The GameCube Had Secret 3D Capabilities [Miyamoto & Iwata Reveal That GameCube Had Capability For 3D Gaming, Nintendo Had Some 3D Software Running On The Console]

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3D gaming is big now, right? I mean, Sony is promoting it as a major advantage to the PlayStation 3. And while Microsoft hasn’t been highly promoting it in the United States, they’ve been pushing the Xbox 360 as a 3D gaming machine in Asia. But, there was one Nintendo console all along that has the ability to play 3D games. Yep, the Nintendo GameCube – you may have one sitting in the closet – had the ability to play 3D games.

If you’re not aware, Nintendo hosts these great interviews on all of Nintendo’s websites (the US website, European website and Japanese site) called Iwata Asks where Nintendo President Satoru Iwata sits down with game industry insiders and has candid interviews with them. Usually, the guests are Nintendo employees (Famed Nintendo developer and Iwata’s pal Shigeru Miyamoto is a regular guest) but they have had third-party developers on to discuss things.

In one of the interviews that came out before the Nintendo 3DS launched in Japan, Iwata and Miyamoto sat down with Shigesato Itoi – a former Nintendo developer who worked on SNES classic RPG EarthBound. Itoi had not seen the 3DS yet and they showed it to him, but the interview/discussion turned to matters of Nintendo’s experiments with 3D.

Eventually, Iwata revealed that the GameCube is capable of 3D gaming. He says in the interview, “To go back a little further, the Nintendo GameCube system actually had 3D-compatible circuitry built in. [...] Nintendo GameCube was released in 2001, exactly ten years ago. We’d been thinking about 3D for a long time even back then.”

Iwata said that at the time, 3D TVs weren’t very prevalent and Nintendo didn’t think there was a market for such 3D games. Miyamoto added that they had a version of Luigi’s Mansion internally at Nintendo that was playable in 3D. “It would jump out at you pretty nicely,” Miyamoto said.

Iwata and Miyamoto shared that Nintendo has worked on 3D for a while. They introduced the Virtual Boy, a 3D “portable” system, portable being used very lightly. However, the 3D was limited in that machine and the graphics were limited to red and black wire frames. Miyamoto and Iwata explained that they even worked on a 3D game for the Nintendo Family Computer Disk System (an add-on for the Famicom in Japan) that used special LCD goggles for the 3D effect.

It’s funny that firmware updates that enable 3D gaming for the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 are considered big deals when such a feature was secretly in the old GameCube all along.

Interesting in seeing the aforementioned Iwata Asks interview for yourself? Check out the source link below.

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