The Nintendo Gamecube stands out for its library of innovative new ideas and impressive sequels, but behind these triumphs lurks a host of the worst Gamecube games. These imprinted themselves on the minds of the elders – us 30- and 40-something folks – who spent their hard-earned cash on a new game, clicked the disc into place, and watched their hopes of joy and excitement wither away in front of them. You can count yourself lucky if you missed out on these – or not so lucky, since we’re forcing them into your consciousness now in our worst Gamecube games list.
Shadow the Hedgehog
What happens if you give a hedgehog a gun and teach him obscenities? Probably not much in real life, but in Sega world, you get Shadow the Hedgehog. Shadow is a substantial departure from everything Sonic tried previously, which is saying a lot after the two Adventure games, and it just didn’t turn out well. It’s a third-person shooter game that doesn’t know how to make weapons and action feel good, and it all unfolds across a series of bland stages with dull enemies.
Not that it matters. Shadow’s swearing made him a certified edgehog and won him a legion of devoted fans.
Monsters Inc Scream Arena
Scream Arena is a decent mini-game idea that developer Radical Entertainment tried stretching into a full game concept. It doesn’t work very well. Your goal is throwing laugh balls – no that’s really the name – at opposing monsters until the laugh meter fills up, and you win. The playable roster is a fun nod to the Pixar movie, but with limited abilities and clunky movement, that’s about all the fun there is here.
Disney’s Magical Mirror Starring Mickey Mouse
Magical Mirror had the makings of something interesting – a point-and-click mystery game stuffed with whimsy, starring the iconic mouse. It sort of lives up to that promise in the first 10 minutes or so, before turning into a frustrating, directionless mess.
The production values are excellent, which is good considering you’ll be stuck in the same place for a long time, trying to figure out the overly obtuse solution to a puzzle. Once you do, it’s time to do it all over again. Yay(?)
Universal Studios Theme Park Adventure
Going on theme park rides is fun, and it turns out playing a poorly rendered video game about going on rides is not. The Gamecube was home to plenty of experimental games, from the brilliant Pikmin to the charming, if barebones Pokemon Channel. Universal was certainly experimental, but in all the wrong ways.
Your goal is gathering stamps by riding roller coasters and the like, and you earn bonus points from completing theme park activities and shaking hands with mascots. The rides are a series of very short, very dull mini-games, and you can clear the whole thing in about an hour.
Jeremy McGrath Supercross World
The Jeremy McGrath adaptations were never good, and Supercross World certainly didn’t break that trend. It’s the kind of game where you know there had to be some sort of nightmare story behind its development. Supercross World features a variety of featureless racecourses, including bland, empty motocross arenas and bland, empty open-world-style setups.
The visuals are blurred and muddy in a style you might expect from an early PlayStation game, and none of the races have even a hint of the excitement you should get from controlling a super-fast motorbike in a racing game.
Batman Dark Tomorrow
Batman games were a mixed bag in the days before the acclaimed Arkham trilogy, and while there were some good ones, Dark Tomorrow wasn’t one of them. The missions were repetitive and probably better suited to a side-scrolling action game instead of a 3D one, and the control setup is frustratingly difficult to wrap your hands around. Factor into that a host of game-breaking bugs, and you’re in for a terrible time.
Army Men: Sarge’s War
The Army Men series is an odd jumble of ideas and revamps, and Sarge’s War carries on that tradition. Despite telling the story of a plastic army man – not the stuff of serious war tales – Sarge’s War takes a gritty approach to third-person shooting, with dark, moody visuals and grim environments.
It gets bonus points for being consistent, but when the gunplay is poor and the action is repetitive, it just emphasizes how much Sarge’s War isn’t on par with the likes of Call of Duty or Medal of Honor.
Frogger Ancient Shadow
Frogger Ancient Shadow suffers from being a half-step toward something better instead of a full renovation of the classic arcade franchise. Its story is decent and cutely written, and the environments are bright and vibrant. Ancient Shadow’s puzzles are even good.
The trouble is that even when the puzzles are good, the presentation – the way Ancient Shadow expects you to figure them out – is so obtuse that you can’t actually figure it out until you die a few times. Then there are the truly bad puzzles and challenges, which just magnify the frustration. It’s a shame, since the idea is actually a solid way to build on the usual Frogger formula.
Spyro: Enter the Dragonfly
The first Spyro on Gamecube was a big disappointment, even considering Year of the Dragon’s drop in quality compared to Ripto’s Rage. Year of the Dragon was a bit stale and gimmicky. Enter the Dragonfly was straight-up bad. The framerate struggled far more than it should, considering how small and bland the environments were. They somehow managed to be less visually detailed than the trilogy of PS1 games, and the only thing more tiring and uninspired than the level design was the voice acting, which sounded as bored as I was while playing it.
Lost Kingdoms
If any Gamecube game deserves a remake, it’s Lost Kingdoms. This RPG from Elden Ring maker FromSoft and Activision – before it was Activision Blizzard and long before the Microsoft deal – actually has a unique premise and some thoughtful ideas at its heart.
The problem is how poorly they’re executed. Lost Kingdoms uses a card-based combat system where battles unfold in real time, and the story centers on an interesting narrative twist involving perceptions of right and wrong. The downside is that fights are clumsy, environments are bland, and the story kinda falls apart after that twist.
Mario Party 7
Mario Party went on a downward slope after the exceptional Mario Party 4, and that’s not just nostalgia talking. Review averages for each entry after 4 were slightly lower than the last, and then we get to Mario Party 7, one of the worst-reviewed games in the series.
There’s good reason for the general apathy toward this subset of Mario games. Mario Party 5 added new ways to play, 6 introduced a day and night system that drastically changed the boards. Meanwhile, Mario Party 7 added – checks notes – Toadsworth and some microphone gimmicks. Even the mini-games and boards seem uninspired compared to earlier Parties.
Charlie’s Angels
The Charlie’s Angels video game adaptation turned the not-so-great movie into a really-very-bad brawler. You play as the Angels, traveling around a series of muddy, poorly rendered environments pulling off loose and unsatisfying combos against enemies who seem pretty happy to stand there and get kicked around. It’s a good candidate for worst game ever, not just worst Gamecube game.
Mega Man Network Transmission
Network Transmission tried some interesting things with Mega Man’s augmentations, but you’d have to be pretty patient and dedicated to see how they all play out. This is one of those games where the developers created challenge just for the sake of it, and the most obnoxious one of all is the game’s structure.
Like most Mega Man games, you can only save when you defeat a boss. Unlike most Mega Man games, most of the boss fights feature a dramatic spike in difficulty that almost guarantees you’ll die and have to replay the level again and again, even with a good setup for the Blue Bomber.
Robots
Finding a good movie-to-game adaptations is never easy, since most of them were pretty lackluster, but the Robots one stands out as a particular letdown. The production values are comparatively high, with good cutscenes and a surprisingly strong soundtrack, and there’s even an impressive selection of gadgets at your disposal. The problem is that everything else is so plain. The action, the platforming challenges, and the world design just don’t make for a very engaging experience.
Dragon Ball Z Sagas
Dragon Ball Z games tend to fluctuate from good to terrible, with the exception of the very good Xenoverse games, and Sagas was the series at its low point on the Gamecube. Unlike the well-received Budokai games, which continued the tradition of turning Dragon Ball Z into a fighting game, Sagas is a third-person action game – and not a very good one. Battles and skills are floaty and imprecise, and stranger still, you don’t even get that many characters or abilities to choose from.
Mary Kate and Ashley Sweet 16 License to Drive
There’s a lot of Mary Kate and Ashley games. Most of them aren’t good, but Acclaim still kept publishing then, and so we got License to Drive. Despite the name, it’s more of a Mario Party clone than a driving game. The twins and their friends take part in a handful of mini-games ranging from kayak racing to quiz shows, and while some of them are decent, most are awkward, clunky, and overly simplistic.
It even led the twins to sue Acclaim, alleging that the publisher didn’t pay royalties and had run their license in video games “into the ground.”
Pokemon Channel
They say you have to kill your darlings when you’re a writer, and that’s what I’m doing here. I know Pokemon Channel is technically not a good Pokemon game. I loved its charm and simplicity as a kid anyway, though, and I still think the idea of a cozy Pokemon life sim where you garden with Pikachu and wander the grassy plains with Volbeat is a brilliant idea.
But as adorable and well-designed as the activities in Pokemon Channel are, they just don’t hold any lasting value after seeing them the first time and even less after the 10th. Channel plays like a test concept for something that never materialized, and it’s a shame we haven’t seen anything build on its ideas.
Written by Josh Broadwell on behalf of GLHF
