10 Most Underrated GameCube Games

The GameCube is a console outlier, a truly odd beast. With its tiny discs and its unique shape, it struggled to be taken as seriously as Sony or Microsoft’s offerings in an era when games increasingly tried to be a little more grown up, for good or for bad.

It is a console with some legendary titles, however, from the unfairly maligned Mario Sunshine (underrated in its own right, though too successful for this list) and arguably still the best Smash Bros. game, to the agelessly brilliant Wind Waker.

Among those established classics, though, are some lesser known titles that are well worth a revisit. During the GameCube era, Nintendo seemed to foster better relations with other designers, reaching out the olive branch to one-time rivals Sega and snapping up all-time greats like the Timesplitters series.

These, though, are the games that fewer folks still remember, whose eventual Nintendo Switch ports are less eagerly awaited - but whose qualities need a reappraisal, and fast, because they have a hell of a lot to offer. Among Nintendo’s iconic titles, these are the rough diamonds.

A game of great ambition and no small amount of weirdness, Cubivore: Survival of the Fittest is an interactive evolution simulator in which your goal is to spawn an offspring strong enough to defeat the savage Killer Cubivore which runs roughshod over the land. By battling your way through the lesser creatures of the world, maintaining a balanced diet, and a programme of selective breeding, in due course you’ll become the toughest beast going. Surprisingly, it didn’t sell altogether too well.

A strategy game of sorts, the player must match their playable character against different types of Cubivore, whose strength, speed, and other vital statistics vary depending on their colour. After vanquishing a foe, you can restore their own Cubivore (there’s a good chance you’ll get your limbs ripped off quite a lot) or simply feast on the (presumably) nutritious flesh of the kill.

There’s a lot of depth to Cubivore, with lessons and theories on evolution rubbing up against a religious undertone - your ultimate goal is to reach Shangri-la, the Cubivore heaven. It’s a tricky sell, perhaps, but a fascinating GameCube curio.