An Engadget feature marks the Nintendo GameCube's 25th anniversary by revisiting standout games from its library, following the console's Japanese launch on 14 September 2001 and North American release that November. The piece frames the GameCube as an underdog of its era, lacking DVD playback and the third-party support enjoyed by the PlayStation 2, yet argues its catalogue of original and exclusive titles has aged remarkably well and helped establish several franchises still central to Nintendo today.

Among the games highlighted are the original Animal Crossing, whose 2002 US debut introduced a gameplay loop of fishing, bug-hunting and daily village life that remains largely unchanged in later entries, albeit without any online functionality. Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem is praised as a genuinely unsettling horror title, published by Nintendo, that manipulates players with fake deaths, glitches and false save deletions across a Lovecraftian, multi-era storyline; it has never been rereleased or remastered. Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance, the series' only GameCube instalment from 2005, is also mentioned, with the article noting its dated presentation compared with later entries like Awakening and Three Houses.