I bought some Gamecube games and a controller for my Wii today, and right off the bat I noticed a couple unexpected things. First was that the controller cord is ridiculously short - it doesn’t even reach halfway to my couch. Second was that I apparently need a memory card. I’ve never used one, since my gaming progression, since childhood, has gone:
Atari—>NES—>SNES—>N64—>Xbox—>Wii
So I called around and found a place that had them. They have the “3rd party, 59 block” cards. How big is 59 blocks? The two games I got are Metroid Prime and Tales of Symphonia. Is this card going to be enough to finish both of these games?
Not for Gamecube games. You still need them for those. And 59 blocks is 4MB. Doesn’t sound like much but I never needed more than one card the entire time I had my Gamecube. The back of the game cases tells you how many blocks the game requires.
Yeah, that should be plenty, at least for Metroid. I haven’t played Tales of Symphonia, but most games that require an abnormal amount of memory will say so on the box somewhere.
As for the control cord issue, see if you can find a Wavebird for sale. It’s the wireless controller for the GameCube, and was the best wireless controller of its generation.
Thanks. Tales of Symphonia did not come in its original box but it’s 2 discs so I’m guessing it is a memory hog. Is there anyhwere I could find out online?
59 is the small card. Mario Kart Double Dash requires over 100 if I recall correctly, so you’d definitely want to look for a bigger card. Grab a 251 (or if you can find it) a 1019 card.
It’s funny. I love the NES/GB/SNES Metroid trilogy, but I’ve never really played a Prime game. I bought Prime 1 used a few years ago and played it for a few minutes and then put it away and never went back to it.
Yes, you should. It is the smoothest transition to 3D I have ever seen a series do, with the exception of Ocarina if Time for Zelda. But Metorid: Prime managed to make a first-person adventure game. That’s really key, because it isn’t an FPS, and doesn’t really play like one most of the time. It has jumping puzzles, but unlike true FPS’s, they aren’t a complete bitch in the Metroid: Prime series.
I’ve never played a Gamecube game, period, and haven’t played a Metroid game since NES. I played for about a half-hour today and it was pretty cool. Beat the first boss but ran out of time trying to find my way out of the level and got pissed because it started me over.
Do you have an Xbox 360? If not, you should track down Ikaruga for the GameCube. Probably the greatest top down shooter I’ve ever played. But if you’ve got a 360 it’s on the XBLA for a good price.
I’m a one-console man. I don’t whore myself out to different consoles of the same generation, and this time around my in-laws got me a Wii for xmas. I’ll look for Ikaruga, thanks.
59 blocks might not be an issue, certainly not with just those two games, but that 3rd party thing might be. 3rd party memory cards have a really bad reputation (on all systems, not just GC) and in my experience, they deserve every bit of it.
Basically, the 3rd parties don’t get the technical data on the cards from the first party* and they proceed to reverse engineer them, often badly. Corrupted data is a real possibility, often after years of using the cards with no problems at all.
They also often don’t fit in the slots quite right. I don’t know how much tolerance the Wii memory card slot has (I don’t have a Wii), but it’s possible even if one of these cards did fit a GC, they might not quite fit on a Wii.
I don’t know if it’s still possible to find actual Nintendo made cards, but you should at least look around and see if you can find one. Even if they cost a little more, in the long run they’re just more reliable.
Tales of Symphonia uses 3 blocks per save, btw, at least according to the box. I just happened to have all my GC games stacked up next to my computer, how’s that for luck?
*-There are some (not all) 3rd party PS2 cards that are authorized by Sony that essentially are as reliable as Sony’s cards, but that’s an exception to the normal situation.
Thanks, TBG.
Am I right that the only way to exit from a Gamecube game is to get up and turn the power off and then back on from the actual console? Unless I’m missing something, there’s no way to get back to the Wii Menu from the Gamecube controller or the Wiimote, including powering off/on with the Wiimote. That’s a pretty big oversight, IMO.
I’d strongly reccomend picking up a Nintendo brand memory card (preferably the 1019 size; it’s the biggest available and runs about $20-25 on amazon.com.) I’ve had some bad experiences with 3rd party memory cards mysteriously losing data.