Speaking about how reliable Nintendo products are...

Console Damage Test 

GCvsPS2vsXbox 

Great thing about most cube and Wii games is that they don't stream data constantly from the disc... they load their scenes very quickly (thanks to the fast ram and speedy drive) and then run everything directly from ram (slowing the disc speed down in the process) so as long as your not reading anything from disc... you can pick up your cube or Wii, shake it for a little while... put it down... and all is fine.

On another note...  I went looking for an official Gamecube 1019 mem card for my Gamecube (since my Wii has my other card) and I had a heck of a time finding one...  what gives?  Is all the cube stuff drying up now?

Maybe recently.I bought all my GC related peripherals on day one of the Wii launch. Hell, I bought Melee  right after E3 2006.

I was just at Wal-Mart looking at wireless GCN controllers today.

They had three Wavebirds for $20 each. I'm thinking I should've bought 'em to sell on eBay.

Availability will probably be feast or famine. Since Nintendo discontinued or greatly reduced production of these Gamecube items, stores in areas with few Gamecube/Wii owners will have lots of them lying around, while areas with lots of Gamecube/Wii owners will have none, or have only a few and at higher prices. Almost all major cities will be in the second category, I should think.

In other words, tonestarr: You have the opportunity to buy 3 New In Box Wavebirds, sell them each at a 50% ($10) profit, and be giving your buyers a great deal at the same time. Or you could be a jerk and sell them for $50 each and still find buyers.

 [edit:  To everyone else:  unless you're looking for bargains on used stuff, I would recommend going to store.nintendo.com, looking at what's still available, and buying what you want from there while you still can!]

I think it would be a great idea to relaunch the wavebird as a wii item, because that would look better than the original one and quite a lot of people probably are needing one because they didn't own a Cube. Also, maybe some developers would launch new games that are controlled with the wavebird.

Besides, I think the Gamecube Controller is the best controller ever created, it just lies perfectly in your hands and playing with it feels so smooth. Best example for that was playing Burnout for me. I owned it for Gamecube while my friend owned it for the Xbox, and we both played very often at each others place, but the experience with the Xbox controller was nowhere near the Cube's experience. I haven't had a comparable experience with the PS2 controller, but I never felt it fits as good as the Cubes controller too, which is quite logic because it was created way earlier.