Nintendo Gamecube Hits the Shelves in North America

The Nintendo GameCube is Nintendo's fourth home video game console and is part of the sixth generation console era.

It is the successor to the Nintendo 64 and predecessor to Nintendo's Wii.

The Nintendo GameCube is the first Nintendo console to use optical discs as its primary storage medium, after several aborted forays by Nintendo in disc-based storage media. In contrast with the GameCube's competing consoles, the Xbox and PlayStation 2, the GameCube uses miniDVD-based discs instead of full-size DVDs. As a result, it does not have the DVD-Video playback functionality of the Xbox and PlayStation 2 nor the audio CD playback ability of previous consoles that used full size optical discs.

In addition, the GameCube also introduced a variety of connectivity options to Nintendo consoles, and was the third Nintendo console, after the Nintendo 64DD, to officially support online play. It also allowed for connectivity to the contemporary Game Boy Advance to access exclusive features of certain games.

The console was released on September 14, 2001 in Japan, November 18, 2001 in North America, May 3, 2002 in Europe and May 17, 2002 in Australia. The GameCube sold 21.74 million units worldwide.