Nintendo's Gamecube has hit Australian shores with a low-cost thump. Don't lay down your dollars until you read our comprehensive review.

Good things in almost cubelike packages
Nintendo's Gamecube is currently the cheapest new console you can buy. If you were looking at a pure value by size arrangement, however, the Gamecube would come across very poorly against the Playstation 2 and especially the XBox. It's the smallest console (aside from portables) we've ever seen. Measuring 11cm x 15cm x 16cm, however, somebody has obviously forgotten to tell Nintendo something very basic about the nature of cubes. We do rather like the handy carrying handle on one side, but were surprised it didn't come with a warning not to carry it in that fashion while the console is on. Nintendo currently sell the Gamecube in either Indigo (purple to non-marketing folk) or Jet (black), although Nintendo's past history would tend to suggest we'll see Gamecubes in a variety of shades before very long.

Keeping with the small form factor, the Gamecube takes custom 1.5GB 7.62cm discs rather than standard CD/DVD discs. This should reduce piracy (who has a 7.62cm CD burner?) to an extent, although we're unsure about whether the smaller discs are likely to be more or less robust than their larger cousins.

Under the hood lies a 0.18 micron 485MHZ custom IBM Power PC chip, a custom ATI graphics chip and keeping with non-standard parts, a custom Macronix sound chip. Nintendo, like every other console manufacturer, is keen to talk up the potential capabilities of its system; it claims capabilities of 6-12 million actual rendered polygons per second . This is well below both the claimed specifications of the PS2 and XBox, but then their claimed figures generally revolve around maximum rates of unshaded, untextured polygons; you're more likely to see the 6-12 million rendered polygons than those that don't exist except as calculations.

The one factor we did notice with the Gamecube is that it has pleasantly fast loading times. It's not perhaps as fast as some of the most optimised XBox games that rely on hard drive caching, but it's certainly a step ahead of the PS2.

Boot up the Gamecube sans disk, and you'll be greeted with a very basic menu of options for memory card management and game loading. The display style is quite sparse, and doesn't visually compare well to the slick PS2 and XBox interfaces.

Gamers from PAL territories often get the short end of the stick when it comes to consoles, with 50Hz PAL translations of 60Hz NTSC games running slowly and with obvious borders. Nintendo's left the choice of display modes up to individual programming houses and the consumer; keeping the B button depressed as a game loads will bring up a menu option for 50 or 60Hz gameplay -- if your TV and the game supports it. It's exceptionally useful if you do have a screen capable of displaying at 60Hz, as the game may appear to refresh faster with this setting on.

Control freak
Nintendo experimented with an unconventional controller design with the Nintendo 64, and the Gamecube follows similar non-standard roots. While it boasts the virtually standard combination analogue and digital controls, the button layout of the Gamecube controller is unlike any other design we've seen. Nintendo's gone against the grain and abandoned the familiar diamond-pattern button arrangement for the frequent use interface buttons, instead going with four face buttons of different sizes (A,B,X,Y) splayed across the right hand side of the controller. These are supplemented with two analogue shoulder buttons (L,R) and a single right hand side button labelled as Z. The layout is very odd, and will take some time to get used to. It's not uncomfortable for extended play, although we did find that we tended to forget about the existence of the Z button, as it sits rather alone on the controller. We suspect, however, that the button layout will make Street Fighter-style games something of a chore to play, as gamers are accustomed to 2x3 button layouts for these games. Gamecube controllers support rumble features, and we were expecting their light weight to mean that rumbling would be more akin to purring. That certainly isn't the case; while the Gamecube controller isn't quite as capable in this area as the XBox controller, it's still no slouch when it comes to random vibrating motions.

The only other official peripheral at the moment is a 59 'block' memory card that looks suspiciously like a repainted PSOne memory card. Currently released games use between 4-15 blocks per save slot, so it should be a while before you need to get into serious memory management.

Would you like to play a game?
The real reason people buy consoles, however, isn't so they can tell their friends how many textured polygons it can render in real time. Well, maybe people like that do exist, but they should probably be locked up for their own protection. The rest of the sane world buys games consoles to play games, and the initial launch titles for the Gamecube are a mixed bag. There's a large swag of titles that have been ported across from other systems -- such as Crazy Taxi, Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3, Burnout and SpiderMan: The Movie. They're all decent titles, but hardly enough to convince an existing PS2 or XBox owner to make a purchase. Nintendo's own releases have been sparse; there's the kiddie friendly Luigi's Mansion and waterski game WaveRace: Blue Storm. Other currently exclusive titles include Sega's Super Monkey Ball and LucasArt's Star Wars: Rogue Leader: Rogue Squadron 2, which has perhaps the longest and most colon-riddled game title in console history.

Visually speaking the Gamecube can certainly hold up its head amongst the current pack, at least based on currently released software. Visual effects are rendered with aplomb and with very little noticeable lag, jagging or the annoying fog that plagued Nintendo's previous machine. Looking at titles that span all three major consoles, the Gamecube sits in place neatly with the XBox and just a touch ahead of the PS2, although that's something that is likely to be very fluid as designers tackle the capabilities of all three machines in the future.

Console manufacturers will always try to hook punters with the promise of upcoming software. This is a double edged sword; it's certainly tempting to pick up a machine based on a drool-worthy game, but only if that game actually does hit retail shelves. Nintendo are promising games based on Mario, Zelda, Metroid, Super Smash brothers and others in the near future. On the third party front gamers can look forward to a high-definition remake of Capcom's Resident Evil and THQ's WWE Wrestlemania X18 for the wrestling fanatics out there.

The Gamecube sits in an interesting position in the current market. It's the only system that is solely a games machine, and Nintendo have aggresively priced it as such. We've got to say that of the three current contenders to the console crown, the Gamecube certainly wins all the style awards; the PS2 only looks good if you have a lot of stereo equipment around it, and the XBox is still just too damn big. Looks are only part of the equation, however; it's the games that sell the machine, and this may be Nintendo's ace in the hole, at least against the XBox. Nintendo has a library of accepted mascot characters that gamers have shown a great deal of loyalty to; only Sega -- who now develop across all three platforms -- has similar brand recognition. Sony has certain brands locked down exclusively -- Final Fantasy and Grand Theft Auto, for example -- while Microsoft still has to reveal any truly surprising exclusives, beyond titles they themselves publish such as Crimson Skies and Mechwarrior.

The Gamecube does what it does -- play games -- very well. It's probably still the best choice for parents;Nintendo knows it has a hook in the rugrat market. It's also a decent choice for gamers who don't need the DVD playback of the other two contenders or who are just plain hooked on Nintendo's character library.

Nintendo Gamecube
Company: Nintendo
Price: AU$329
Distributor: Selected resellers
Phone: (03) 9730 9822

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