The GameCube handle and purple color made it the hottest fashion accessory of the early 2000s.

It’s October 2002 and you’re at the hottest party in Hollywood. On the left, you’ll see Paris Hilton in an aqua-and-lime-swirled halter dress that will make the 2022 Depop-er swoon. On your right is Christina Aguilera, her newsboy cap perched atop her head and cargo gauchos swinging gingerly around her waist. At any other event, these divas would get all the attention, but here are some of the highlights of Hollywood’s early 2000s – Leonardo DiCaprio, Alicia Silverstone, The Scrub – All contain the hottest accessories of the season:

GameCube.

Similar to the successful modern Apple clamshell iBook, the GameCube is designed with a 2000s-driven taste in technology, right down to the perfectly ergonomic handle. Both were marketed equally as fashion and function, each using (and paying for) the powerful ex-celebrity engine to attract attention and publicity. It worked for the iBook, but can the same be said for Nintendo’s second-worst console?

In the year In 1998, Nintendo began working on a top secret initiative called Project Dolphin. The console, later known as the GameCube, was Nintendo’s attempt to build a gaming system unlike its competitors: Sony’s long-awaited PlayStation 2 and Microsoft’s newcomer, the Xbox. Nintendo Japan wanted to build something for friends to play together that prioritized fun and humor – and distanced itself from the blokes on the PS2 and Xbox.

As part of that, Nintendo had to convince gamers to get behind a radical concept:

purple.

“Not that you couldn’t come up with hardware in a different color, but it was a very… ‘feminine’ color. It didn’t feel masculine,” Nintendo of America vice president of marketing and corporate affairs Perrin Kaplan said in a 2021 interview with Video Games Chronicle.

Photo: Ivan Agostini/Getty Images

Kaplan went on to say that many in Nintendo’s western division tried to convince Nintendo Japan to go in a different direction – but their concerns went unheeded. After extensive market research, Kaplan considered every color from “dark brown” to hot pink for the console, Nintendo’s GameCube launched in its trademark indigo with black, platinum and spice orange versions.

Many gamers, millions of whom protected their sleek PlayStation 2s, more or less scoffed at the iconic purple box. Aesthetics aside, the GameCube has been criticized for its lack of adult (see: violent) games, lack of a DVD slot, and lack of Internet connectivity. Nintendo prepared for those criticisms; He always aimed to create something functionally different from his competitors. But many at Nintendo felt that the console’s design was preventing it from being taken seriously by “real gamers.” Small discs and multi-colored controllers graced the GameCube, upping the console’s aesthetic and giving it a “Fisher-Price” aesthetic, Nintendo’s European PR head Shelly Pearce told Video Games Chronicle. To some extent, this “cute” factor over-associates the console with kids, but Nintendo had a huge demographic challenge.

Girls.

According to Nintendo’s 2007 E3 press conference, the numbers of a Nintendo-conducted survey showed that 42% of GameCube users were women – compared to 32% for the PlayStation 2 and 11% for the PlayStation 3. It was a statistic that was easy to see. My middle-class neighborhood. Using my GameCube-style bag-like handle, I lifted the console from sleep to sleep, the pile of cables and controllers rattling around in my Vera Bradley duffel. As the nights went by, the older brothers could be heard shouting on their Xbox headsets while their sisters and I played. Mary-Kate and Ashley: Sweet 16 – Licensed to drive.. Many times these brothers would go to the kitchen or bathroom, stop to tease us, or sneer to see their sisters crying over an easily accessible reset button.

As a kid, I didn’t relate to these brothers’ vitriol for the GameCube and the joy I got from sliding the console onto my kid-sized wrist the next morning to my mom’s minivan. But now it seems clear: as much as older brothers love Smash Bros. and Mario Kart, there still needs to be a difference between them, the real gamers, and us fake gamer girls. As gaming culture evolved, the growing idea that we should only use games to find ourselves and our personalities made it clear that the GameCube, with its social games, high-end aesthetic, and freakin’ wallet case, was our accessory of choice.

Fortunately for Nintendo, the GameCube would be a short-term failure for the company. In the year In 2006, Nintendo released the Wii, which sold 101 million units in its lifetime, compared to the GameCube’s 21 million. Learning from the mistakes, Nintendo mainly Wii in plain white, occasionally with some color, put the console not only for girls, but for everyone. With its delicate sensor bar, the Wii wasn’t a grab-and-go console, so it mostly sat on our entertainment center, joined by my brother’s equally stylish PS3. When I’d go over to my friends’ house to play Win, their older brothers would fight to use the new gaming technology – although later they’d go back to their shooters on the Xbox and leave us our toys.

I was also impressed with the Wii’s capabilities, but I didn’t feel much ownership over it. As far as I was concerned, the Wii was just part of the TV. My game cube, the color I chose and the colors of the controller were distributed among my friends in whatever internal hierarchy I placed them in that week, the more personal, the more I felt.

And, like my beloved Vera Bradley duffel, I kept dragging my GameCube to sleepovers, then college, and finally stashed it in a drawer in my fully functional adult apartment.

My brother sold three PlayStations and all their games to GameStop for $78.

So it’s easy to say the GameCube failed. And financially, of course, that’s hard to argue with. But for those who were busy for personal reasons, it became a symbol that I carried with me for years to come. The choice of purple may not suit the market, but I wouldn’t have it any other way.