Let's Play Every GameCube Game, Part 24
Mortal Kombat: Deception (Midway, 2005)
I still don't want to play the proper game, but chess seemed different enough, so here's that. It sure is chess.
Mr. Driller Drill Land (Project Driller/Namco, 2002)
A puzzle game where you drill colored blocks and try to reach treasure/the bottom without getting crushed by the cave-ins you cause. It has loads of modes and a cute story, but probably not many people are at all familiar with it because it was Japan exclusive until an eShop and PC release last year. It won't be the last this site hears of it, though, because it's going on the list.
Muppets Party Cruise (Mass Media/TDK Interactive, 2003)
A bunch of Mario Party-esque minigames without the boardgame, which isn't a huge loss to me. The minigames aren't anything all that impressive and almost all of them are locked to begin with, though, so there's not a lot of game available to you. You'd have to really want the Muppets theme to get anywhere with it.
Muscle Champion: Kinnikutou Kessen (Konami/Takara Tomy, 2002)
A series of stupid four player minigames where you're competing to do be the first to do something with the flag item. In the minigame above, you needed to slap it on the central console, and in the next you needed to dig it out of the sand while dizzy. There also appears to be a Ninja Warrior course you can unlock with coins, a house to customize, and a bunch of silly OCs to play alongside what appear to be caricatures of real people. Another surprise Japanese list game.
Mutsu to Nohohon (Tomy, 2002)
I think it's basically an aquarium game where you add things to the tank to make the weird alien fish happy, but it didn't really bother to explain itself beyond a low-budget story text scroll. I really don't like that they use hiragana for words on the shell menus even when they'd normally be written in katakana, especially since items in the sub-menus use their usual character set. Famitsu gave this a 25/40, which is a very bad score for them, and I'm not seeing much of a game either.
MVP Baseball 2004 (EA Canada/EA Sports, 2004)
I accidentally set up a game between the worst rated AA team and the Yankees, but it was on rookie and I actually know how to play this game, so it worked out anyway. I don't think there will be much dispute from anyone that this series, short as it was, is the definitive baseball sim of this generation. It had almost everything you could want from the genre until The Show came along, and both games still hold up well even now. But the next one is better, so I'll leave it at that for now and move on.
MVP Baseball 2005 (EA Canada/EA Sports, 2004)
This is one of my most nostalgic games ever, so I can't pretend to have an objective evaluation of it, but it's very well regarded by others as well. It added an owner mode where you could run a team and even customize your stadium, gave you ways to permanently boost player stats with minigames, and had a great soundtrack. The announcers leave something to be desired in terms of saying player names, but that's understandable since you could make custom rosters, and there are unique lines for cool achievements like winning the WS with a walk-off homerun and throwing a perfect game. One more list game.
MX Superfly (Locomotive Games/THQ, 2002)
Another dirtbike racing game, although this one at least looks pretty good for a game from 2002. It has a few different modes and the tracks are fairly interesting, but something feels off with the physics. I felt like I was riding a hoverbike rather than a motorcycle.
Mystic Heroes (Koei, 2002)
Basically a Dynasty Warriors game. It plays exactly the same, but it's more cartoony and is set over a thousand years earlier at the beginning of the Zhou Dynasty instead of during the Warring States Period. It seems like it has a decent amount of content between four different playable characters that (I think) have their own campaigns and some bonus modes, but it feels slow to play and the camera is zoomed in much too close.
Namco Museum (Mass Media/Namco, 2002)
The arcade port collection that Namco likes to do on every system. I can't get it to reach gameplay, so I can't tell you if this specific version is any good, but you can play most of these games on everything up to and including calculators. It's just about the least interesting game on the console.
Namco Museum 50th Anniversary (Backbone Entertainment/Namco, 2005)
It features a few more games than the previous archive and is the first title in this series to emulate the original arcade ROMs, so it'd be the way to go if you really wanted to play Pac-Man on GCN.
Naruto: Clash of Ninja (Eighting/Tomy, 2003)
A 1v1 anime fighter with all of seven playable characters. That's not a very impressive number, and there doesn't seem to be anything else about it that really makes up for that.
Naruto: Clash of Ninja 2 (Eighting/Tomy, 2003)
It adds a bunch of modes and boosts the character count to 20. I have zero familiarity with this series, so I don't know how well it represents anything. This character has a mind control super move where the damage comes from dropping a giant boulder on your opponent, which seems like something that could've been done without the mind control.
Naruto: Gekitou Ninja Taisen! 3 (Eighting/Tomy, 2004)
Now with 100% less English, some new mechanics, and a story mode covering different arcs. If you're a casual player with no interest in the manga/anime like me, though, you're probably not going to notice anything except the nine extra playable characters.
Naruto: Gekitou Ninja Taisen! 4 (Eighting/Tomy, 2005)
The last GCN entry in this series was also Japan-exclusive. It has 20 characters unlocked at the start and some unknown number you can get after that. I'm sure there are some story and mode changes as well, but the only thing I noticed was that the UI is completely different after staying virtually identical for three games.
The list:
1080° Avalanche
Animal Crossing
Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance
Baten Kaitos: Eternal Wings and the Lost Ocean
Batman: Dark Tomorrow
Burnout 2: Point of Impact
Charinko Hero
Chibi-Robo!
Cocoto Kart Racer
Cubivore: Survival of the Fittest
Custom Robo
Dark Summit
Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem
F-Zero GX
Family Stadium 2003
Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance
Freedom Fighters
Freekstyle
Gotcha Force
James Bond 007: Everything or Nothing
Jikkyou Powerful Major League
Kirby Air Ride
The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess
The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker
Mario Golf: Toadstool Tour
Mario Kart: Double Dash!!
Mario Power Tennis
Metal Arms: Glitch in the System
Mr. Driller Drill Land
Muscle Champion: Kinnikutou Kessen
MVP Baseball 2005