GameCube Turns 25, Top 10 Best-Selling GameCube Games - Sales
by William D'Angelo , posted 5 days ago / 6,118 Views
Nintendo's sixth generation home console, the Nintendo GameCube, released 25 years ago in Japan on September 14, 2001. It would also release in North America on November 18, 2001 and in Europe on May 2002.
The GameCube sold 21.74 million units lifetime worldwide, along with 208.58 million games. It is the 23rd best-selling video game platform of all-time.
Looking at the regional breakdown for hardware sales its strongest region by far was North America with 12.55 million units sold. The console also managed to sell 4.44 million units in Europe, 4.04 million units in Japan, and 0.71 million units in the rest of the world.
Three games for the GameCube sold over five million units, 11 games sold over two million units, 45 games sold over one million units, and 96 games sold over 500,000 units.
Here are the top 10 best-selling GameCube games:
- Super Smash Bros. Melee - 7.41 million
- Mario Kart: Double Dash!! - 6.88 million
- Super Mario Sunshine - 5.91 million
- The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker - 4.43 million
- Luigi's Mansion - 3.33 million
- Metroid Prime - 2.84 million
- Mario Party 4 - 2.46 million
- Pokémon Colosseum - 2.41 million
- Animal Crossing - 2.27 million
- Mario Party 5 - 2.17 million
A life-long and avid gamer, William D'Angelo was first introduced to VGChartz in 2007. After years of supporting the site, he was brought on in 2010 as a junior analyst, working his way up to lead analyst in 2012 and taking over the hardware estimates in 2017. He has expanded his involvement in the gaming community by producing content on his own YouTube channel and Twitch channel. You can follow the author on Bluesky.
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so many fun games on this system, too bad they did not sell more. NINTENDO release Eternal darkness please
haha I went all mad and did the save with all three consecutive gods, then it unlocks the fourth... Good times. Do not look into the bathtub !
Metroid Prime 1 was a masterpiece and one of the few bragging points for owners back then (although Halo dudes still scoffed at it).
For how little both the Gamecube and Wii U sold, and even the N64. They were all some of my favorite systems.
I got banned by a "moderator" for a Mario Kart 8 thread where I complained that Mario Kart 8 didn't get 120fps support. That was not trolling, and has nothing to do with PC releases.
Switch 2 is now a 120 fps machine, for home console use and for portable use, both. Nintendo's biggest failure is not releasing higher frame rate versions of old games imo.
All these Gamecube games are being released to NSO without proper care and attention. I'd play all these top 10 games every day today if they were 120fps widescreen and 1080p on Switch 2. Like they should be.
Kind of bonkers we don't even have Mario 64 in widescreen and high refresh rate yet. Every single one of Nintendo's classic games is being ported to PC because Nintendo didn't do it themselves, there wouldn't be huge demand for PC ports if these Gamecube games were released properly on Switch 2, imo.
Nintendo should have a full time "classics" dev team. Even NES and SNES should be enhanced and released that way on Switch 2.
Youre making it seem like adding 120fps support is as simple as flicking a switch.
This is why we have to appreciate the limits of our understanding when it comes to these demands we place.
Retro games often have hardcoded their physics, animations, and scripted logic directly to original frame rates (30 or 60fps). Simply unlocking the frame rate triggers a "fast-forward" effect where physics break, animations move at hyper-speed, and collisions fail, demanding meticulous, game-by-game code rewriting to decouple game speed from rendering.
Literally the GOAT. Give me a GameCube HD, port modern games to it and I will be set for life.
lets push nintendo to keep adding them to the subscription service. im playing star fox adventures now
Hours playing SSBM and MKDD. Infinite fun with friends. So much good memories !
I can understand if they don't put Prime on NSO (they want to keep selling Remastered) but those other titles currently missing from NSO on this list need to go on there.
