller) to really enjoy the thing. (With the GBA you basically have to buy some light dongle like Nyko's worm light.) If you want a mental picture of what they look like, imagine a rectangular purple bar about 3 inches thick molded like a play station controller gone horribly wrong. The analog stick just protrudes off at the oddest place on the left hand grip area. Of course, the xbox controller is worse since it deceptively looks useful and comfortable, but is exactly the opposite.
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It takes a while for the Japanese games to be translated to english, and even longer for new English games to be made.
That and Nintendo probably has their factories running full tilt to just satisfy Japanese demand right now. Adding in NA might cause another Sony-Style mislaunch of the product.
Power in Japan is 100v, 60 or 50 Hz, and uses NA-style plugs. Very little would be needed to adapt it to handle our 120v system. Likely nothing would need changing at all.
Check here for all your international power questions.
If you could be told what you can see or read, then it follows that you could be told what to say or think - BoC