Nintendo Switch Will Play GameCube Games: Report

Another day, another Nintendo Switch rumour. While no Nintendo Switch price or release date will be revealed until the company’s January 12 event, that hasn’t stopped information from trickling out on what you can possibly expect. Aside from the Nintendo Switch using USB Type-C and performing better via the Nintendo Switch Dock, it may play games from the GameCube — regarded by many as one of the company's best consoles with hits like Super Mario Sunshine, Metroid Prime, and Eternal Darkness.

“GameCube support is already tested and working, we understand, and three Nintendo games have already been prepped for Switch. Those games are Super Mario Sunshine, Luigi's Mansion and Super Smash Bros. Melee. Wii, Wii U and 3DS have all offered a Virtual Console service for downloading games released on earlier Nintendo hardware. Switch will be no different,” claims Eurogamer citing sources.

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The site also claims that the GameCube version of Animal Crossing is being tested as well. If it works, this game in particular could see some interesting use cases.

“Animal Crossing is a particularly interesting title as it included more than a dozen NES classics - such as Donkey Kong, Mario and Zelda - to obtain and play within the game,” the post reads. “Impressively, we've heard that support for these games is currently in Animal Crossing's Virtual Console build and working. So, if all goes to plan, you would be able to be play an emulated NES game within an emulated GameCube game on your Switch on the bus.”

Last month, Eurogamer reported that we may see Pokemon Stars. It’s the codename for a new Pokemon game for the Nintendo Switch. It will be a new version of Pokemon Sun and Moon.

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It seems that there will be some form of connectivity between all three games with Pokemon being tradable via the Pokemon Box app. There might be more Pokemon to collect in Pokemon Stars although not all of Eurogamer’s sources could verify this.