The
moment the doors were opened to the exhibits at the Los Angeles
Convention Center, a flood of gamers rushed to the Nintendo booth.
Ever since, Nintendo's extravagant booth remained thoroughly
occupied with visitors that couldn’t get enough of the GameCube
titles on display. Recently, there has been some dispute as to
whether these fantastic titles were running off of GameCube systems
or Nintendo development boxes.
A reliable Nintendo source informed GameCubicle.com that all of the
GameCube titles at Nintendo’s booth were in fact running off of
developer boxes - with the exception of Luigi’s Mansion and Pikmin. At their booth, Nintendo made some
attempts to hide this truth. Floor displays hid development boxes
within well closed kiosks where gamers could not at all see the
console. In secluded viewing areas, it appeared very much like
titles were in fact running off of GameCube systems. Actual GameCube
units sat atop illuminated podiums into which each controller was
directly plugged (image below). However, according to the source,
the GameCube served only as a hardware interface through which the
system could be controlled but games were not be run.
Because GameCube development boxes (in most cases) are just as
sophisticated as actual consoles, this was probably more a design
move than any attempt to deceive the public.
GameCube Displays:
These images should better demonstrate the situation: Two depict the
kiosks that hid (in most situations) development hardware; Last, is
one of a number of viewable GameCube units that many thought to
actually be running games.
