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Editorials   Think You Own a GameCube?
- By Nathaniel Walker

Remember how excited you were when you lined up to snag your GameCube on launch day? Can you recall the moments just before they wheeled the little buggers out, your palms sticky and your tummy all a jit-jit-jittery? Can you still feel your muscles tense up in anticipation of the jaw-clock you briefly planned on delivering to that 11-year-old brat in front of you who bought the last 12 memory cards? I bet you do. And I bet that every single recollection feels great, because you know all that stuff was part and parcel of the same grand moment when the GameCube was finally delivered unto our world. I bet you feel like you were a part of bona-fide history! You can almost hear it now: “So, grandpa,” said little Billy-Xenon-5 with a cheerful smile, despite his irreversibly corrupted radio-brain. “Where were you when the very first GameCube launched?” Yes indeed--that day was truly glorious beyond measure.

And it was a lie. A brilliant, perfectly-conceived, masterfully-executed lie. You see folks, truth be told, you were not present for the launch of Nintendo’s new console. You might remember standing in line, sheepishly explaining the whole thing to your gameskeptic girlfriend, shelling out the ciz-ash, etc., etc., but none of the matters. You, along with most of the rest of the world (including myself), were duped. You were a hapless witness of the ultimate “fake invasion”, the Calais of the videogame world, complete with dummy armies, and fabricated entirely out of propaganda. Fact: the GameCube’s launch was intentionally and specifically designed to happen at a time and place other than November 2001. Fact: that is precisely what will happen. Let go of your memories, they have betrayed you enough! Accept the inevitable truth: Nintendo’s next-generation console launch will occur in November of 2002. It’ll be pretty sweet, too.

Now hold on, you say. Wait just a minute, you say. Fists clenched in barely suppressed rage, you stutter: “We’ve all made the casual reference to the lack of a major launch title. We all know tons of stuff is coming our way later this year. So we have all made the little joke that the GameCube is ‘practically’ launching in 2002!” Yes, I know that’s old hat. But I am not saying “practically” anything. I am saying “totally and without limitation”. I am saying “deliberately and with purpose”. My friends, I think that Nintendo intends and has intended all along for the GameCube launch to be in November of 2002. That is why Star Fox Adventures was pushed back to September. That is why Metroid Prime was pushed back to the end of this year. And that is why nobody likes you as a person. Oh but they do, you say. I am popular, you say. I doubt it, or you wouldn’t be reading about Nintendo on the internet. Loser.

Don’t you think it is a little suspicious that so few Metroid Prime shots or movies have been released to the public? They would all look far too complete for us to believe the game is still in production, ha ha. I mean, geez! Star Fox has tons of stuff, and we’re supposed to swallow that it still needs work but looks so polished because of previously shot-for and missed deadlines. Bollocks. It’s all finished; it’s probably been finished for months! Only one possibility remains: Nintendo is saving it all--no, HOARDING it all--for the launch. That’s right. The launch. Luigi’s Single Family Duplex, Super Smash Whatever, Wave Race Absent of Wicked Air Storm, Star Wars Pretty Good, and Pikmin-Jabba-JIKmin were all little plastic make-believe men with parachutes designed to throw the competition into a defensive posture at the wrong place/time. The staggered release dates (Star Fox, Super “Summer More Like Early Fall” Mario Sunshine) turned out to be not so staggered after all. Every explosive thingy in Nintendo’s arsenal (minus Mario Kart) is lined up to converge at the same spot at the same time, much to everyone’s surprise. None of this is evidence for my little theory, but it virtually could be. You think I’m crazy, do you? Seen little flaws in Star Fox und was immer, have you? Don’t believe they were purposefully inserted to make the game look incomplete, do you not?

Fool! If the GameCube were already launched, you would expect to see something different, wouldn’t you? You would expect to see lots of game all the time, so people would buy the machine, wouldn’t you? Do you think it’s an accident that Nintendo has failed to release games in, like, forever? Sure, it’s happened before. It happened after the last console “launch”. But here’s a little number you can dance: the last supposed launch--the “N64” or whatever--was just as hocus-pocus as the one last November. That’s right. You heard me. Donkey Kong 64, Perfect Dark, Blast Corps, Ocarina of Time…did you actually think those were real games? If you guessed they were distractions, space-fillers meant to occupy the competition until the real launch could occur (again, in November of 2002), than you guessed correctly. I won’t even go into the Game Boy. That’s as dirty a piece of tomfoolery as I ever saw. Hiccup.

The last paragraph was mostly to make the larger part of my argument seem more credible. By placing it next to utter rubbish, etc. But I fear in the end, while attempting to give my readers a choice between two evils, I may have only discredited myself and Journalism In General. Please, check this out: 2001 was a fun year for Nintendo. Game Boy Advance, GameCube and stuff, but I really believe that Nintendo used last November to knock on the industry’s door, all the while intending to ram that sucker down come Winter 2002. You guys are great, I mean it. I love you people. This is art, this is games and consoles. I just think it was fake. You know?