GameCube in the context of Graphics processing unit

The Nintendo Switch 2 is a hybrid video game console developed by Nintendo, released in most regions on June 5, 2025. Like the original Switch, it can be used as a handheld, as a tablet, or connected via the dock to an external display, and the Joy-Con 2 controllers can be used while attached or detached. The Switch 2 has a larger liquid-crystal display, more internal storage, and updated graphics, controllers and social features. It supports 1080p resolution and a 120 Hz refresh rate in handheld or tabletop mode, and 4K resolution with a 60 Hz refresh rate when docked.

Games are available through physical game cards and Nintendo's digital eShop. Some game "key" cards contain no data and require players to download the game content via an internet connection. Select Switch games can use the improved Switch 2 performance through either free or paid updates. The Switch 2 retains the Nintendo Switch Online subscription service, which is required for some multiplayer games and provides access to the Nintendo Classics library of older emulated games; GameCube games are exclusive to the Switch 2. The GameChat feature allows players to chat remotely and share screens and webcams.

Luigi's Mansion is a 2001 action-adventure game developed and published by Nintendo. The game was a launch title for the GameCube and was the first game in the Mario franchise to be released for the console; it was released in Japan on September 14, 2001, in North America on November 18, 2001, in Europe on May 3, 2002, and in Australia on May 17, 2002. It is the third video game in which Luigi is the main character instead of Mario, after Mario Is Missing! and Luigi's Hammer Toss. Players control him as he explores a haunted mansion to rescue Mario and battles ghosts by capturing them through a vacuum cleaner supplied by Professor E. Gadd.

Luigi's Mansion received a positive critical reception overall, with reviewers praising the gameplay, setting, and soundtrack, though its short length was criticized. The game sold over 3.3 million copies, and is the fifth-best-selling GameCube game of all time. It was one of the first games to be re-released as a Player's Choice title on the system. Initial fan reception to the game was mixed; however, it improved over the years and achieved a cult following. The game was followed by two sequels – Luigi's Mansion: Dark Moon, released for the Nintendo 3DS in 2013, and Luigi's Mansion 3, which was released for the Nintendo Switch in 2019. A remake of Luigi's Mansion for the 3DS, co-developed by Nintendo and Grezzo, was released in 2018. The game was re-released for Nintendo Switch 2 as part of the Nintendo Classics service on Nintendo Switch Online in 2025.

PowerPC (with the backronym Performance Optimization With Enhanced RISC – Performance Computing, sometimes abbreviated as PPC) is a reduced instruction set computer (RISC) instruction set architecture (ISA) created by the 1991 Apple–IBM–Motorola alliance, known as AIM. PowerPC, as an evolving instruction set, has been named Power ISA since 2006, while the old name lives on as a trademark for some implementations of Power Architecture–based processors.

Originally intended for personal computers, the architecture is well known for being used by Apple's desktop and laptop lines from 1994 until 2006, and in several videogame consoles including Microsoft's Xbox 360, Sony's PlayStation 3, and Nintendo's GameCube, Wii, and Wii U. PowerPC was also used for the Curiosity and Perseverance rovers on Mars and a variety of satellites. It has since become a niche architecture for personal computers, particularly with AmigaOS 4 implementations, but remains popular for embedded systems.

The Nintendo DS is a foldable handheld game console produced by Nintendo, released worldwide between 2004 and 2005. The "DS" in the name is an initialism for "Developers' System" or "Dual Screen", reflecting the system’s most distinctive feature: two LCD screens working in tandem, with the lower screen functioning as a touchscreen. Both screens are housed in a clamshell design similar to that of the Game Boy Advance SP and some models of the Game & Watch series. The Nintendo DS supported wireless connectivity for local multiplayer over short distances, as well as online play through the now-defunct Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection service. During the seventh generation of video game consoles, its primary competitor was Sony's PlayStation Portable.

Prior to release, Nintendo marketed the DS as an experimental "third pillar" in its console lineup, intended to complement the Game Boy Advance family and the GameCube. However, backward compatibility with Game Boy Advance titles and strong sales led it to be widely regarded as the successor to the Game Boy line. On March 2, 2006, Nintendo released the Nintendo DS Lite, a slimmer and lighter redesign featuring brighter screens and improved battery life. The system was later followed by the Nintendo DSi, released on November 1, 2008, which introduced additional enhancements such as dual digital cameras and digital distribution of games, while removing backward compatibility with Game Boy Advance titles.

Nintendo has developed eight home video game consoles and multiple portable consoles for use with external media, as well as dedicated consoles and other hardware for their consoles. As of September 19, 2025, Nintendo has sold over 869.95 million hardware units.

The company's first console, the Color TV-Game, was a success in Japan but was never released in other territories. Their first systems to achieve worldwide success were the Game & Watch handheld series, before achieving greater worldwide success with the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES), originally released as the Family Computer (Famicom) in Japan in 1983. The NES restarted the video game industry after the video game crash of 1983, and was an international success. In 1989, Nintendo released the Game Boy, which became the first handheld console to sell in large numbers. In the early 1990s, Nintendo's market lead began to decrease; although the 1990 Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES) was a strong seller, the Sega Genesis was a very strong contender. Nintendo and Sega would both lose a significant portion of the console market towards the end of the 1990s, as Sony's PlayStation became the most popular console, beating the Nintendo 64, though Nintendo managed to sell more than Sega Saturn.

Hon Hai Precision Industry Co., Ltd. (鴻海精密工業股份有限公司), doing business as Hon Hai Technology Group (鴻海科技集團) in Taiwan, Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集团) in China, and Foxconn (富士康) internationally, is a Taiwanese multinational electronics contract manufacturer established in 1974 with headquarters in Tucheng District, New Taipei City, Taiwan. In 2023, the company's annual revenue reached 6.16 trillion New Taiwan dollars (equivalent to US$198.533 billion in 2024) and was ranked 20th in the 2023 Fortune Global 500. It is the world's largest contract manufacturer of electronics. While headquartered in Taiwan, the company earns the majority of its revenue from assets in China and is one of the largest employers worldwide. Terry Gou is the company founder and former chairman.

Foxconn manufactures electronic products for major American, Canadian, Chinese, Finnish, and Japanese companies. Notable products manufactured by Foxconn include the BlackBerry, iPad, iPhone, iPod, Kindle, all Nintendo gaming systems since the GameCube, Nintendo DS models, Sega models, Nokia devices, Cisco products, Sony devices (including most PlayStation gaming consoles), Google Pixel devices, Xiaomi devices, every successor to Microsoft's Xbox console, and several CPU sockets, including the TR4 CPU socket on some motherboards. As of 2012, Foxconn factories manufactured an estimated 40% of all consumer electronics sold worldwide.

Nintendo Switch Online (NSO) is an online subscription service operated by Nintendo for its video game consoles, the Nintendo Switch and Nintendo Switch 2. The service is Nintendo's third-generation online service after Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection and the Nintendo Network. The subscription service officially launched on September 18, 2018; an expanded tier of the service, Nintendo Switch Online + Expansion Pack, was released on October 25, 2021.

Nintendo Switch Online features include online multiplayer, cloud saving, voice chat via a smartphone app or GameChat, access to special profile pictures, as well as other promotions and offers. The service also includes access to a library of emulated retro games called Nintendo Classics. Nintendo Switch Online + Expansion Pack includes access to additional retro systems' libraries (up to GameCube as of June 2025) and downloadable content for Animal Crossing: New Horizons, Mario Kart 8 Deluxe and Splatoon 2. The Nintendo Switch 2 Edition upgrade packs for The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild and The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom were added as additional benefits for Expansion Pack members in June 2025.

Nintendo Classics is a line of emulated retro games distributed by Nintendo for the Nintendo Switch and Nintendo Switch 2. Launched in 2018, subscribers of the Nintendo Switch Online service have access to games for the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES), Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES), Game Boy (GB) and Game Boy Color (GBC). A more expensive subscription tier, titled "Expansion Pack", was introduced in 2021. Through this tier, players can also access Nintendo 64 (N64), Sega Genesis (GEN), Game Boy Advance (GBA), and Virtual Boy (VB) games, with GameCube (GCN) exclusively available on Nintendo Switch 2. Each console's library is accessed through a dedicated app, with new games being added on an irregular basis. Games are accessible as long as the user has an active subscription, and a user must connect to the internet at least once a week to continue to access services while offline.

The Nintendo Classics emulators include online multiplayer support, allowing players to play local multiplayer games remotely with friends. The emulators also support save states, with most consoles also allowing players to rewind gameplay. Some NES and SNES games also have an alternative version labeled "SP" ("Extra" in some regions) which alters the game in some way, typically unlocking additional modes, starting the player with additional items or levels, or starting the player midway through the game.

The GameCube controller is the standard game controller for the GameCube video game console, manufactured by Nintendo and launched in 2001. As the successor to the Nintendo 64 controller, it is the progression of Nintendo's controller design in numerous ways. The M-shaped design of its predecessor was replaced with a more conventional handlebar style controller shape; a second analog stick was added, replacing the C buttons with a C stick and the X and Y face buttons, last seen on the Super Nintendo controller, were reintroduced; the shoulder buttons were changed to hybrid analog triggers. A wireless variant of the GameCube controller known as the WaveBird was released in 2002.

Though many elements of the GameCube controller's unique design were not embraced by many future twin-stick gamepads (such as the pressure-sensitive shoulder buttons and a face button layout that emphasizes one button over three others), some controllers adopted its staggered analog stick layout. The GameCube controller continued to endure even beyond its system's launch cycle, gaining varying levels of support from its subsequent successor consoles. GameCube controllers are natively forward-compatible on most models of the Wii console, which feature dedicated ports for connecting said gamepads for use in either GameCube or supported Wii games.

In telecommunications and computing, backward compatibility (or backwards compatibility) is a property of an operating system, software, real-world product, or technology that allows for interoperability with an older legacy system, or with input designed for such a system.

Modifying a system in a way that does not allow backward compatibility is sometimes called "breaking" backward compatibility. Such breaking usually incurs various types of costs, such as switching cost.

XIII is a first-person shooter video game, loosely based on the first five volumes of the 1984 Belgian graphic novel series of the same name. Developed and published by Ubisoft, it was released in November 2003 for Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 2, and GameCube; an Xbox version of the game, released at the same time, was developed by Southend Interactive, while an OS X version was developed by Zonic, published by Feral Interactive, and released in June 2004.

Designed with a comic book-style, cel-shaded presentation, the game incorporates single-player and multiplayer game modes. The game's main story focuses on a confused and amnesic man who searches for his identity after being found stranded on a beach. He slowly finds himself caught up in a conspiracy by a group who aims to overthrow the government. The protagonist assassinated the President of the United States, and is wanted by the FBI.

Super Smash Bros. is a series of platform fighting video games published by Nintendo. Created by Masahiro Sakurai, the Super Smash Bros. series is a crossover featuring many characters from other video game series created by Nintendo and other developers. Its gameplay is distinct from traditional fighting games, with players aiming to knock each other off of stages after accumulating damage with numerous attacks. The games have also featured a variety of side modes, including single-player story modes.

Sakurai conceived the idea of Super Smash Bros. while working at HAL Laboratory in 1998 with the help of Satoru Iwata. The series's first game, Super Smash Bros. (1999), was released for the Nintendo 64 and used characters from Nintendo franchises including Mario, Donkey Kong, The Legend of Zelda, Kirby, and Pokémon. The game was a success, and Sakurai was asked to make a sequel for the then-upcoming GameCube, Super Smash Bros. Melee, which was developed in 13 months and released in 2001.

The Xbox is a home video game console manufactured by Microsoft. It is the first installment in the Xbox series of video game consoles. It was released on November 15, 2001, in North America, followed by Australia, Europe and Japan in 2002. As a sixth-generation console, it competed with Sony's PlayStation 2, Sega's Dreamcast and Nintendo's GameCube. It was also the first major console produced by an American company since the release of the Atari Jaguar in 1993.

The console was announced in March 2000. With the release of the PlayStation 2, which featured the ability to playback CD-ROMs and DVDs in addition to playing games, Microsoft became concerned that game consoles would threaten the personal computer as an entertainment device for living rooms. Whereas most previous games consoles used specially designed hardware, the Xbox was built around standard PC components. It uses variations of Microsoft Windows and DirectX as its operating system to support games and media playback, and is powered by a Intel Pentium III CPU and an Nvidia GeForce 3-based GPU. The Xbox was the first console to feature a built-in hard disk. The console was designed to support broadband connectivity to the Internet via an integrated Ethernet port and Xbox Live, a fee-based online gaming service that launched in 2002. The popularity of the system's blockbuster titles such as Bungie's Halo 2 (2004) contributed to the popularity of first-person shooters and online console gaming.

The Wii (/wiː/ WEE) is a home video game console developed and marketed by Nintendo. It was released on November 19, 2006, in North America, and in December 2006 for most other regions of the world. It is Nintendo's fifth major home game console, following the GameCube, and is a seventh-generation console alongside Microsoft's Xbox 360 and Sony's PlayStation 3.

The Nintendo president, Satoru Iwata, focused on appealing to a broader audience through innovative gameplay, rather than competing with Microsoft and Sony on raw computational power. Shigeru Miyamoto and Genyo Takeda led development, which was initially codenamed Revolution. The Wii emphasized new forms of interaction, particularly through its wireless controller, the Wii Remote, which featured motion-tracking controls and could recognize gestures and function as a pointing device. The Wii was Nintendo's first console with native Internet connectivity, enabling online gaming and digital distribution via the Wii Shop Channel. It also supported wireless connectivity with the handheld Nintendo DS console for select games. Early models were backward-compatible with GameCube games and accessories. Nintendo later released cheaper versions: the RVL-101, without GameCube compatibility, and the Wii Mini, which removed features such as online connectivity and SD card storage.

2001 saw many sequels and prequels in video games, such as Madden NFL 2002, NBA Live 2002, NBA 2K2, WWF Smackdown! Just Bring It, Capcom vs. SNK 2, Crazy Taxi 2, Dead or Alive 3, Final Fantasy X, Gran Turismo 3: A-Spec, Grand Theft Auto III, Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty, Myst III: Exile, Silent Hill 2, Sonic Adventure 2, SSX Tricky, Super Smash Bros. Melee, Tekken 4, Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3, and Virtua Fighter 4. New intellectual properties include Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney, Advance Wars, Animal Crossing, Burnout, Gothic, Black & White, Devil May Cry, Fatal Frame, Ghost Recon, Halo: Combat Evolved, Jak and Daxter, Max Payne, Oni, Onimusha: Warlords, Operation Flashpoint, Pikmin, Pro Evolution Soccer, Red Faction, Serious Sam, and Tropico.

Three major video game systems were released in 2001: the GameCube and the Game Boy Advance by Nintendo, and the Xbox by Microsoft. Sega, which had been a major competitor in the video game hardware market to this point, ended its involvement in the market after the failure of the Dreamcast.

The PlayStation 2 (PS2) is a home video game console developed and marketed by Sony Computer Entertainment. It was first released in Japan on 4 March 2000, in North America on October 26, in Europe on November 24, in Australia on November 30, and other regions thereafter. It is the successor to the original PlayStation as well as the second installment in the PlayStation brand of consoles. As a sixth-generation console, it competed with Nintendo's GameCube, Sega's Dreamcast, and Microsoft's Xbox.

Announced in 1999, Sony began developing the console after the immense success of its predecessor. In addition to serving as a game console, it features a built-in DVD drive and was priced lower than standalone DVD players of the time, enhancing its value. Full backward compatibility with original PlayStation games and accessories gave it access to a vast launch library, far surpassing those of its competitors. The console's hardware was also notable for its custom-built Emotion Engine processor, co-developed with Toshiba, which was promoted as being more powerful than most personal computers of the era.