We’ve all been hoping for GameCube titles to come to Nintendo Switch Online; I think about it on a weekly basis and am incredibly excited to see Wind Waker, Double Dash, Starfox Adventures, and many more of my favourite GC games (hopefully) heading to the platform. At the moment, we’re working with conjecture when it comes to Ninty’s plans, though their cryptic ‘stay tuned’ message about what’s next for the service certainly got our hopes up. Now, fans on a Resetera thread have discovered something exciting in some shipping notifications to Nintendo HQ – it seems that they’re ordering all the parts to make GameCube controllers en masse, which could mean a new wireless GC controller for use with Nintendo Switch Online.
I know I’m using ‘could’ here like my life depends on it, but hear me out. As our friends over at Nintendo Wire discovered, there was recently a firmware update on the Switch which ‘broke compatibility’ with a lot of the third-party adapters for GameCube controllers. And I know that you can already buy licensed GameCube controllers for the Switch to use with Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, but the timing seems a little suspicious. An update about NSO and shipments of GameCube pad parts; as Sherlock Holmes famously once said, ‘The Game Is Afoot!’
If you think about it, it makes sense for Nintendo to be making a new controller if they’re about to announce GameCube games on NSO. When N64 and Genesis/Sega Mega Drive arrived on the platform, Nintendo released wireless controllers for us to play our favorite games using the muscle memory we had built up over years of playing with those original pads. It would only make sense for them to resurrect a WaveBird-style controller for wireless play if the update was indeed Cube-based.
We already have some GameCube games available to buy on the Nintendo Store that this controller could be used for too. The Switch is powerful enough and primed for GameCube titles, and if they’re planning on launching a new GameCube controller alongside the new Switch or even shipping it with the console, then I think the pre-orders will come rolling in.
Again, this is me doing some investigatory guesswork fuelled by a lot of excitement, but you’ve got to admit that it’s all pretty plausible!
