GameCube Coming To Nintendo Switch Online With 3 Games At Launch

Kind of weird to focus on something like an emulated GameCube version of Wind Waker when they already released a more definitive HD version.

Honestly maybe the best part of this is that when they add shit like Coloseum and XD to the service, it will probably bring down the cost of those physical games a little bit. I thought I'd never end up getting them in my collection because they were just too expensive to justify.

Emulators for them but not for us

feels like everything Nintendo does these days is is too little too late. I was playing gamecube games on my pc 15 years ago, 1080p, anti aliasing, save states, shaders, whatever controller I wanted, so on and so forth.
This is a nice plus for people who were going to buy a switch2 anyway, but from the perspective of someone who would need to be convinced (especially after being burned by nintendos asinine refund policy a few years back), I'm a bit offended by these paltry offerings.

Hope they won't be coming for Dolphin now.

Nintendo have announced that The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker, F-Zero GX, and Soul Calibur II will be launching first with other games such as Luigi's Mansion, Super Mario Strikers, Pokémon XD: Gale of Darkness, Chibi-Robo, Pokémon Colosseum, Super Mario Sunshine, and more coming at a later date.
- Super Mario Sunshine
  You mean the game that's already available on the Switch via Mario All-Stars?
  Cmon, Nintendo.
  
  No, it has been delisted from the shop, otherwise why people would pay a subscription for playing that

we will never get a new F-Zero :(

Meh. I was hoping for Windwaker to get a real release on Switch 2, not just become available as a GameCube title on Nintendo Switch Online
- I was also baffled at using WW for the demo. Give me that port of Wii U port you cowards.
  
  It was strange hearing them tout high resolutions and smooth gameplay when they have Wind Waker HD right there begging to be ported over.
  
  Wii U ports will be available on the Switch 3 in 8 years
  
  oh yeah, i forgot, my pc ran cemu just fine before my recent upgrade. I could totally play the wind waker remake.

In my opinion, this is awesome. It's about damn time they added offical Gamecube support to their systems. 3 games at launch is a little weak, but if they support it like the rest of NSO, the library will probably be great within a year or so.
- 3 games is not a little weak. Its a fucking joke, but it's Nintendo.
  
  Well that's pretty much how NSO started. It sucked at first with a tiny lineup of NES titles. Now there are tons of games and they're still adding. I think it makes sense that they would hype up people with additional games added over time. I'm fine with that if I'm still paying $20/ year for NSO. I get enough value out of that as is, and more games at the same price is added value. But I absolutely agree that they should have started with more than 3 games.
  Admittedly though, when I first commented on this, I hadn't seen the new prices on Switch 2 yet. Now, I'm just as pissed as anyone else. I won't be buying the system at all unless they drop their prices. And if they don't, then I guess I will just stick to playing elsewhere.
- My steam deck has better Gamecube support than the official Nintendo next gen console, let that sink in...
  
  Yeah mine does too. That doesn't mean we can't be glad to see some actual official support on these games for the first time in 20 years. Emulation is great, but so are steps in the right direction.
  
  Were you expecting to have every game available from day 1? I'm sure they could, but they are a business and they probably want to make money.

If the Switch 2 does not have analogous triggers then GX is going to be a shadow of a game, unless you use the USB to GC adapter.
- That’s why they sell you a special controller. You can pay to be able to pay for the games you are paying for.

Super Mario sunshine is my literal go to game
This is excellent news
- It was a part of Super Mario 3D All-Stars bundle on Switch 1 although not having an analog trigger kinda sucks. New controller seems to have digital triggers again unfortunately.
  
  Apparently, there is a design for GameCube controller for switch 2. If that one works at least similar to the first GC version, many gamers dreams will become true
  We are SO BACK BOIS
  MEAT IS BACK ON THE MENU

Please Kirby Air Ride!
- Well, considering they announced a new Kirby Air Ride that seems likely.
  
  OMG WHAT I MISSED THAT HOLY SHIT

Well, there goes the market value of my launch edition of Fire Emblem Path of Radiance (look it up, it's no joke).
Honestly, given Nintendo's scorched earth approach to third party emulation I'm not inclined to give them extra money on top of their base subscription for this. Double that for the choice of making visual improvements to backwards compatible games a paid upgrade.
- Maybe I can actually start buying GameCube games for reasonable prices soon.
  It’s a pipe dream, but I can cling to hope.
  
  Hey, if extremely good, hassle-free emulation didn't do it I wouldn't hold my breath, but I guess more options can only help.
- ngl tbh I think that was my favorite FE game, so I'm glad if they make it easier for people to play
  
  Oh, I'm super onboard with it. I don't collect old games for speculative purposes. Hell, I didn't collect that one at all, I just bought it when it came out.

Is the Switch even powerful enough to emulate Gamecube? Or are they porting them?
- Nintendo has already been selling a small selection of GameCube and Wii games that run emulated on Switch's processor (Tegra X1) in 1080p.
  On the Switch itself: Super Mario 3D All-Stars runs emulators for Mario Sunshine (GC) and Galaxy (Wii)
  On the Nvidia Shield TV, which uses the same processor: Twilight Princess (GC), NSMB Wii, Punch-Out (Wii), Mario Galaxy (Wii), Donkey Kong Country Returns (Wii). Only available on Shield systems sold in China.
  The Dolphin emulator can be installed on Nvidia Shield (Android) and, thanks to modding, on exploitable Switch systems as well.
  However, this newly announced library of GameCube games is only for Switch 2, which has drastically more powerful hardware than the 8-year-old original Switch.
- They used some kind of hybrid solution for Super Mario 3D All-Stars but I can’t imagine Switch 2 won’t be powerful enough for regular emulation. Even relatively old Android phones can run Dolphin now.
- I was emulating the GameCube on a athlon64 15 years ago; the switch is underpowered but not that underpowered
  
  I used to bullseye womp rats in my T-16 back home. They're not much bigger than two meters.
- I don't exactly keep up with the latest in emulation, and who knows how Nintendo is going to do things, but my understanding that in a lot of ways GameCube (and WII for that matter) emulation has been in a better place than N64 for a while now, so I'm not too concerned about the switch being able to run it.
  While the console itself was less powerful, the N64 is kind of a monster to emulate, it basically speaks a totally different language than any computer (or phone, console, etc) you might try to emulate it on, and there's a lot of weird special code in individual games that the console needs to deal with, so there's a lot more for the emulator to do and so you kind of need a comparatively beefy device for the emulation to run well.
  GameCube and later consoles work a lot more similarly to how your computer and other devices work, so it's a lot easier to emulate them.
  I've seen it explained sort of like if the N64 spoke Chinese, the GameCube spoke Spanish, and your computer speaks Portuguese.
  If a Spanish speaker slows down and throws in some hand gestures, a Portuguese speaker will probably more-or-less get the gist of what they're saying, and Google translate can pretty much fill in the rest. That's your computer emulating a GameCube game. There's not too much the emulator actually needs to do, just some minor corrections here and there but mostly things translate pretty cleanly 1:1 between the two languages.
  Chinese and Portuguese are wildly different languages though, almost no shared vocabulary, different languages families, even some of the hand gestures may have different meanings, and Google translate is probably going to spit out some weird garbled nonsense if you try to translate anything too complicated through it. It takes a lot more to facilitate communication between the two languages.
- The have N64 games on Nintendo online, which are still pretty Emulation resistant, so I assume they're using a different method.
- Pikmin 1 and 2 run great on Switch. I also never ran into any issues with Sunshine.

They've got to still be planning on the Wind Waker Wii U version release

Pokemon Colosseum and XD listed as upcoming titles is very surprising. Does this open the door for the rest of the main series to come to the other NSO apps?
- Those two aren't actually considered main series Pokémon games. They're the only side games that can catch and train Pokémon that can be traded into the main series games. Pokémon Stadium is a similar release that's already on the Nintendo Switch Online N64 app.
  It remains to be seen whether Pokémon Home gets an update to support these GC games.
  I very much doubt the main series games will ever be added to the NSO GB/GBA apps. It seems likely enough that they'll rerelease the classic games in some form on Switch next year for Pokémon's 30th anniversary (similar to how 3DS got the GB ones for the 20th in 2016), but I fully expect that the release will be under The Pokémon Company's terms rather than a part of NSO. Either as part of the Pokémon Home subscription or sold on eShop.