6 Underrated GameCube Games No One Talks About

The GameCube is one of Nintendo’s strangest consoles. Nintendo was coming off a relatively lackluster N64 generation, which the original PlayStation dominated in sales. When the GameCube was announced, we also learned that Microsoft was joining the party, giving Nintendo another major player to go up against. Plus, those tiny discs were almost impossible to keep up with. Who thought of that? Anyway, despite the issues, the GameCube had its share of great games. The list below doesn’t include those games. Instead, this is looking at the underrated gems that fell through the cracks, but are worth checking out once you’ve finished the GameCube’s top games.

Here are the six underrated GameCube games no one talks about.

6) Chibi-Robo!

Chibi-Robo was originally going to be a point-and-click adventure game until it entered a development lull, and Shigeru Miyamoto stepped in to overhaul production. Players step into the role of a tiny robot working for the Sanderson family. You need to go around the house, completing various chores, to help the family solve their problems. However, you need to manage the robot’s energy by using electrical outlets to recharge its battery.

It’s a charming platform-adventure with a quirky story that could only come from a publisher like Nintendo. Unfortunately, fans didn’t show up despite solid review scores. Thankfully, that didn’t stop Nintendo and developer Skip Ltd from making more games in the series. None of them quite captured the same spark as the original, though Park Patrol on the DS got the closest.

5) Gun

Gun was developed by Neversoft, who are most known as the team behind the Tony Hawk series. In fact, Gun was the first non-Tony Hawk game the team had put out in nearly five years when it launched in 2005. Still, the team proved it had chops outside of the skateboarding genre.

Granted, Gun first launched on PC, PS2, and Xbox, so it’s not a GameCube exclusive. That said, it’s one of the few Grand Theft Auto-like games that made its way onto the GameCube, giving that audience a chance to dive into that genre. It’s not as good as Rockstar’s open-world action games, but it’s a fun take on the formula that fit perfectly in the GameCube’s 2005 roster.

4) Geist

Eternal Darkness: Sanity’s Requiem is the more popular pick for “weird M-rated GameCube game,” but I think it’s gone beyond the point of being underrated at this point. That’s not to say it isn’t a great game, but I think most GameCube heads agree that it’s one of the system’s best and most inventive games.

Geist is a different beast. You play as a disembodied spirit who can only interact with the world by possessing characters and items. It’s part first-person shooter, part adventure game that feels a bit too ambitious for the hardware. That’s too bad because there’s a very original game in there that could stand a modern remake to really nail it.

3) Billy Hatcher and the Giant Egg

Sonic Team is, as you’d expect, best known for Sonic. However, they did so much more than just work on the Blue Blur over the years, including games like ChuChu Rocket, Phantasy Star Online, and most importantly for this entry, the 3D platformer Billy Hatcher and the Giant Egg.

Mascot platformers have always been relatively common on Nintendo platforms, but Billy Hatcher was able to stand out thanks to its excellent visuals, music, and multiplayer offerings. Players technically control Billy, but he isn’t able to do much on his own. Instead, you need to use one of 72 different egg types to give him extra abilities to get through each of the seven different zones. It’s far from a perfect game, but if you’re looking for a platformer you haven’t tried, it’s worth checking out.

2) Odama

One thing you can’t say about the GameCube is that developers were afraid to get weird. Just look at Odama. It’s a tactical war game that uses pinball as its central gameplay. It’s hard to get more beautifully strange than that setup, but Odama included a GameCube microphone that you could use to shout orders to your soldiers to move them out of the way of incoming attacks.

Like Billy Hatcher, Odama isn’t a perfect game. In fact, it received middling reviews at launch, so it’s not showing up on many “best of” lists. That said, it is one of the more innovative games on the GameCube, which could’ve gone even further. At the debut of Odama, Nintendo showed a second player using the DK Bongos to improve troop morale. That feature was unfortunately cut, but it’s still a great historical artifact that more people should play.

1) Baten Kaitos: Eternal Wings and the Lost Ocean

One of the largest problems for Nintendo after the launch of the N64 was a lack of great RPGs. While the SNES was filled with genre classics, most of the heavy-hitters decided to move to the PlayStation to take advantage of the increased storage space of discs. Even with the GameCube adopting mini-discs, RPGs were still relatively hard to come by for Nintendo fans. Luckily, games like Baten Kaitos helped fill that void.

Baten Kaitos is a gorgeous game for the time that almost looks like a moving storybook. Instead of traditional RPG combat, Baten Kaitos uses a unique mix of collectible card game, poker, and simple action combat. It’s not for everybody, but if you get into it, there isn’t much better on the platform. The series got a prequel three years later, but has mostly gone dormant, as developer Monolith Soft has put its full force behind the Xeno series.

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