The refurbished Nintendo GameCube is a powerful video game console that rightly deserves its place among the other next-generation game systems. In fact, its playful, appealing design and small size (the unit is a not-quite-cubed 6 inches) aren't the only features that set it apart from the others.

The GameCube is the first Nintendo video game system to use a disc-based medium rather than cartridges for its games. Moving the software to disc media generally means better...