As the Nintendo GameCube turns 20, nostalgia for its absolutely killer library of games is at an all-time high. But there's another reason it's one of the best consoles ever made: the actual design of the thing. It might not have the luxurious aesthetic appeal of the minimalist, monolithic PS2 or the gliding lines of the Dreamcast, but it's attractive in its own unique way. Granted, at 6 inches long, 6 inches wide, and 4.3 inches tall, it's not actually a cube. But the neat, unassuming squareness of the thing is a big part of its power. It's chunky and practical: a machine for playing video games on, not sitting under your TV looking pretty.
There's something incredibly inviting about the GameCube too. Those four built-in controller ports placed front and centre, primed and ready for multiplayer. The handle, letting you easily grab the thing and cart it over to a friend's house or move it to another room without any fuss. It's solidly constructed too. In 2003, G4techTV put a GameCube, PS2, and Xbox through a series of gruelling durability tests, and Nintendo's console survived the worst of it. Most consoles, especially today, are designed to sit alongside Blu-ray players and ultra-thin TVs, to feel like cool, contemporary entertainment devices. But the GameCube is unashamedly a games console, and there's something endearing about that.
It was joyously small as well. Reading reviews from the time, almost every one marvels at how wonderfully compact it is—another reason it's such a perfect social console. You can sling this thing in a backpack and not even notice it's there. The colours are also a huge part of its appeal. The indigo GameCube is the most common model, but it was also available in jet black, platinum, pearl white, and best of all, spice orange. This colourway was only available in South Korea and Japan, but it's arguably the peak of the console's aesthetic. That vibrant, slightly fluorescent orange is a delight for the eyes, and somehow perfectly captures the spirit of the console. Spice orange really should have become a Nintendo standard.
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And don't forget the controller. Admittedly, the large, colourful buttons didn't do much to convince people who thought the GameCube was too childish and toy-like otherwise. But c'mon, it's one of the best controllers of all time. It has fewer buttons than its competitors, which was a headache for developers porting multiplatform games. But it feels deliciously smooth and comfortable in your hands, the analogue sticks are solid, and that oversized, glossy A button—bigger than everything else on the controller—is incredibly bold and, again, inviting. You just wanna slam that thing when you see it. The design is very much of its time, but there's no denying it's a classic. Shame about that tiny, awkward D-pad.
The GameCube has aged remarkably gracefully. The sheer uniqueness of it as an object has helped it weather the decades, and I still think it looks incredible. It's a true original, and one of the boldest things Nintendo has ever done from a design point of view. The company could have tried to imitate the imposing, oh-so-serious look of its rivals, the Xbox and PlayStation 2, but it did its own thing. I have a lot of fondness for that squat little almost-cube—with its tiny, tiny discs—and it helped that you could play some of the best games of the generation on there too. Alas, the size and cooling demands of modern console hardware means we might never see a square-shaped console again, and that's a damn shame.
