Cube 2005 line-up

Nintendo's George Harrison took the stage during the Nintendo conference this morning here in LA to try and convince us that GameCube fans have a lot to look forward to, and although a lot of the "60 new titles in 2005" he talked about were things like "Scooby Doo! Unmasked" and "Midway Arcade Treasures 3", there were a few games that stuck out - and Nintendo Europe's post-conference literature dated a few of them too.

Naturally The Legend of Zelda headlined, but more on that in another item.

Besides that, Mario will return to Cube this year, we were told, but there was no sign of a traditional approach. Instead there's four-player Mario Baseball, Mario Party 7 (with 80 new mini-games, and eight-player mode, new mic uses and two new playable character), Dance Dance Revolution: Mario Mix, and Super Mario Strikers, a four-player football game along similar lines to SEGA Soccer Slam judging by the video. All will be imbued with the same spirit as Nintendo's other Mario sports titles.

Battalion Wars, combining action and real-time strategy, was pushed pretty heavily, as was Pokémon XD: Gale of Darkness, a fully fledged RPG with a "dark and sinister plot" that connects with existing GBA titles.

Other games on the 2005 list include Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance (November in Europe!), Geist (October), Killer 7 (summer), SSX On Tour (winter), Spartan: Total Warrior (September), Harvest Moon: Another Wonderful Life (September!) and Shadow the Hedgehog.

We'll try and play at least some of them at E3 tomorrow. If anybody knows where we can get our hands on some cheap cloning tech, let us know.