Yeah couldn't disagree more here. Gamecube is my favorite Nintendo console. I've owned every console from them since the NES, and it's no contest. Sure, I think it would have been cool if Wink Waker had more dungeons, but it was a solid game and many people's favorite in the series. Melee was my favorite Smash, though it doesn't have my main. Double Dash was my favorite Mario Kart, nothing comes close except for 8 (Deluxe). Metroid Prime, both 1 and 2, were fucking divine. And I don't care what anyone says, Sunshine is my favorite 3D Mario, even above Odyssey. It actually tried to innovate Mario's abilities beyond powerups (something never tried elsewhere until Odyssey), I loved FLUDD, it actually tried to make a more interesting story (certainly harder than any non-RPG Mario game did, and harder than some of the Paper Marios even), and the levels were pretty creative given the limitations of the locale. For all its quirks, I actually like Star Fox Adventures, and think the series could stand to have more exploration based elements added to it. If you don't like Adventures, Assault is better than anything since, and while it doesn't have the same nostalgia that 64 has, it's gameplay it a bit better than 64 in my opinion. People also forget Fire Emblem. I love Awakening and Fates, but Path of Radiance is still my favorite from the series. Luigi's Mansion 1 was better than 2. And you can shit on Mario Party all you want, but 4 and 5 were the peak of the series, not 2 or 3 like I see people usually say. And the RPGs, oh the RPGs. So many people missed out on Baten Kaitos. Both Baten Kaitos games kick the ass of every title in the Xenoblade series. Tales of Symphonia is the best Tales game, at least story-wise and character-wise. Then you have Paper Mario TTYD, easily peak Paper Mario, maybe even peak Mario RPG, though I have a soft spot for the SNES Mario RPG. I really wish we'd gotten more games like Pokemon Colosseum and XD:Gale of Darkness. If you're into Harvest Moon, A Wonderful Life is the best game in that series. The Gamecube's Animal Crossing is still my favorite Animal Crossing, though New Leaf comes close. It has the highest villager count in the series for starters, and you can't forget it had full NES games in it. For those that miss F-Zero, it had the best F-Zero game in GX. Pikmin 1 and 2 were amazing, and I'll take them over 3 or that piece of garbage on the 3DS any day. And anyone who has only seen the 3DS disaster that was Chibi-Robo Zip Lash has no idea what Chibi-Robo is capable of. The Gamecube Chibi-Robo was a beautiful hidden gem, deserving of millions more. It explores themes Nintendo (or most of gaming honestly) has never dared to explore since. It has most of the best Mario Sports games. It has the best Mario Baseball, the best Mario Golf, arguably the best Mario Tennis, and it has Super Mario Strikers, probably the best Mario sports game period.

Were any of these games rushed? Well, if by rushed you mean short development times, then sure, some had some impressively short ones. But if by rushed you mean that the development time was cut short and that the games suffered for it, then no. None of the games felt rushed to me. Not one. All were quality products for what I paid and what I expected. And since it was the strongest console of its generation, the third party games were great too, the best experience in fact. Switch has a chance to come close, but it's not there yet.

I don't know, maybe Zelda Wind Waker was a little bit rushed when it became obvious that GCN would struggle, cause that Triforce-hunt they did felt out of place and like padding in a otherwise exceptional game. Some of Mario Sunshine's gameplay mechanics didn't really work for me, but i think that is more of a case of Nintendo being experimental and not because it was rushed. But i can't think of any other game that felt inferior from what it could have been in my opinion.

We know for a fact that Metroid Prime 2 was, though. It's great, but it was supposed to be even better if it wasn't rushed to fill the poor Christmas 2004 the GameCube was going to have.

You know, I never had this impression, on the contrary. It's growing inside me the idea of buying a Gamecube. As most of us, I spent the whole sixth generation of consoles playing only PS2 games. I want to be on pair with Nintendo games release in the past seventeen years.

You'll have a great time.

If you have a Wii (other than the Wii mini) it natively plays all gamecube games.  If you don't Gamecubes are pretty cheap.  Can't go wrong either way.  In addition to the Nintendo games, I recommend the Rogue Squadron series.

But we got the best Star Wars ever at launch, the best Paper Mario and the best Monkey Ball. :P

Metroid Prime says hi. Also, Windwaker was not rushed - it was simply a humongous project that would have taken another 5 years to make if Nintendo had put in it everything they wanted to.

So I've made 2.4 thousand posts on the topic? Really? =)

But Metroid Prime is not my reason. That game is ancient and has no bearing on the current Retro studios; it was developed by the ex-Iguana staff who haven't worked at Retro in well over a decade.

If you do follow my thousands of "Retro is overrated" posts, then you'd know the reason I say Retro is overrated has next to nothing to do with Metroid Prime. It is pushback against those who continue to pretend that Retro is, in stark contrast to reality, Nintendo's strongest and most cutting-edge studio. In the last decade, Retro has released a couple of DKC platformers, neither of which lived up to the impact of the original DKCs; which dominated the mid-90s console scene. When looking at the biggest franchise rivals of DK in the SNES era: Mario, Zelda, and Final Fantasy - all of those franchises continue to be cutting edge while, in the hands of Retro, the Donkey Kong franchise languishes in throwback territory.

Is that right? I've always been under the impression that Wind Waker was rushed. I replayed the game recently, and it seemed apparent that there should have at least been an extra dungeon to get the third pearl, but instead it's just given to you. I'm not sure that I felt as though there was a second area of the game that was blatantly missing a dungeon, but the game did have much fewer than previous entries, so I would like to think that they could have added a third dungeon to go along with wind and earth to power up the Master Sword.

You sound very sure of yourself in your post. Do you have a source?