Let's Play Every GameCube Game, Part 31
RedCard 20-03 (Point of View/Midway, 2002)
Midway's take on soccer isn't edgy at all except for not bothering to call fouls, and the announcers even take it mostly seriously. That said, "not bothering to call fouls" does not improve the sport, especially when the exception to that rule is that they do still call penalty kicks. There wouldn't have been a reason to play this over the many alternatives even back in 2002.
Rei Fighter Gekitsui Senki (Global A Entertainment, 2003)
A flight sim that never released outside of Japan, presumably because it has you flying for Japan in WWII. It opens with Pearl Harbor, and while I don't know if it includes any actions more controversial than that, I can't imagine it would've gone down well in any other market. Looking past that, though, it barely has graphics, there's no sense of speed whatsoever, and it doesn't even control well. I don't think anyone would've wanted this even if it had a more widely appealing theme.
Reign of Fire (Kuju Entertainment/BAM! Entertainment, 2002)
Credit where credit is due: This latest forgotten movie game is at least not a collectathon platformer. Instead, it's a third person shooter that is apparently also a flight game in the dragon campaign. It doesn't control well and seemingly has about two colors in its pallet, so that's all the credit I'm willing to give it.
Resident Evil (Capcom, 2002)
Popularly known as REMake, this, well, remake of the PS1 classic updates the graphics and remixes the systems and enemies to make a game that felt surprising despite still being mostly the same. It's generally considered one of the best in the series, and I've been sitting on the Steam version of it for three years. I'm not putting it on the list for that reason, but maybe this'll inspire me to, you know, play the game I bought.
Resident Evil 2 (Capcom, 2003)
By contrast, RE2's GCN outing was widely criticized for being an unmodified port of the DualShock version of the PS1 game. It released at full price despite looking like... this, and it didn't even have features that were in the N64 release. While presumably better than the GameCom version, it's still not much of anyone's recommended way to play.
Resident Evil 3: Nemesis (Capcom, 2003)
I could basically copy paste the description from RE2 here and it'd almost all be true. This release one day earlier and was also criticized for being an unmodified port of a PS1 game that nonetheless charged full price. Like RE2, it's a game you should play elsewhere. It also got a full remake recently, but reception was nowhere near as positive as RE2's new version.
Resident Evil 4 (Capcom, 2005)
This is my personal pick for best RE game, which is about as uncontroversial of a gaming opinion as there is. RE4 shifted the perspective to an over-the-shoulder view and went all out on the campy nature that had always been part of the earlier games. It easily could've been a disaster, but instead it resulted in a shooter that's simultaneously tense and hilarious, and which still holds up great today. I've never played much of the GCN version, but the (much later) PC port made my top 100 games at #57.
Resident Evil Code: Veronica X (Capcom, 2003)
And with that classic out of the way, here's another unmodified port of an earlier game. This time it's a port of a PS2 game from 2001 that was itself a barely modified version of a Dreamcast game from 2000. The PS2 and especially the DC versions both got very positive reviews, but by 2003 everyone was apparently sick of playing the same game and this port fared much worse. This is the only mainline RE game that isn't playable on PC, interestingly, but it has been ported to more recent Sony and Microsoft consoles. Those are likely the best way to play it today.
Resident Evil Zero (Capcom, 2002)
I think it's fair to say that this would've been the least popular mainline RE that was released in the GCN era, although RE6 and maybe even RE5 have since taken that title. Like RE4, it was developed for GCN first, but most reviews pegged it as merely good instead of an all-time classic like that game. Slightly updated ports are available on practically everything nowadays. I'll play it on a newer system eventually.
Ribbit King (Infinity + Jamsworks/Bandai, 2003)
A golf game in which you launch a frog from a catapult instead of hitting a ball. It's a silly idea that is taken to equally silly extremes, but it's a little too chaotic to be much of a game. Your frogs will jump away from where they land to go after flies and can be attacked by hostile creatures that send them flying off in another direction, so it's almost impossible to know where you'll end up.
Road Trip: The Arcade Edition (Hudson/Takara, 2002)
This is actually Choro Q, a long-running series based on what are essentially Japanese Hot Wheels toys. Most of them don't leave Japan, but this was an exception. I'm not really sure why - it's a very simple racing game where you don't even need to brake and everything about the menus and graphics suggest it was made on a low budget. Predictably, it got mediocore reviews and no GCN sequels were made.
RoadKill (Terminal Reality/THQ, 2003)
This game pitched itself as the only post-apocalyptic vehicle combat game with missions, but I think it's more notable for having the weakest starting weapon in all of video games, personally. This turret here takes at least 30 seconds of focused fire on an enemy to kill, which would be functionally useless except that the AI is an idiot and gets stuck on walls a lot. Still, since the bullets are much faster than your car and have auto-aim, it means there's no way to kill an enemy without taking tons of damage yourself. That does not make for much of a car combat game.
RoboCop (Titus, 2004)
This uses the same nonsensical aiming system that puts horizontal on the control stick and vertical on the c-stick that was seen earlier in Nightfire, and it's from the same bizarre deal that led to Titus also making a GBC RoboCop game that came up in the series covering that system. But those things are really the most logical parts of this game. What's much more interesting is that this game - made by a French studio and based on an American movie - features voice overs in full American English and has a UI that is entirely in English except for the case selection screen, yet it was released exclusively in Japan on GCN. Meanwhile, the PC release was exclusively German, the PS2 release launched only in Japan and the UK, and the Xbox release came out in the NA and PAL regions. Now that's what I call convoluted.
Robotech: Battlecry (Vicious Cycle Software/TDK Mediactive, 2002)
It starts out as a flight game, but other sections later on are mech combat. This is one of those games that I'm sure elementary school me would've considered the coolest thing ever if I'd played it at the time, but the special effects and gameplay don't really hold up in 2021. Not that it even received positive reviews back then, of course.
Robots (Eurocom/Vivendi, 2005)
I've heard some people say that they miss licensed movie games, and doing this series has made me realize that I'm really not one of those people. I've barely even played any of these for more than two minutes and I'm sick to death of low budget collectathons that recycle movie scenes and throw in platforming sections for no reason at all. If anyone wanted to make good ones that weren't just thoughtless cash grabs, that's another story, but it's also not what happened 95% of the time back then. I wish I at least had some positive news about the devs, but Eurocom are still stuck making crappy licensed games and Griptonite, who did the GBA version, have switched to porting other people's games to mobile.
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
Nintendo Puzzle Collection
Odama
Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door
R: Racing Evolution