Instead, the GameCube spat out neutered versions of its ancestors' masterpieces, as though Wave Race: Blue Storm were some stillborn echo of the N64 classic, a half-baked corpse bobbing limply on digital waves, devoid of the spiritual vigor that made its predecessor bearable. Let’s not even talk about the complete and utter decimation of Rare Ltd., whose exodus to Microsoft transformed it into a Kafkaesque shell of its former self. Their creativity, their brilliance—crushed beneath the weight of corporate indifference, leaving us with the soulless husk of what could have been.

And then there's Yamauchi. Oh, Yamauchi was pissed, and rightly so. His contempt for this console, this failure of cosmic proportions, was palpable. The man saw into the heart of the abyss, and what he saw there was the GameCube. The ruinous console. A device that could only inspire ire, derision, and an urge to fling it across the room—though at 6'2", I would do so with a certain grace, sending it sailing into the void where it belongs.

In the grand metaphysical schema, the GameCube represents stasis—Yamauchi’s unspoken fury was that of a man witnessing the betrayal of the eternal dialectic between chaos and order. The GameCube was not ruinous; it was worse. It was safe. And safety is the death of all transcendence.

If the GameCube represents a metaphysical retreat, then Mario Kart: Double Dash and Wind Waker are the banal capstones of its failure, encapsulations of Nintendo's cynical abandonment of intellectual rigor in favor of infantilized pandering. The GameCube, particularly with these games, symbolizes the hollowing out of a once-pioneering philosophy, giving way to surface-level indulgence—barely even simulacra of Nintendo’s past excellence.

Mario Kart: Double Dash is not only aesthetically vapid, but its very essence is one of retreat. There is no dialectical tension between precision and chaos, no deeper engagement with what a racing game could be. Instead, it takes the most pedestrian elements of Mario Kart 64, strips them of their kinetic vibrancy, and packages them in a gimmick—two drivers, one kart—that reeks of creative exhaustion. It’s a farce of multiplayer mechanics, offering nothing but hollow distraction, an opiate for the masses who mistake redundancy for comfort. Nishida would scowl at its utter lack of philosophical ambition, its dearth of any attempt at existential or even mechanistic inquiry. The game is a perfect reflection of a culture that has embraced form without essence, movement without meaning.

And then there is Wind Waker, whose cell-shaded art style is nothing but a smokescreen to obscure its shallow core. Fans will defend its aesthetic as 'bold,' but this reeks of the cultural malaise Takeuchi wrote about in his critique of Japan's postwar reconciliation with the West. This game reflects a Nintendo that no longer knows itself, an aestheticized self-denial masquerading as innovation. Wind Waker is an abandonment of the darker, more spiritually resonant tones that characterized Ocarina of Time and Majora's Mask. Where those games engaged with time, death, and despair, Wind Waker gives us a breezy, feel-good adventure designed for children, as if our collective intelligence has regressed. The oceans stretch wide, but they are metaphorically shallow—a perfect symbol for a world designed to dazzle without depth.

And what of Metroid Prime? The game was hailed as Nintendo’s foray into maturity, an attempt to offer something darker, grittier—but this is where the desperation of the fanbase becomes truly unbearable. It’s lauded for no other reason than the fact that it wasn’t a cartoon. A first-person shooter draped in the trappings of Metroid lore, developed not by Nintendo's internal geniuses but by Retro Studios, a spiritual successor to Iguana Entertainment, known primarily for Turok: Dinosaur Hunter. The very idea that Metroid Prime was heralded as a triumph shows how thirsty Nintendo fans were for anything remotely resembling a 'mature' experience. Yet, strip away the veneer of the Metroid IP, and you're left with a mechanically sound, yet utterly derivative shooter. The game adds little to the genre, and less to the franchise's legacy.

The Nintendo fandom has much to answer for. In their blind adulation, they have allowed mediocrity to fester. They excused Double Dash's failings, embraced Wind Waker's shallowness, and exalted Metroid Prime as some savior of their artistic legitimacy, when in truth, it was a far cry from the richness of its 2D predecessors. Like the shambling corpses in Takeuchi's writings, they cling to a hollowed-out tradition, unaware that what they love is but a ghost of what once was.

The GameCube's legacy is not just one of poor design and underwhelming titles—it is a reflection of a fanbase content with the minimum, willing to be complicit in the decline of a once-great cultural force

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5598297&forum_id=2).#48185587)