Toomanywires

Vanessa Z Schneider appears out of thin air. She's an unwelcome guest on "colonized planet Ode". She's immediately greeted by a pair of guns-on-hovercraft robots, and they are not friendly. She remains unfazed, however, and continues to nod along to a spot of drum & bass. The robots open fire, but Vanessa stays rooted to the spot, confidently allowing the shots to harmlessly whistle past her. She continues her head-nodding. More lasers, but this time she takes evasive actions, and effortlessly executes a back flip. She lands and resumes head nodding. She spins left, then pulls off a side-strafe scissor kick that would put a less balletic hero in the emergency room. Still nodding, lost in the music. Finally, she goes on the offensive, firing a deadly barrage of lasers from her palms. Big explosions, and then robot guts scattered over sand dunes. Vanessa strikes a pose, and the opening movie ends. Everything effortless and graceful. Then I take over, and it all goes...

I'm not sure what I'll do with four spice orange GameCube controllers. It's highly unlikely I'll ever need that many. I very rarely have friends over, and I might not have four of them anyway. Four friends, that is. I definitely have four controllers (see pic), which is the point of this post. Four spice orange GameCube controllers. Even if I somehow convinced my family to join me in a GameCube session, we'd still be a player short of utilising all four pads. Still, having a full set just seemed like the right thing to do, which is why I bought a fourth a few weeks back. I wanted to use all the controller ports and get fully plugged in; I needed to gather all that orange, even if just for the visual treat. I bought my GameCube in early 2024 and, to be honest, I haven't used it much. I played a good chunk of Eternal Darkness, and have dipped into a handful of other titles, spending the most time with NBA Street Vol. 3 and Wave Race. I've been quite selective...

Buying a new-to-you retro console is a lovely thing. A complete and well-appraised library ready to be experienced, an array of affordable games, and a wealth of written features, histories and buyer's guides to delve into. You're getting a new piece of hardware to explore, an unfamiliar startup screen to gawk at, and controllers to get to grips with. A new medium via which you can experience, or relive, a time past. A new box to pour some of your passion into. While the Nintendo GameCube isn't quite brand new to me, I've never owned one myself. However, I'm planning on changing that very soon.  Aside from chasing the new-console high, the decision to buy a GameCube was partially inspired by talk of Eternal Darkness a few weeks ago on The Back Page pod. I'm a sucker for historical-timeline-switching, and being that it's only playable on GameCube, Eternal Darkness is the perfect excuse for a console purchase. I was semi-familiar with it beforehand, but not o...