GameCube LCD monitor prototype footage has been uncovered
A piece of Nintendo history has resurfaced on YouTube. Once-lost footage of Nintendo’s prototype LCD monitor for the GameCube has shown up, years after the hardware was shown at E3 2002.
YouTuber and IGN parent company Ziff Davis employee Adam Doree uploaded some footage from the show, as noticed by GoNintendo. This LCD monitor was apparently shown at E3 2002, but was never released.
The attached LCD monitor would have made that GameCube handle suddenly make a lot more sense. To me, it feels like a distant murmur of the ideas that would lead to the Wii U and Switch. Part of the thinking, as Nintendo’s Satoru Iwata explains in the footage, is that players might be able to carry their GameCube around and link them up, using something like a broadband cable.
Having a small screen on top of the GameCube wasn’t the only gimmick of this monitor, though. This may have also contained another wild potential twist: 3D technology. In an Iwata Asks about the Nintendo 3DS, Iwata talked with producer Hideki Konno about early attempts at glasses-free 3D.
Konno: Yes. I think the timing was good. Some of the staff members around me were saying things like, “Today’s 3D LCDs really look good!” I thought so, too. I had a connection with 3D games anyway. After the development of Luigi’s Mansion for Nintendo GameCube was over, I was involved in the experiment of making a 3D version of it.
Iwata: Luigi’s Mansion 3D. Unfortunately, we never released it.
Konno: Yeah. We tried fitting the Nintendo GameCube with a small, roughly four-inch, LCD that allowed you to enjoy Luigi’s Mansion in glasses-free 3D.
Iwata: We showed that LCD as a reference exhibit at the 2002 E317, but kept the 3D aspect secret. I liked that, though.
Konno: Yeah. It had
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