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My best friend gave me a Gamecube and Gameboy player for my birthday a while ago. Decided to give it a nice shell that matched with the rest of my setup and it looks amazing! It's a little more dark blue irl than in the photo, but it still looks pretty sick

I picked up this bundle on Sunday from marketplace, paid 100$CAD for it, it includes mario sunshine, mario kart double dash, zelda twilight princess, mario strikers (which I've been playing non-stop, super fun) 2 copies of mario party 7, street v3, sonic heros, super monkey ball 2, battle for volcano Island, TMNT mutant melee, hello kitty, bratz over the hedge, cars, lego star wars 2, and harvest moon. 2 memory cards, microphone, and 4 controllers and it also comes with The Oregon Trail handheld. I've been wanting to pick a gamecube up for a while but I couldn't find any good deals until this showed up, I was first to message, so the person that posted it gave me the opportunity to pick it up.

Yesterday I made the decision to acquire my Holy Grail… the Panasonic Q! I got a message from my boss over the weekend saying they picked up a CIB Panasonic Q at the Southeast Game Exchange over this last weekend. Decided then and there to trade in some of my retro collection to finish my dream of owning the Panasonic Q. It is modded to be region free, replaced drive belt and has new drive rails. It also has Picoboot and Swiss through SD2SP2. I think it was worth the purchase! Next on the list is the Gameboy player, may take a while but I’ll get there!

And there was more but had to limit myself

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A few weeks ago I introduced my 3 year old to gamecube and she loves it! So far she likes Sonic adventure 2 the most with mario sunshine a close seccond. It has become a nightly thing for her to play a bit before bed.

Ever since I saw the gamesphere episode I’ve been drawn to this thing and now that I’m an adult with adult money and some free time I decided to put a GameCube in the boomball from drake and Josh. I do need to make some changes on the inside to make it more reliable and have stickers on the way. But let me know what you think.

My Papaw (grandfather) Duke had a Sega Genesis since before I was born in 1994. When I was young, we would sit in his John-Wayne-themed room and play that Sega for hours. Usually struggling with the Lion King or Aladdin, taking turns when each one of us died, which was fairly often. And when we would play, Papaw Duke would keep a notebook handy for writing down tips and tricks.

On my 8th birthday, in 2002, I received a Nintendo GameCube. That console was everything to me. I played it every day. Which meant that I even brought it with to my Papaw’s vacation house in Florida when we went to visit. My Papaw would sit back and watch me play my Nintendo every day. I’d always ask him to play with me, but he always gave the excuse that the controller looked too difficult to manage compared to his Sega, so he’d rather watch me play.

A few days later, I went on a trip with my sister and parents to Seaworld. When we returned, I found my Papaw playing Super Mario Sunshine on that GameCube. I sat back and watched him play, then later joined in with Super Monkey Ball, once again playing together for hours.

The next day I woke up to my Papaw walking in with 3 GameCubes in his hands. 1 Silver, 1 Black, and 1 “Blurple”. I asked why he bought 3, and he replied “1 for my regular house in Illinois, 1 for this old retirement house, and the last as a spare because my old sega was always breaking.” From then on, my Papaw Duke was a GameCube man.

Over the next few years I’d introduced him to many more games we’d play together. Medal of Honor Rising Sun, Call of Duty Big Red One, NASCAR Thunder, Backyard Baseball, you name it. We would sit in that John Wayne room and play for hours. Every time he would play, he would play with patience and precision. Only firing for head$hots, not taking damage, playing for stats, and keeping a notebook handy to jot down details to remember when playing again in the future.

But that all changed when I introduced him to “Harvest Moon: A Wonderful Life.” You see, my Papaw was previously a farmer when he was growing up, and he was quite the romantic. He loved relationships with people. He became enamored with that game. He would spend hours playing it, discovering new things completely on his own by chance and quickly noting it down on his papers. He would refuse to read a guidebook. He would constantly complete the game and start from scratch, just to see the different results. No game had ever meant as much to my Papaw as Harvest Moon had. He would fill up those pages with notes and keep them neat and tidy, constantly revising his own guide and restarting if he ever missed anything.

As years went by I’d moved on from the GameCube to newer consoles, but Papaw Duke remained dedicated. He would have me order him replacement wireless controllers, and new memory cards as he’d filled up the last ones. 2 out of the 3 GameCubes eventually stopped working, and only the Blurple one lived on. He continued playing the GameCube long after support for the console ended, even trying the other couple Harvest Moon releases. But Harvest Moon: A Wonderful Life always remained.

On October 7th 2025, at the age of 85, my Papaw passed away. His heart gave out.

With his passing, I’ve inherited his GameCube to play with my 2 children whom Papaw loved dearly. It’s all I asked for in his Will.

And on top of that stack of games; Harvest Moon. Complete with 3 x16 memory cards filled with his saves, and his gameplay notes that he condensed. One of the memory cards even marked with his initials - DJS.

It will be a long time until I muster the courage to open up those save files and venture into the worlds he’s created and left for us, and these old Nintendo GameCubes will always mean so much to me because of him. He will forever live on in those files.

I love you Papaw. My best friend. My mentor. My Player 2. Donald “Duke” Snyder Sr. 1940-2025.

Disks are in perfect condition too! I was excited

Thank you thrift Gods

Only $2.92

Was lucky enough to snag a GameCube mug when we went to the Nintendo museum a few months ago!