Ten Reasons to Get Connected

Ahh, the year of 2002... a time when Eminem was eating up album sales with his distasteful lyrics, when The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers was telling an epic tale and claiming the top of the box office charts, and of course a time when Nintendo claimed they would not support online gaming with the GameCube and instead focus on none other then Game Boy Advance connectivity. Four years later it's quite clear things have changed; the best selling album is the kid friendly "High School Musical Soundtrack" (what the hell is wrong with people?), the epic tale of The Lord of Rings has been told with its creator now trying to back the Halo movie, and Game Boy Advance connectivity is all but dead and Nintendo is embracing online gaming in full force. What a difference a couple of years can make, huh?

Like many others, I was extremely disappointed by Nintendo's initial stance on online gaming, especially considering some of Nintendo's properties seem almost made for the online scene. So while I sat and salivated at the beauty of Xbox Live (and laughed at Sony's attempt at online gaming) I said to myself, maybe, just maybe Nintendo could be right about this one. We all know Nintendo has been notorious for not giving us what we want, but rather what we don't know we want, so maybe GameCube to Game Boy Advance connectivity would follow that trend as well?

After four years it's quite apparent that that really wasn't the case, as support has all but fizzled away. But was support really the reason for its demise? Hardly. With big name companies such as SEGA, Ubisoft, EA, Konami, Capcom and of course Nintendo incorporating it into a handful of their games it had the chance of really taking off; the real problem in lied with the fact that it wasn't at all consumer friendly. Typically in order to take advantage of the connectivity options you were required to have a GameCube, Game Boy Advance, GCN to GBA cable, and a game for both GameCube and GBA, even in some of the most extreme cases you needed four Game Boy Advance's as well as four of the connecting cables. All of that combined is a huge chunk of change, and wasn't logical by any means.

But I stuck by Nintendo through thick and thin, from when the concept was first introduced with Sonic Adventure 2: Battle to the final game to support it - Pokemon XD: Gale of Darkness and everything in between. While my buddies were combating against people from all over the world in Halo 2, I was getting exclusive collectable items in Disney's Magical Mirror Starring Mickey Mouse. They laughed. I cried. It wasn't all a waste however, in fact there's a handful of interesting concepts that surfaced out of the idea and made all that time and money worth it. Nintendo might want you to forget about the train wreck that was GameCube to Game Boy Advance connectivity, but I say forget them, here's ten reasons you need to get connected (and waste hundreds of dollars in the process.)