Of all the major players in the video game industry, it goes without saying that Nintendo is one of the longest standing companies out there, with classic consoles, characters, and series that fans remember fondly to this day. Being such, the Japanese video game company has been celebrating quite a few anniversaries lately, such as the Super Mario Bros. 35th anniversary, Pokemon's 25th anniversary, and now Zelda's 35th as well.
Despite all of these anniversaries, some fans may have missed that both the GameCube and the Game Boy Advance are celebrating their 20th anniversaries this year, with the GBA's taking place just last month. Now, just in time for the anniversaries, an official Nintendo catalog from Winter 2002 has surfaced, giving fans a glimpse of what being a gamer during that year looked like for Nintendo consoles and games.
Over on Reddit, user steamy__jimmy posted their own scans of the Nintendo catalog which they picked up at a GameStop all the way back in 2002. The scans contain about 50 pages of the catalog in total, all in impressively high resolution. Flipping through the catalog, fans can see promotional material for the original Metroid Prime, The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker, Star Fox Adventures, and more.
It's interesting to see early advertisements for some of Nintendo's most widely regarded titles today, including Super Mario Sunshine and the original Animal Crossing. Of course, the catalog promotes some of the GameCube's third-party titles as well, like Resident Evil Zero, Crash Bandicoot: The Wrath of Cortex, and Spyro: Enter the Dragonfly. About halfway through, the catalog transitions to promotional material for the Game Boy Advance, bolstering some of its biggest titles, showing screenshots of games like Kirby: Nightmare in Dreamland and Metroid Fusion. The catalog even shows off the seemingly now-forgotten e-Reader accessory along with various e-Reader cards.
Of course, fans expressed their thankfulness to the Reddit user for uploading the catalog scans, with many reminiscing about picking up the exact same catalog themselves back in 2002, remembering various games shown off in the catalog, and even sharing memories of working at game stores like EB Games during the time of the catalog's release. In the comments to the Reddit post, many fans even noted that they had similar catalogs in their own possession, so it is possible that more scans like this could surface soon.
Even if the GameCube isn't one of the company's best-selling systems, a quick glance at the catalog shows just how much of a powerhouse Nintendo was poising itself to be at the time, especially during the holiday season. As fans enter five years of the Nintendo Switch, it's interesting to take a look back at what Nintendo was promoting nearly 20 years ago, and now, fans look forward to see what Nintendo has in store next.