The Story of the Gamecube - The Source
The following details my sources and the making of The Story of the Gamecube. If you haven’t watched the entire series, I highly recommend you do so before reading more.
The Story of the Gamecube is finally out and I wanted to cover some of the development of the series, my sources and some of the mistakes that made it into the videos themselves (not everyone is perfect).
To start, the series began production all the way back in January when I began doing research and planning for the series. I had been working on two projects at the time, a podcast and a blog. While I'm still doing both, I decided to step back on both in order to create the series. I had always planned on creating six episodes with each episode being around 10 minutes long. The final runtime ended up being longer and I'm actually very satisfied with that. Instead of being an hour long series, it's around 75 minutes. I wrote the series back in February and thankfully all of the information present in the video is up-to-date and correct. I spent March, April and May on recording the voice over, gathering footage and editing. If I had to redo the series I would have spent more time on the script and the voice over. Both ended up being rougher than I intended, but I was able to make some adjustments in the editing process.
Mistakes, goofs and misc info
Everyone makes mistakes and I've got a few to make note of. I'll also cover some various information that I didn’t cover or might seem odd in the videos.
Episode 1 - Why the Gamecube Failed
This is a goof on my part. I originally planned to have quotes throughout the series from various people in the game industry. Episode 1 featured 3 quotes and I had planned to continue pace. As I continued writing, quotes became less of a concern. The original quotes for episode one stayed in place, as did the large on-screen view of the quotes. These “quote pages” took awhile to make and were ultimately dropped.
Episode 2 - Enter Dolphin
Episode 2 was originally called “how the gamecube gamecube was a success" with the final episode covering the legacy of the system. When I began writing episode 2 I noticed how similar it was to the final episode’s layout. I retooled the episodes, combined episodes 2 and 6 and was planning on a five part series as opposed to 6 (more on that in a moment).
One thing I didn’t cover in depth was the specs of the gamecube. I just threw around a very basic setup for the system. Check the sources if you want a complete look at what is under the hood of the gamecube.
Episode 3 - Year One and Launch
Originally episode 3 and 4 were one video and thank God I split them up. Episode 3 is my favorite of the series as I think it touches on every subject these videos set out to cover.
Notice anything special about the music in episodes 2-5? When it came to picking songs I wanted to use music from Nintendo gamecube games, but I went a step further and only used songs from the games released during the period I was talking about. This is why episode 3 features Nintendo 64 music and Episode 5 has so much music from Twilight Princess.
Episode 4 - Reggie and a New Nintendo
When discussing the gamecube’s price cut, I never mentioned that the system had received a price cut beforehand. The gamecube had actually received a $50 price cut around six months after it launched in 2002, bringing the system down to $150. While not as drastic a cut as the video implied, it definitely showed how much Nintendo was struggling to keep up with Microsoft and Sony.
Episode 5 - Death and Discontinuation
There’s some strange wording in this episode which mostly came down to my lack on knowledge. I stated that Microsoft was preparing their next system for launch and Sony had began hyping up the PS3. While true, the vagueness of that statement can be misinterpreted. By the time the Revolution (Wii) was shown at E3 2005, Microsoft and Sony had revealed their new consoles and Microsoft was preparing for a launch in the fall.
Episode 6 - How the Gamecube was a Success
Around the middle of the video I discussed Super Smash Bros Melee and the gamecube controller. Within the last week it was announced that the new Super Smash Bros game for Switch, Super Smash Bros Ultimate, will continue to use the gamecube adapter for Wii U and it will be released alongside a new gamecube controller.
Special Thanks
First off, thank you for watching the series and reading this article. It means the world to me that people are out there watching my content and enjoying it enough to watch the entire series.
I want to also thank my wife and dogs who supported me during the creation of the series. There were some days I felt like throwing in the towel, but they kept me going. Thank you to my fellow beautiful boys who I bounced ideas off of during the creation of the series. I want to thank the people of reddit for upvoting my videos and the mods for not removing them. Roughly half of my video traffic came for reddit so I appreciate it. Thank you to source gaming for finding the first episode and making it featured content on their site. That was truly amazing.
Emily Rogers did some truly amazing investigative work on the development of the gamecube and what was going on at Nintendo. Her work shaped this series greatly. I've tried to reach out to Rogers, both to praise her for her work and see if there were any other details regarding the gamecube and Nintendo that her articles did not cover. Unfortunately, her Twitter account is set to private and she has largely stepped away from games journalism. Various legacy websites like IGN and gamespot were a huge help in crafting this series. Any time I needed an answer or needed to fact check, these sites were my go to source. Many of their older articles are still available for free. Other youtubers were a help as well. Notably series like didyouknowgaming and the gaming historian provided content that not only spurred my interest in the subject, but provided crucial information on otherwise niche topics.
The Sources
Below I've listed many of the sources I used, but not all of them. I didn’t keep every single link I utilized due to laziness or just forgetting. The bulk of information is still there including some opinion pieces on the gamecube as well. I also included various videos that I pulled for footage. Some of them contain more information if you would like to watch them. The link below will take you to the appropriate Google document.
The future of YouTube, this blog and “The Story of" series
What’s next?
That's the question that plagued me towards the end of production and has sat in the back of my head for the last week or so. At times I felt immense pressure to create this series and editing the entire thing was a bit of a nightmare since I was using outdated software. Since I finished editing the final episode, I've felt something else: boredom. Normally I'm not one to complain about being bored since I like to play video games, read or watch tv. I got into such a habit of always dedicating a portion of my day to working on the series that it feels weird to start my day and think “I have nothing of importance to do today". I don’t like feeling that way.
First, the blog. This blog has been a part of my life for close to six months now and I've done more writing in six months than I have since college. I want to continue this blog, but I want to do so on my own time. Unfortunately that means weekly series are not something I want to do anymore and Smash Diaries will be cancelled. My original idea for the series doesn’t really work anymore since E3 and I don’t want to just speculate on characters. Other sites like source gaming do that way better than I ever could. I will still write here and I plan on writing about more than just current trends in video games. I want to cover other forms of entertainment like I had originally intended. I've got some ideas for articles on television that I think will lead to some good reading.
Next comes “The Story of" series. When I started work on the gamecube project I never really intended on covering other topics or even making more videos. I considered it a chance to make new content and scratch my creative bone. Now I want to do more and cover other topics in gaming. I've had requests to do other game consoles and someday I plan on doing that. But I want to study something different before returning to a game system. It would be very easy for me to sit back and create a 4 part series on the original xbox, but I want to challenge myself and look at something completely different.
“The Story of the Gamecube" is what I consider Season 1 of this new series. I've got a solid idea of what I want to cover for Season 2 and hopefully it will be out sometime this fall. I have no idea how many parts the next season will have, but my initial research is leading me to believe that there will be at least 4 episodes and maybe as many as 8. If you got a good eye you might be able to figure out what I'll be covering next. Check out episode 5.
“Fall?” You may be wondering. “That’s gonna be forever!” That’s true, but just like with my recent videos I want to take my time and really make them good videos. Don’t worry though. I plan on making some smaller videos in between. I'm not sure exactly how many I will make or what they will be exactly, but they will be video game centric. I'm hoping that I can get one or two new videos out this summer. Not only will this please my subscribers (love you guys!), but it will give me a chance to learn how to use this fancy new microphone I bought and new editing software.
There is one final video coming soon. It’s a supercut of the story of the gamecube. All six episodes will play beginning to end with the outros cut and the intros being edited. No new footage will be included and my original goofs will remain in place. Hopefully it'll be out in June.
That wraps up everything regarding The Story of the Gamecube. I've had so much fun creating this series and I hope you enjoyed it. The best way to support this series and my work is to subscribe and share. Getting my work out to a larger audience is my ultimate goal so I don’t have to spend half my time shilling my videos on message boards. You can also follow me on Twitter for updates and general thoughts about random things. Once again, thank you guys and I'll see you again with season 2.
