Nintendo
The first ever GameCube prototype was called ‘Dolphin’: it was made out of wood and wireless
New footage of the Dolphin, Nintendo’s first prototype of what would become the GameCube, has surfaced online.
While the Nintendo GameCube was one of the biggest losers of the sixth generation of home consoles, at least when talking purely about sales numbers, it managed to amass a legion of fervent followers who were delighted with its phenomenal catalog of exclusive games. Recently, new images of the Dolphin, the initial prototype of the game console before it was even called GameCube, were rediscovered online, serving to highlight the unique characteristics of this device, including the fact that it was made out of wood and it had an absence of audio/video cables and power supply, so it was a non-functional prototype.
A piece of GameCube history
Nintendo began development of the successor to the Nintendo 64 in 1998, with the code name for this project being “Dolphin”. The machine was announced as such in 1999 at a press conference during that year’s E3. The conference in question can be seen in the video below, where Howard Lincoln, then president of Nintendo of America, announced the project for the first time starting at minute 33:18:
In August 2024, Console Variations was able to gain access to one of these prototypes, with it considered to be one of the first-ever fabricated by Nintendo. However, it’s actually a non-functional device as it did not have a socket for the power supply or any audio or video output.
There were no details shared on who owns this piece of living video game history; simply that the owner has let them photograph it. There are many key design differences from the final version of the console:
- The mini-DVD tray lid trim is white and there is a “Dolphin” logo instead of the black trim with the Nintendo GameCube logo of the final version.
- The LED that indicates the on/off status of the front console has a much smaller rectangular shape than that of the final version.
- The controller ports are upside down on the Dolphin prototype.
- The two Memory Card slots are slightly recessed inside the console’s chassis instead of being more outward like in the final version.
- This prototype is made of wood and has a feel similar to plastic, which makes its weight considerably greater than the final consoles made of plastic.
- The prototype lacks the output ports for composite/S-Video, RGB SCART, and digital video via component/d-terminal. It also does not have a power supply.
Apparently, there is some wiring and circuitry inside the console, but they were not allowed to photograph it. It could be argued that these electronic components were introduced into the system to serve as a guide for engineers regarding size and compactness.
In any case, and taking into account all these differences between the non-operational Dolphin prototype and a functional console, It does not seem unreasonable to assume that we are dealing with a model created expressly so that both their direct managers and other key personnel such as the company’s shareholders they could have in front of them an approximate representation of the final product.
What was known about the GameCube Dolphin prototype before this recent discovery?
Prior to this brief photographic report, very little was known about the initial Dolphin prototype. Only two images were known to exist, and they did not have good quality. The origin of one of them is not entirely clear, but the other was taken at the Rare offices in the United Kingdom, where they had this prototype in a display case along with other Nintendo consoles and video games.
Taking into account the good relationship that Nintendo and Rare had during the 90s and early 2000s, it’s not that big of a surprise that they had one of these prototypes in their possession, possibly provided by Nintendo itself so that they could get an idea of the size of the machine for which they would later develop titles such as Star Fox Adventures.
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