The launch commercials in the US did, but the product itself, not so much. The N64 was much cooler with the sports car styling design and GoldenEye/James Bond and lots of other FPS games and racing games (genres that Microsoft basically bumped Nintendo out of) and epic Zelda games, go to Wrestling multiplayer machine, fair amounts of sports games, etc.
The purple lunchbox design and Zelda looking like a Powerpuff Girls cartoon killed the GameCube's appeal to older audiences, it was deemed a kiddie machine by the teenagers/college aged kids of that era. Losing their hold on the console FPS shooter market to Microsoft hurt Nintendo a lot in the West.
It was just a tough era for Nintendo pop-culture wise, being cool/bad ass was given a lot of importance. I remember my roommate laughing in a good natured/fun way about me buying Animal Crossing like thinking "what the fuck is this shit", lol, but today it's a huge franchise, back then it was like "oh what the heck is Nintendo doing" type thing.
In terms of cool factor it's probably SNES > N64 > Switch > NES > Wii > GameCube > Wii U from coolest to least cool for the time they were released in.
Last edited by Soundwave - on 08 December 2023
