The good and the bad of Nintendo Switch Online’s GameCube library.
The Nintendo Switch 2 GameCube game library – formally known as ‘Nintendo GameCube – Nintendo Classics’, because Nintendo is so good at naming things – arrived on June 5 alongside the launch of the new console.
Part of the Nintendo Switch Online + Expansion Pack subscription tier, the service arrived with three choice games and (at the time of writing) one more in the month that followed. We also know that several more confirmed titles are on the way, and will arrive on the service at, presumably, a cadence of one per month. The games we have now, and those we know will be arriving so far are as follows:
The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker (available now)
Soul Calibur 2 (available now)
F-Zero GX (available now)
Super Mario Strikers (available now)
Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance
Luigi’s Mansion
Chibi-Robo!
Super Mario Sunshine
Pokémon Colosseum
Pokémon XD: Gale of Darkness
Again, assuming that these games are arriving once per month, there’s enough here until January 2026, and I’ve little doubt the GameCube collection will grow beyond that. It just remains to be seen which titles will receive representation on Switch 2.
But how is the collection doing so far? It’s getting a lot of things right, in my opinion. Games that include native widescreen support (like F-Zero GX and Soul Calibur 2) look fantastic in handheld mode. The Nintendo Switch 2 GameCube controller is also a winner, with excellent battery life and seamless wireless connectivity. I’m also generally happy with the current roster of games, though I do have my own wishlist which I’ll get into later.
There are of course a handful of things that I wish to see improved, particularly in regards to overall performance, but let’s get into it.The good
We’ve come a long way from the advent of Nintendo Switch Online’s retro libraries. In those initial months, games were plagued with audio and visual issues, exacerbated by the streaming model Nintendo had opted for (these are not downloadable titles like we saw with the Virtual Console, after all).
Things have improved dramatically since then, and overall game stability is very solid for these GameCube titles. No jarring instances of screen-tearing or audio desync that were a frequent point of contention when Nintendo’s retro libraries first landed on the original Switch.
