I've got so many fond memories of playing with the GameCube. My mates and I spent so much time playing on WarioWare, Mario Kart, Smash Bros, Gauntlet Dark Legacy, and many more amazing games. We'd spend hours messing around on it, but at no point did any of us ever think that we could try to get Windows NT running on it for a laugh. We were too busy trying to get a hole-in-one on Mario Golf
JigaTech, on the other hand, has spent a lot of time thinking about how to make this happen. Once of a day, I wouldn't have thought that this was even possible, but after seeing Throaty Mumbo running Windows CE on the N64, you start to realise that anything is possible!
Thanks to Hackaday, I've watched a 20-minute video on JigaTech getting Windows NT, an OS that first came out in 1993, running on the Indigo Powerhouse. And yes, you can make it work ever so slightly with the DK Bongos. I bet you didn't think you'd read that today, huh?
JigaTech spends some time tinkering with his GameCube to get this working, the kind of thing that I was always too scared to do with my tech as a kid for fear of not being able to play The Wind Waker on it anymore. Windows NT had a PowerPC version that came out in 1995, and that's how we come to have a version running on the GameCube today. And it's all thanks to the combined efforts of Rairii, NTx86, and stonedDiscord.
This isn't something that everyone is going to want to try, especially as it's a bit of a fiddly process and something you'll really need to concentrate on. I see these videos a little like skydiving or BASE jumping - I wouldn't do it myself, but I'm intrigued when other people do it!
Other than the DK Bongos, you could hook up the ASCII Nintendo GameCube Keyboard Controller and really turn your GameCube into a carry-handle PC, though those controllers sell for a pretty penny these days! And because the Wii plays GameCube games, you could do the same thing on the Wii too.
You can check out all of the instructions on how to get Windows NT running on your GameCube over on Github!
Don't forget to check out Windows running on the Game Boy Color while you're here too! There seems to be a trend of getting Windows running on old Nintendo consoles, and I'm here for it! Is Windows becoming the new DOOM?
