Latest Nintendo leaks suggest company mulled portable GameCube

More of Nintendo's internal secrets appear to have hit the internet - including early plans for a Switch-like portable GameCube with a dock.

The dock would have included GameCube controller ports, plus slots for both GameCube memory cards and SD Cards (as the Wii eventually offered).

Leaked documentation posted to reddit also includes a proposal for a traditional console follow-up to the GameCube. This plan would have seen an HD GameCube successor with power equal to Xbox 360 launch for Christmas 2005 - a year before Wii debuted.

The HD GameCube project is detailed within a leaked PowerPoint presentation which appears designed to pitch the project internally. Interestingly, it seems to have been put together by or in partnership with technology company ATI (now part of AMD), which Nintendo has worked with for many of its consoles.

Its roadmap lays out a two-year plan from inception to release on shop shelves in October 2005. The idea would have been to "leverage ATI 2005 gaming enthusiast technology" for "competitive strength" and to "reduce schedule risk". Unlike its contemporary console rivals, it would a "dedicated gaming device" and be "differentiated from competitors by price point".

Of course, Nintendo eventually discarded the idea - and it's hard to tell how far it actually got past these planning stages. After the GameCube's perceived sales failure, Nintendo opted to go for the more inventive Wii as its follow-up console. The portable GameCube idea, meanwhile, was also obviously shelved - though echoes of its design with a TV dock can be seen in both Wii U and Switch.

The source for these leaks appears to be the same as July's "gigaleak" of top-secret Nintendo data that included design documentation and source code for numerous games, and which has drip-fed information on scrapped Pokémon designs for several years.

Last month, details uncovered from the "gigaleak" included previously-unseen Star Fox 2 prototypes, cut content from The Legend of Zelda Ocarina of Time and Majora's Mask and the truth about Luigi hiding in Super Mario 64.

We've contacted Nintendo for comment.