Tired of guns, gangstas and grey skies, UK:Resistance made the following demands of video game developers:

• Change everything that’s grey into blue.
• From now on, everyone wears red shoes.
• Make everything happen at midday or sunset.
• Replace gun textures with banana textures.
• Turn all cars into pink convertibles that wobble and only do 15mph.
• If you get 100 of anything, a little tune plays.
• Instead of saying “crew” say “your buddies”.
• Instead of saying “hood” say “zone”.
• Make the female characters something other than prostitutes.
• Make the black characters something other than drug dealers.

The World of Me concurs.

The main retailers such as Dixons and HMV had completely sold out, while the dedicated gaming outlets like Game and Electonics Boutique had only ridiculous +£250 deals that included useless travel bags and cuddly toys. Toys R’ us had the best deal price-wise (£175 would get you a console, two games and an extra third-party joypad) but you couldn’t choose the games in the bundle. In the end the Virgin Megastore had the best deal and I was lucky enough to purchase their last available Gamecube for £189, which included the console and two games of your own choice (I chose Star Wars Rogue Squadron II: Rogue Leader and Luigi’s Mansion)

At the time of writing, the Gamecube has been newly-housed under the tevelvision and a few hours of gameplay has taken place. So what are the first impressions?

The first thing you notice is how small both the console and it’s ‘DVDs‘ are (the Gamecube measures 11.5cm x 15cm x 16cm=small). The controller is great, toy-like in some respects, mainly due to the bright colours on each of the buttons. The vibration you get while playing through the games is subtle and not as rasping as that on the Sony Dual Shock controller.

The console comes with a joypad and a phono video cable only, no memory card or demo discs are included. An RGB scart cable is available but not necessary as the video output through the composite phono cable is excellent.

Games-wise, Star Wars plays like a dream, with some of the later levels boasting superb graphics (and something you never saw on a Nintendo in the past – video footage) whilst Luigi has everything you expect from a Nintendo game; colourful graphics with simplistic yet enjoyable gameplay.

So, a great start to what seems to be a great console. Check back soon to find out if the Gamecube is still in favour or has ended up a failure.