Three years later that cute girl was my wife. Being the terrible human being I am, I barely gave her the time of day constantly checking my watch, fidgety, distracted. I remember shopping with this cute girl - intelligent, friendly, drop dead gorgeous. I didn’t need to play my GameCube, I just wanted to. I had made friends - I barely had time to spare. I had gotten through the first stage of culture shock and was knee deep in what experts call the ‘Honeymoon Phase’ - I had fallen in love with Japan, with the language, the politeness of the locals, the food. I had to wait another month for the new Freeloader to arrive… it felt unbearable.īy the time I was actually able to play Metroid Prime and Wind Waker, I no longer had that need to disappear. I frantically cycled to the nearest internet cafe and did a Google search - turned out the version of the Freeloader my brother sent me was outdated and wouldn’t play the games I’d been so desperate for. What the hell is going on, I asked myself, why couldn’t I play?
The disappointment was palpable almost physical.
Would a japanese gamecube gba player play us tv#
I followed the Freeloader instructions to the letter, placed the small Wind Waker disc into the tray and sat cross legged in front of the TV like I was 10 years old again the perfect man child.īut then… nothing - a flickering black and white image on my outdated Japanese CRT. I’ll never forget the day the games hit my mailbox - In a brown envelope that I ripped to shreds in seconds.
I had to call my brother to post me English versions of Wind Waker, and Metroid Prime, along with a Freeloader - the disc that allowed importers to override region codes. I’d simply walk past it, grumbling.Īt the time I had no internet. This was the game I wanted to play, so badly, but couldn’t. I’d walk past video game stores - I’d look at Wind Waker in its small Japanese box, covered in Kanji I couldn’t read, and I’d feel such frustration. A simple two player fighter was fun for a while, but it hardly gave me the respite I craved. But there were obstacles: I could barely speak Japanese, let alone read it. I wanted to disappear.Īnd it worked for a short while at least. Back then I thought I was buying my GameCube because I wanted to play Soul Calibur 2 - but what I really wanted was an excuse, something to procrastinate with. One of the first symptoms, in the very beginning, is a strong desire to remove yourself from your surroundings - to find respite from the culture you don’t understand, to avoid the difficult task of assimilation. I had just turned 22, I was alone in a strange country. I had been living there for a single month. I was living in Nagoya, Japan when I bought my GameCube, stumbling home in the dark, completely penniless.
Some of my fondest memories are inextricably linked with the GameCube, to the extent that I can barely separate them from the games themselves. The GameCube was the last straw for many - including my own brother, who never bought another Nintendo console again.īut, for me? It was a console I fell in love with a console I fell in love playing. It was a console without direction, a trough in anticipation of a peak. The GameCube sold poorly Super Mario Sunshine was arguably the weakest ‘canon’ Mario ever made, Wind Waker wasn’t for everyone. When history judges the GameCube, it won’t be judged kindly. I shelled the 24,000 Yen I couldn’t really spare, smiled politely at the sales clerk, and stumbled home in the dark with my brand new GameCube. I was poor, still waiting on my first paycheck, I couldn’t understand a single word on the box, but still… I bought it.
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