Nintendo games are arguably the reason to own a Nintendo console, even today. But with developers keen to get their games in front of as many players as possible, you can find plenty of third-party titles among the best Switch 2 games out there. Back in the GameCube era, though, Nintendo's lack of third-party support was downright infamous, and a newly released chart of the platform's best-selling games suggests there's a reason most publishers steered clear of the 'cube.
The 20 best-selling US GameCube games of all time were shared today by Mat Piscatella of industry analysis group Circana. The top spots on the list are dominated by some of the straight-up best GameCube games ever, including titles like Super Smash Bros. Melee, Super Mario Sunshine, Mario Kart: Double Dash, and The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker.
Nintendo games absolutely dominate the top 10, with just two third-party entries squeezing in: Sonic Adventure 2 and Sonic Mega Collection. I was just old enough to recognize how weird it was to be getting Sega games on a Nintendo platform, and I guess that novelty helped propel these Sonic games near the top of the charts.
Happy 25th to the Nintendo GameCube! Here are top 20 best-selling GameCube games in the US, ranked by unit sales. Super Smash Bros. Melee, Super Mario Sunshine and Mario Kart: Double Dash!! lead the list. Source: Circana Retail Tracking Service
— @matpiscatella.bsky.social (@matpiscatella.bsky.social.bsky.social) 2026-09-14T20:11:21.927Z
Things even out in the rest of the top 20, where five of the remaining ten come from third parties, with Lego Star Wars, Sonic Heroes, Star Wars Rogue Squadron 2: Rogue Leader, Super Monkey Ball 2, and SoulCalibur 2. Namco's fighting game might have had a slight advantage with Nintendo fans, though, since they put Link in it.
Perhaps the most notable absence from the list is Resident Evil 4, which launched as a GameCube exclusive and is now widely regarded as one of the greatest games of all time. Apparently it landed just outside the top 20 at number 21, having sold 7,899 fewer units than Kirby Air Ride. No wonder the Capcom Five eventually went multi-platform.
Unfortunately, we don't have similar stats for the modern Switch era. Wikipedia's list of best-selling Switch games is also top-heavy with Nintendo titles, but that's certainly at least partly due to the fact that third-parties tend not to publicly report sales data per platform. Meanwhile, Nintendo is happy to report every new million that Mario Kart 8 Deluxe has sold.
Given the fact that third-party developers were very willing to put in the work to downgrade their PS4 and Xbox One games to get them running on Switch, it seems all but certain that there was an appetite for third-party games on the platform, and that trend seems to be continuing on Switch 2. But for now, that's just guesswork – maybe we'll actually get stats on how it all breaks down when Switch celebrates its own 25th anniversary in 2042. I wonder if The Elder Scrolls 6 will be out by then…
Donkey Kong 64 beat Pokemon mania to become the best-selling game of 1999 in the US.
