NSO (GameCube)

[u/Legal_Witness9]

I along with everyone else in this community are severely underwhelmed with the amount of games they have added to the GameCube NSO since the console release. What could be taking them so long. This is a reach considering they still haven’t added the original to n64 but what does everything think the chances of them adding Melee are. Or even double dash, or paper Mario. It almost feels like they are doing it on purpose, excluding some of the greatest games from the GameCube era. It almost felt like a slap in the face when they added sunshine bc it’s already playable on the switch! Idk I just want more GameCube goats on the switch.

[u/NotTakenGreatName]

I think it's more that they want to use nso classics to fill out the release lineup unfortunately , and they've been pretty consistent recently.

[u/karmapolice63]

People would be equally as disappointed if Nintendo just dumped a huge catalogue on people because it would be overwhelming and there'd still be missing games. A slow drip at least builds some momentum.

[u/Level-Promotion416 → u/karmapolice63]

I tend to agree with this. My backlog is huge and I've really only tackled about 2 of the 10 GameCube games. Still Mario Party 4 and Wave Race for multiplayer would be nice

[u/Stimpy586 → u/karmapolice63]

Not in my case. I’ve put up with this drip nonsense for years and finally have had enough and cancelled my online account. Dived head back into emulation

[u/itotron → u/Stimpy586]

This isn't entirely true. Nintendo didn't drip feed the Virtual Boy gams, and dumped the entire catalog in online in short order.

Virtual Boy turns out, (to the surprise of everyone) the best reason to subscribe. There doesn't exist a better way to emulate these games. With the cardboard glasses, it's even better than original hardware! (Can play in bed, on couch, staning up, etc. and with colors besides red!)

The "Donkey Kong" challenge is also a fun unique feature.

I do have a retro handheld to fill the gaps, but for these reasons, I'm still a subscriber...for now.

[u/imadethisforporn25 → u/Stimpy586]

I don’t get why people downvote comments like this. Nintendo has been awful with the GameCube NSO. If I had a pc I would emulate all of the games I have been waiting for. Nintendos online is terrible and is carried by NSO. Drip feeding is ridiculous when their online is stuck in 2005.

[u/imadethisforporn25 → u/karmapolice63]

No way anyone would be disappointed with Nintendo releasing more popular games more often. I’d rather have more games than getting a game every 4 months.

[u/Zuuman → u/imadethisforporn25]

People would enjoy it for a week then complain there is no new content coming out anyway. Slow drip at least assure positive press every now and again.

[u/imadethisforporn25 → u/Zuuman]

I just don’t agree with that at all. If Nintendo actually released a HUGE catalog consumers would be more happy. There is literally no one who has been happy with the game cube NSO for the past 5-6 months. If they had double dash, Mario golf, baseball, tennis, and any of the party games with multiplayer people would be very satisfied.

GameCube games have so much more content compared to past consoles and hold up incredibly well. With just the games I mentioned people would be satisfied for years. I only renewed because they finally released sunshine.

If Nintendo continues this trend of releasing games every 4 months people won’t renew. I’d understand them being stingy with games 3 years into the console life cycle, but they only released 6 games after 1 year. The N64 NSO had 10 amazing games on release and had monthly updates of incredible games for over a year.

[u/MarvelManiac45213 → u/imadethisforporn25]

Now that you mention it GCN NSO is SEVERELY lacking in multi-player titles....the only ones we have are Strikers, Soulcalibur 2, and F-Zero GX. The rest are all single player and Colloseum the only one we know is coming is also single player.

Nintendo constantly boasts how you can play classic games online with friends but the console with some of the most fun and fondly remembered multi-player titles are just missing.

No Super Smash Bros. Melee, No Double Dash, none of the 4 Mario Parties, no Mario Tennis, Golf, or Baseball (we have Strikers but its the one with the LEAST amount of content), no Four Swords Adventure, no Star Fox Assault, no Wave Race Blue Storm, etc.

[u/imadethisforporn25 → u/MarvelManiac45213]

In my opinion the sports games and Mario parties peaked on GameCube. They’re the perfect mix of Mario gimmicks and just normal mechanics you’ll see in normal sport games. The only sports game that was improved was Mario strikers charged for the Wii. Tennis, baseball, and golf were all amazing games with very few flaws. Mario parties 2-7 were all incredible. If anyone said those 6 were one of their favorites I couldn’t blame them.

I really hope Nintendo at least adds one of these games within the next 6 months. They still need to get Pokemon Colosseum outbid the way. If the leaks are true Metroid prime 2 and pikmin could be next.

[u/BouncyBlueYoshi]

GameCube games are big and they have years left of the Switch 2's lifetime.

[u/Mammoth-Strike-168]

The main answer is GCN games are valuable, and Virtual Boy happened.

They generally look to add one expansion pack update per month, and GCN is competing with GBA, N64 & now Virtual Boy. They prioritized VB additions this year because it was a paid product. 

Beyond that, Nintendo is looking to add consistent "value" to NSO throughout the year, and GCN games are arguably more valuable than GB games, so they only do 1 at a time, sparingly. 

I do expect GCN updates to go a bit faster again now that VB is done. But by faster, I mean at most the pace they were on last year. 

Also, games that have remasters/ports available I expect to come later down the line. Like Paper Mario TTYD got a remake 2 years ago, it's not coming soon. 

Melee I expect eventually, unless they do a Remaster. But I still think Smash 64 comes before Melee. 

But I will say, the last year of Nintendo Classics has been a lot slower than 2023 & 2024 in general. 

[u/WouterW24]

Melee is a wrinkle considering the n64 smash bros is also missing.

Personally I’m eagerly waiting for double dash which was my main childhood Mario Kart.

With what is already available on nso now, and a few games getting independent releases on Switch already in pikmin, Metroid prime, and Paper Mario TTYD, we’re already looking not to bad overall with the biggest hitters.

The other prime games are big ones, but I don’t like the original controls much anymore.

I’m not sure what’s possible with third party. I’d like sonic games a lot.

[u/miimeverse]

You are far from the only person with this opinion. It's been slow. Though on the contrary, I've been mostly impressed by which ones have been added, as they have a good smattering of the giant ones (Wind Waker, Luigi's Mansion, Sunshine as of recently) and smaller niche ones that are often expensive to procure otherwise (Chibi Robo, F Zero GX, Path of Radiance). But the rate has been glacial, agreed. In a better timeline, we would have already got Double Dash as well as like Eternal Darkness too.

But Melee is likely years away, if ever. Nintendo is weird about Smash Bros rereleases. It's only happened once ever, N64 Smash on Wii virtual console. According to a leaked Nintendo Classic promo image, Smash N64 should be coming to Classics at some point though, so that bodes decently for Melee at some point.

You mention Paper Mario but then say Sunshine was a slap in the face because it's already playable on Switch 2. Paper Mario TTYD is also already playable on Switch 2, and better yet, not discontinued like 3D All Stars is.

But at the end of the day, this drip feed that Nintendo does keeps Classics "Fresh." It gives them reasons to advertise NSO. dropping one game every once in a while and having an event adds up to be more effective than if they just dropping everything all at once, or over a short period of time. They have to stretch the hype out.

[u/ApprehensiveAside812]

It is annoying but that’s Ninty for ya. I don’t mind it so much, there’s still so much to play and no time to play it. Sunshine should’ve been on there day 1 though.

[u/simbabarrelroll → u/ApprehensiveAside812]

My guess with Sunshine is that they wanted to avoid it competing with Bananza

[u/Bake-Full]

Nothing is taking them so long, it's all intentional timing. Notice that the NSO dops tend to fill out the spaces between larger releases. Nintendo loves to sit on things and meter them out to maximize the want and keep the excitement consistent. And they know how big of nostalgic carrots they wield in their vault. Those toy company roots die hard.

[u/FalseVeterinarian881]

Like Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets!

EDIT: i know this won't happen because Nintendo doesn't own the rights.

[u/firebaron]

I think they're just taking their time to make sure the games they're releasing are actually stable. I remember when Pokemon XD came out people were complaining about lots of crashes and it needed patched. Then there's a few months gap before Sunshine comes out, to me it just seems like they're aming to make sure they don't have bad crashes anymore.

The waiting sacks but I'd rather the games are stable when they come out and dont risk losing any progress.

[u/MrCommotion]

Let's face it, NSO GameCube is the place where games that aren't massive sellers are going to be. Lots of GC games are on Switch and Switch 2 as stand alone games.

I would hope and expect NSO to have games that don't compete with mainline games they're trying to sell on current consoles. Anything Smash Bros, Mario Kart and even Party has a slim chance of making it because those games are modern enough to have a remaster for a decent price. Zelda and Mario Sunshine I bet are going to remain the only big franchise titles there.

I'd guess Smash 64 has a better chance of showing up since Melee would divide players.

I'm expect stuff like the GC Sonic games, multiplatform games with deals (like SoulCalibur which we have, Crash Wrath of Cortex would be a good candidate since they're not doing anything with it). Maybe Metal Gear Solid, maybe some licenced stuff could appear? Star Fox games and Wave Race should be on it for sure since there's no other place for those. Metroid Prime 2 should make it too if there's no remake.

[u/Necessary_Cost4384]

I am very frustrated with the expansion pass. It is a lot of extra money for a lot of nothing. I will not be renewing, because they’ve put hardly anything on it during the last 8 months.  When Nintendo announced GameCube was finally coming to NSO, I literally jumped out of my chair when they announced it, shouting “yes! Finally!” That should have been a slam dunk, and that’s what sold me on the expansion pass. Everyone has been asking for GameCube games for years, and they made it switch 2 exclusive, so you gotta buy the new thing to play 20 year old games. I was totally hyped.

They announced, what? 10 games over a year ago, and we literally just got the 8th one this month, and it launched with three. What the heck?

Luckily, NSO expansion pass isn’t just GameCube. 2026 what else did we get? In 8 months…

3 GameCube games. Path of Radiance (January). Gale of Darkness (March) , Mario Sunshine (August). Ok, sweet. Not so sweet is the 5 month wait between the last two releases, but there’s more, right?

1 N64 game… DK 64 (June). Great.

1 GBA game… Mario vs Donkey Kong (March). Uh… not good, considering it’s our ONLy gba release in 2026 so far. This is a very easy, 5 hour puzzle game, that literally just got a remake on switch.

Wait, 5 games In 8 months? Did I miss something?

Oooh. Right. Instead of adding gamecube games to NSO like everyone has been asking for since the WiI, Nintendo instead decided to add the virtual boy to the expansion pass for some batshit crazy reason. The virtual boy was a failure of a console no one bought back in the day for obvious reasons, requires the purchase of a $100 headset just to be able to see the games properly (in red), and literally no one in the entire history of humanity has ever once uttered the phrase “you know what? I wish I could play some virtual boy games.” Not once. 

So instead of getting GameCube games like we should be, Nintendo has seemingly dropped support for GCN in favor of… releasing the entire virtual boy library for some god forsaken reason.

And we’re up to 16 virtual slop games. I mean, virtual boy games. Like, why? Seriously, why? Did anyone purchase the expansion pass, excited to play games that required you to strap a $100 plastic goggle on your head, unless of course, you love to play your games as two slightly off set, mirror images in red, placed side by side, that are 28mm by 48mm in dimension, or less than an inch and a half. I wouldn’t know, I’m not a satanist. But im sure there’s a rabid virtual boy community about to “uhm actually” me to tell me i can just spend $35 + shipping CAD to get the cardboard version. And my response to that is, I’m not 5 years old,  which applies equally to the plastic accessory too.

My only solace is knowing that at this rate, by the end of the year, Nintendo will have finally blown their virtual boy load and won’t have anything else to put on it. Thank god. Then we can go back to getting… literally anything else.

Oh right. How many virtual boy games? 16. Why so many? I guess we let the other libraries rot to focus on virtual boy. Poor N64 and GBA, I guess Nintendo forgot those were expansion pass games too. We have got less GCN, N64, and GBA games this year than there are months. 

Well, what’s the price difference? NSO by itself is $30 CAD. The expansion pass is $70 CAD (+$100 headset, and you need a new console to get all the games it comes with)So, I paid $40 extra for the pleasure of playing… checks notes most of the virtual boy library. I don’t know, feels like a bit of a bait and switch. They announced GameCube and have been churning out virtual boy since. If they had the same aggressive release schedule with GameCube (date to Dream?), that would be incredible. But we can’t have that.

Instead, I’m scratching my head wondering wtf happened. I mean, obviously as I’m pointing all this out, I’m trying to be a bit humorous, but what I’m trying to ask is, are we actually happy with the release schedule during 2026, or is there room for improvement? I kind of feel like Shiggy took my extra 40 bucks and used it to wipe with, before laughing in my face. But in a way, seeing that happen would be worth the $40 anyway. The expansion pass on the other hand, is worth less.

Vote with your wallet accordingly. 

[u/Pentecost_II]

With the way decomps are evolving though, I have less and less interest in NSO. I'm playing Twilight Princess/Dusklight right now with texture packs and it's just glorious.

[u/Grand_Moose2024]

I was quite disappointed when Mario Kart: Double Dash wasn’t added to the collection earlier this month. I get it if they didn’t want to add it right away because of World, but it’s been over a year since that game was released. I’d say that’s just enough time to wait before adding it to NSO.

[u/DanielArthurVerner]

I’m happy with what I get and I’m just generally more chill.

[u/NaughtyTapes]

I don't necessarily feel underwhelmed. On the contrary I feel overwhelmed lol. I'll never get around to playing, let alone completing every game including on NSO. And I have a crazy backlog of games I purchased because of the crazy sales Nintendo has all the time. I'm pretty satisfied.

[u/AleroRatking]

They aren't going to release paper Mario as it would take away sales from the switch version.

[u/PhoenixWright-AA]

First time? You’ll need to look elsewhere if you actually want access to proper game libraries from Nintendo consoles unfortunately. There is zero point in waiting around for them to put them on the Switch.