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The Nintendo GameCube (officially abbreviated as GCN), Nintendo's entry into the sixth generation of the Console Wars, was released in late 2001. It marked Nintendo's shift from cartridges to optical discs in response to third parties being driven away by the Nintendo 64's continued use of cartridges, using miniature proprietary discs. The graphical capabilities were better than the PlayStation 2, and in some cases, on par with those of the Xbox. Star Wars: Rogue Squadron III actually holds the sixth-gen record for polygon count, at 20 million polygons. The GameCube was the first Nintendo console to have fewer buttons on its controller than its predecessor; this was due to the introduction of a second analog stick, though this C-stick was smaller than the primary analog stick.

Nintendo offered many of its properties to other developers. Namco ran around with Donkey Kong and made the Donkey Konga series, Dolled Up Installments of the Taiko no Tatsujin series of drumming games. Namco and Rare (under the company's last days with Nintendo before getting bought out by Microsoft) both had Star Fox-based games (although Rare's was too a Dolled Up Installment, this one born out of Nintendo meddling with the would-have-been Nintendo 64 game Dinosaur Planet.) Most famously, Retro Studios rose to fame with the smash hit Metroid Prime. Capcom was working on The Legend of Zelda and liked the 'Cube so much they promised a few exclusive games for it, dubbed the "Capcom 5":

Dead Phoenix (cancelled)
PN 03: Project Number 03 (the only game to stay exclusive)
Killer7 (ported to the PS2)
Resident Evil 4 (ported to the PS2 again)
Viewtiful Joe (ported to-you guessed it-the PS2)

Oh, and this thing is tough, as in physically. There are stories of people having dropped GameCubes off the top of tall buildings and them still being perfectly intact. It's gotten a reputation for being damn near indestructible; someone once fended off a mugger with a knife with his Gamecube and it wasn't even damaged. Intentionally trying to break it is just about the only way to go. Considering Nintendo's history of making their products Tonka Tough, there might be a reason for that.

Its codename during development was "Project Dolphin" and there are often little nods to this throughout early Gamecube games, such as Super Mario Sunshine being set on "Isle Delfino" (Italian for dolphin). An early rumoured release name for the console was "Starcube", which was apparently dropped for copyright reasons.

There was a stylish-looking variant of the GCN that plays DVD movies and contained other multimedia functionality called the Panasonic Q, but only in Japan and only for those who care not about the health of their wallet.

Oh, and the slow, haunting theme

that plays when you turn on the thing? It's the start-up theme for the old Famicom Disk System

, slowed down a whole bunch. Pretty neat

Specifications:

Processors

The CPU is a 486 MHz IBM PowerPC 750CXe based CPU codenamed "Gekko". While it was internally a 32-bit processor, everything else about it was 64-bits. It's essentially an enhanced version of the processor found in Apple's G3 based computers.
The GPU was a joint venture between Nintendo and ArtX. ATi later bought ArtX, which explains the badge on the console. Codenamed "Flipper", it's a 162 MHz GPU superficially similar to ATi's own Radeon 7500 for the PC.
Audio was done on a ustom 81 MHz Macronix DSP that supported 64 CD-Audio quality channels. However it could only output stereo sound, but there was support for Dolby Pro-Logic II for surround sound if the speakers supported it.

Memory

24 MB MoSys 1T-SRAM main system RAM. 3 MB embedded 1T-SRAM within Flipper.
- 1T-SRAM is a type of RAM that offered both high density and avoids the low-level complexity of DRAM.
- The fact that the Flipper has embedded RAM in it made it extremely fast, compared to the RAMBUS RAM used in the Nintendo 64
16 MB DRAM used as buffer for game disk drive and audio.
Games were stored on a 8mm optical disc similar to a mini-DVD. A key difference is that the GameCube uses Constant Angular Velocity (where the disk spins the same speed) rather than Constant Linear Velocity (where the laser traverses the disk at the same speed). The total storage capacity is 1.5GB. The three main reasons why this format was chosen was to reduce load times, to make piracy harder, and to avoid paying licensing fees to the DVD forum.
To store game saves and other data, the GameCube used memory cards similar to the PlayStation. For better or worse, cards were formatted into blocks and capacity was Colour-Coded for Your Convenience. Gray came with 59 blocks, black with 251 blocks, and white with 1011 blocks. Each block is about 8KB.

Graphics

The GameCube could output all forms of standard definition resolutions, including progressive scan. Except for PAL progressive scan, that had to be enabled with a soft mod.
Maximum in game polygon count is about 20,250,000 polygons a second, or about 337,500 polygons a frame at 60FPS. This is about 10 times more than the developers could push on the Nintendo64; Maximum Polygon count is 60 million a second.
Maximum pixel throughput is 648 megapixels per second
It supported all the nice graphical features at the time, such as anisotropic texture filtering, anti-aliasing, and bump-mapping. Color output is at 24-bits, the system also had a 18-bit color mode but no games used it.

Add-Ons and Expansions

The first generation models had two AV outputs, one labeled analog out for standard use with composite cables, the other labeled digital out. This was a misnomer, as the video and audio were still analog, it just supported higher quality versions of it.
There were three expansion ports total. One was for a high-speed network adapter/modem used for online/LAN games (though very few used it). One was for the GameBoy player. The last one never got used.
The Game Boy Advance had an accessory that allowed it to be connected to one of the GameCube's controller ports. This was used in Pok�mon Colosseum and Pok�mon XD to transfer Pokemon back and forth. However, Square Enix was a notable abuser of this with Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles, where each Game Boy Advance was the controller.