41. TimeSplitters: Future Perfect – James
Three games and no one has learned how to jump yet. Weird.
Directly following on from TimeSplitters 2, Future Perfect burst onto the scene in 2005, developed by Free Radical. It does everything that makes Timesplitters great, and more. A vast array of weapons, characters and stages are present, along with a fantastic single-player campaign. Fully voice-acted and continuous, it’s a step up from TimeSplitters 2‘s disjointed but still enjoyable missions. You play as Sergeant Cortex, a sort of space marine who is trying to prevent humanity from being eradicated by the mysterious race of TimeSplitters.
TimeSplitters, GoldenEye, and Perfect Dark influences are still there, but more subtle this time. The gameplay has been modernised to the standards of 2005, with better control schemes and auto-aim. Part of TimeSplitter’s charm is just how much content can be unlocked by playing the game normally, and trying to get those elusive gold trophies in the challenges. Something that’s sorely missed these days.
42. Star Fox: Assault – James
Star Fox is back. And this time he’s well-seasoned and ready to attack you with sodium chloride. Get it, because that’s-
One of the GameCube exclusives you don’t hear too much about these days. Star Fox: Assault was developed by Namco in 2005 and was, in my opinion, everything that Star Fox Adventures should have been.
There are two different types of missions in Star Fox: Assault. You’ve got your standard on-rails flight missions. Shoot, bomb, dodge, barrel roll, aileron roll, repeat. These are fun, not too difficult and look pretty nice to boot. Then you’ve got your on-foot missions, which are a bit more irksome. You’ll have some objective on the map that you’ll have to carry out while being shot at without the plethora of defensive options you’d have in the ship. If you’re patient and don’t rush, these levels are also okay. The final few can be a little tight on the ol’ ticker when your hp is low, but that’s part of the experience.
If you asked a kid in the 90s what a next-gen Star Fox 64 would look like, they’d be thrilled with this game. Oh, and there’s a story apparently.
43. Crash Bandicoot: The Wrath of Cortex – James
This time it’s marsupial
The first mainline Crash game after Naughty Dog laid down their crown and entrusted their precious IP to Traveller’s Tales, this one is a mixed bag depending on who you ask. Released in 2001 on all 6th-generation consoles, what it adds in new mechanics, it loses in something almost inexplicable.
First, for the good. There’s the obvious upgrade in tech, going from wobbly low-res textures to higher fidelity visuals. The developers continued to innovate with interesting levels, like the hamster ball levels. The game does make you /feel like Crash Bandicoot./ For the not-so-good, has Crash got grease on the bottom of his boots or something? To me, the movement just feels slightly off. I don’t know if it’s how the camera tracks crash, if the frame rate is different or whether it’s just my malfunctioning brain.
As a fan of Crash Bandicoot 2 and early Crash in general, this one is the last traditional Crash that was released until Crash Bandicoot 4, all the way on the PS4. By that metric, it’s a solid game but there’s something missing for me. Give it a go and tell us what you think.
44. Warioware, Inc.: Mega Party Games! – James
Friendship is a weakness x2
Interestingly, this is a remake of the Gameboy Advance original. Released in 2004 by Intelligent Systems, it’s interesting to see how the series has changed from then until now.
For the uninitiated, WarioWare is a series where you will be tasked with completing many microgames in quick succession. A microgame is just that, a 5-second or so snippet where you’ve got an easily discernible task that you must carry out before the timer runs out. Fail, and you lose a life. Lose all lives and you must try again.
As someone whose many hours in WarioWare come from Smooth Moves on Wii, it’s surprising to learn that the majority of the game is just the GBA game. The inputs for most of the microgames are directional controls and the A button. This is deceptively simple, but rest assured this game is still very difficult. Games range from cracking an egg into a moving pan to sawing a log in half, and then get crazier from there.
As suggested by the title, this version of WarioWare also has a fantastic multiplayer mode. Up to 4 players can play head-to-head games, though I haven’t tried this aspect of the game. Couch co-op is something that is sorely missing these days.
45. The Simpsons: Hit & Run – James
The Simpsons does what Ninten-d’oh!
Known to all kids who grew up in the early 2000s. The Simpsons: Hit & Run needs no introduction. Kid’s GTA that somehow surpassed the source material, Hit & Run is unmatched.
At any point, Hit & Run could have fallen apart. The driving could have been bad. It wasn’t. Cars drive like a dream, minus the damn Duff truck. Any car can realistically be used to complete any mission. I personally did almost all of the missions with the starting car, the iconic purple Sedan. The implementation of the Simpsons IP could have been unfunny and drab. It wasn’t. Springfield is faithfully recreated in a creative way, with every corner crammed with references to the best era of the show. The show’s original voice actors return to provide fantastic voiceovers, keeping you occasionally chuckling as the game continues.
There’s enough in the way of collectables and unlockable cars that if you don’t want to spearhead through the story, you’ll have plenty to do in each level. The missions have characters interacting with each other in ways that weren’t previously seen. In the first mission, Homer has to race Principal Skinner to the school to give Lisa her science project. When he gets there, she complains that Homer ate the gallbladder, thinking it was a fig. There are plenty of moments like this throughout the story, with 5 playable characters and 8 levels in total.
If I’ve rejigged your memory, grab your old copy, give it another go, and give in to the nostalgia.
46. Super Monkey Ball 2 – James
Monkey Balls, Roll Out!
After Super Monkey Ball was released as a launch title, the dev team got straight to work on a sequel. Super Monkey Ball 2 was released in 2002 by Amusement Vision and expands on the original greatly.
The original game had very simple stage designs, lots of them having very geometric and squared-off looks. Super Monkey Ball 2 expands on this and begins to experiment with large structures, momentum and teleportation. There’s even a story mode where the villain “Mr Bad Boon” (haha) steals all of the monkey’s bananas and Ai Ai and his troop must find a way to get them back. There are 10 biomes each with 10 stages, each with unlimited continues. These increase in difficulty, but due to the unlimited continues they’re not too bad.
Where Super Monkey Ball shines for me personally is the challenge mode. You progress through set stages either on beginner, advanced or expert mode with a limited amount of lives. If you complete these stages without losing a continue then you gain access to the ever more difficult extra stages. Complete expert extra without losing a continue and you reach the master stages, finally resulting in master extra whose final stage is literal GameCube spinning around with the goal inside the disc tray. There are also all of the extended party modes which are fun.
As a Super Monkey Ball fan, if you’re interested in the franchise I personally would only recommend the first two games on the GameCube. Other games on different consoles are missing one important thing, the GameCube controller. The GameCube controller somehow has a perfectly calibrated L stick for this game, which makes precise movements effortless. Try that on a PS2 controller and you’ll know what I mean.
47. Need For Speed: Underground – James
Xzibit A:
Seeping with street racing culture, Need For Speed: Underground is now a time capsule to a time long gone.
Released in 2003 by EA Black Box, Underground is the seventh instalment of the Need For Speed series. I was young at the time and this was my first NFS game, but the amount of customisation blew my mind. As you progress through the circuits, sprints, drag races and drift races, you earn points which allow you to buy cars, parts that affect performance, and parts that affect appearance.
Let me tell you, you could really kit a car out. There were spoilers, panels, rims, underfloor lighting, tinted windows, different colours and the YHVH of car customisation: decals. You could get all kinds of decals. Tribal, geometric, tribal, funny designs, tribal, have I mentioned tribal? Anyone remember the tribal GBA?
The racing itself was fast and responsive but was plagued with strong rubber banding. If you crash in the last 40 seconds of a race good luck catching up as your opponents will have sling-shotted past you like a whippet. The sequel really did improve on Underground in a lot of ways, but I feel it’s important not to forget the original.
48. Metal Arms: Glitch in the System – James
It’s pretty metal
Mummy, can we get Ratchet and Clank? We have Ratchet and Clank at home. In all seriousness, for those who haven’t heard of this gem, I’m already going to tell you to try this out. Released in 2003 by Swingin’ Ape Studios, if you couldn’t tell by my R&C comparison this is a robot-themed 3D platformer adventure game.
You play as Glitch, a recruit in the endless war against General Corrosive and the Milbots. Your objective is to win the war. Simple enough right? What ensues is an adventure with plenty of shooting, hacking of robots, and shooting. Your upgradable arsenal expands throughout the campaign, as you blast smash and crash through your enemies. You’ll get in trouble multiple times along the way too, it’d be boring if you didn’t right?
There’s enough variety in this game to keep you going until the end, with on-foot and vehicle sections, and some puzzles too. Worth a try at least.
49. The Incredible Hulk Ultimate Destruction – James
“The best bit about this game is that in the comics the standard green Hulk we all know and love has never canonically killed a civilian via collateral damage” – Dave
When you think of open-world games from the 6th generation of consoles, you typically think of GTA, Mercenaries, Smugglers Run or any other similar games where you can drive a car to and from your objective. You don’t typically think of an open-world Hulk game. A game where you can run around New York City, smashing the place up to your heart’s content. THAT is Hulk Ultimate Destruction.
As you progress through the game, Hulk gets smarter and smarter. You begin to learn you can split a car in twain and use them as boxing gloves. You can use wrecking balls as improvised whip flails. Each strike Hulk deals has considerable heft. People play GTA by just ignoring missions and causing carnage, you could certainly do the same. Don’t think there’ll be no resistance though. As you progress the military starts rolling out the big guns. Tanks. Big mechs. Little mechs. Welcome to our cafe mechs (Where did that come from?!)
It’s a lot of fun and doesn’t need to be taken seriously. Just smash and smash to your heart’s content. If there’s a story to this game, I completely missed it.
50. Future Tactics: The Uprising – James
Listen, no one on staff played Viewtiful Joe 1 and 2, or Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance, and Sean never got around to writing about Rogue Squadron II
Don’t think of Future Tactics: The Uprising as just a game. Think of it as an album with a game-sized conjoined twin. I say this because the game itself is really a little bit so-so. It’s a good vs bad turn-based strategy game, a little bit XCOM, a little bit Valkyria Chronicles. Each turn you and the enemy have a limited amount of movement and actions you can perform. The campaign has you doing level after level, with more and more complicated scenarios appearing. The story really isn’t that interesting, and while the character abilities are cool they can’t hold the experience up. The music, however, can.
If you’ve never heard of Tim Follins, the main is a genius. Starting out in the 80s with soundtracks for microcomputers and 8-bit consoles, he is characteristically unlucky about the games he decides to compose for. They either turn out to be bad or don’t sell well. He unfortunately no longer writes music for games, as he mainly composed to push the limits of primitive sound chips. As proprietary sound chips became an effective thing of the past, he lost interest. As for Future Tactics, he is on form. A vast array of instrumentation is used, different ones used for the bad and good guys.
Shredding organs and acoustic guitars make playing this middling game worth it, at least for a while.
Of course, the Nintendo Switch 2 is being released alongside the Nintendo Switch Online GameCube emulator. Though there is a lot more to be added, we can only hope that this list inspires you to search for some of the entries on NSO.
We’d love to hear your thoughts and views on our entries. Comment your thoughts below, or alternatively, join our Discord so our discussion can go on further.
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He/Him
A flamboyant ultra nerd, Dave participates in the Underlevelled Tournament both for the thrill of the fight, and to avenge the orphans lost in the climax of the previous tournament.
Born: London
Height: ???
Weight: ???
Nen Type: Manipulator
Classes: Editor, Dancer,
Hobbies: street dance, collecting manga volumes, reading, editing
Likes: short-to-medium walks on the beach, pointing out how things can and will be misconstrued as racism, fighting games, RPGs, anime, Hades, alternative hip hop, conscious hip hop, Mara Wilson, overly long bios, ice-cream
Dislikes: insincere media, his own uncanny resemblance to Richard Ayoade, mayonnaise
Sean Hollyman is an avid fan of action figures, videogames and sometimes other things too. When he's not labourously trying to earn platinum trophies for games that he otherwise probably wouldn't care about, Sean can often be found taking photos of his Transformers in embarrassing situations.
Favorite Food: Roast Dinner
Least Favorite Food: ANYTHING with mayonnaise in it
Melltith, or Melty, enjoys cosier or slower paced games and likes to take her time with things.
She's a very crafty person who will throw her all into a multitude of new projects and skills.
Video game completionist and 3D platformer connoisseur, Riley is a fan of the whimsical frenzy of bright and colourful characters that blessed us in the late 90's. Their favourite game's are Spyro, Persona 5 and Super Mario Sunshine.