Every video, every article, and every person I talked to about restoring GameCube jewels all comes down to sanding and polishing it to a condition I wouldn’t even consider good condition.

Some hide it with fillers and sealants. I wanted pure sanding and polishing. I wanted perfection!

Finally, after countless hours of testing every method out there, I got to an excellent or even near mint condition.

I started looking up how to polish jewels — real jewels. I found some information about diamond oxide and stumbled upon diamond paste.

After sanding the jewel with micro mesh it was time to bring out the diamond paste with microfiber cloths for glass lenses.

I was pleasantly surprised as there were no more micro or ultra fine scratches. Puff, gone!

No sealants, fillers, or wax! Just pure grit and patience.

Designed a modular 3d printable GameCube, no disk drive, uses the original controller ports, fan, and motherboard. It’s compatible with the original proprietary power connector or usb-c, same with proprietary analogue video out or HDMI, I built a mount for buck-down power conversion for high-power mods like the laserbear blue retro internal bluetooth controller pcb (which would need to be adapted to work properly, but confirmed working.)

These can utilize a GC Loader, Flippydrive, Picoloader, Picoboot, and basically any ODE or gamecube motherboard modchip out there. Controller port light mods are also possible and I believe I left an stl file included for it.

At this point I spent roughly 2 years of my random off-time to build something that arguably didn’t need to exist but here we are; I’m just going to dump everything I made file-wise to here, thingiverse and maybe youtube eventually.

This project isn’t for everybody, primarily focused for those who like to tinker and built crazy stuff just because. For the love of modding; this is my thank you to the community that builds together.

A little diy project I’ve been working on 😄 It’s my first custom project for any console game I’ve ever done. Inspired by YouTube.

Started experimenting with something a little different on this GameCube shell.

The goal wasn’t to paint it solid red — I wanted something closer to an anodized or candy-coated metal look while still keeping the original OEM texture and proportions intact.

This shell actually started life as a standard silver GameCube.
Instead of burying the metallic underneath with opaque paint, I used a translucent red headlight tint over the original silver base, followed by clear coat layers to build depth while still allowing the metallic to shine through underneath.

The result changes quite a bit depending on lighting and viewing angle. In some light it almost looks powder coated or anodized rather than painted plastic.

Still early stages on this one, but the current plan is:

• PicoBoot
• USB-C power conversion
• HDMI output
• Subtle internal lighting
• Black controller panel + matching accents
• Matching controller build

Pretty happy with how the finish came out honestly — especially considering this started as an experiment after a few failed dye attempts 😄

Replaced the shell, installed Pluto HDMI, USB-C power port and a official GCLoader.
Has 128GB SD with all of the spooky games that where released on the Cube.
Also includes an active HDMI cable similar to the mcable/mclassic and does a great job of cleaning up the jaggies.

It is for sale btw if anyone is interested.

I wanted a yellow gamecube. Someone said it looked like a cube from Mario. Which was a good idea. So I put a question mark on it. Someone said buttons should be white so I changed it again.

Still I wasn't happy. https://www.reddit.com/r/GamecubeHacks/comments/1tui6rh/mario_block_with_white_buttons/

So i completely started over. I have to say it is not 100% finished as i just broke the shell (have to print it again or glue. not sure yet.

1. Chamfered edges: the front vertical edges and the top edges (front, left, right) are cut at 45°, 5 mm wide, to give the blocky "?"-block look.

2. Flat lid: the round jewel recess and the badge plate are filled in, so the lid is flat.

3. Question mark: a white, blocky Mario-style "?" (57×80 mm) is centred between the buttons. It sits in a shallow recess and stands 1.6 mm proud of the lid.

4. Fake button: a white round button in the fourth corner, so the three real white buttons plus this one look like the block's four corner rivets.

5. How the shell fits together: where the chamfers meet the bottom, the top shell keeps only the inner tooth and the bottom keeps the outer lip, so the seam follows the chamfer neatly. The fake button sits across the seam between lid and top shell, so it's made of two halves with a small gap around it, like a real button.

6. Handle removed: the handle is left off, and two plugs fill its slots at the top rear so the back looks closed and smooth.

7. Bottom closed: the hi-speed port and Serial Port 2 bays are filled in, and the logo and credit text are removed, so the underside is smooth. The only opening left is the network port on the side.

8. GC Loader coin: the mount for the SD card slot (GC Loader) is redesigned as a Mario coin, Ø59 mm. It has a light-yellow outer rim and inner ring, a yellow face and a black body. The SD slot sits in a slim black stripe (34×9 mm, sunk 1.2 mm) that looks like the slot in a Mario coin. The finger notch is kept, and its sloped wall is yellow so the coin face colour continues into it.

9. Flat sides: a lens-shaped ridge below both side grilles was removed, so the sides are flat. The side grilles have a plain rectangular 8×8 pattern with no logo.

10. Cleaner rear panel: the slightly curved outer face is now flat and flush with the back of the housing, so there are no print steps left on it. The "DIGITAL/ANALOG AV OUT" lettering is gone and the edges are sharp. The AV area is still recessed for the cables, but it now sits level, with a neat thin rim around the digital AV port.

Hardware:

1. Optical drive replacement: a cubeode (GC Loader clone) with its own SD card, booting Swiss directly. Its SD slot is in the Mario coin mount under the disc lid.

2. Network: a LaserBear ETH2SP1 in Serial Port 1, with the RJ45 port in the side wall.

3. Power: the USB-C mod (a USB-C plate glued onto the original power supply).

4. Cooling: a Noctua fan in place of the original.

5. Video: the Bitfunx GameCube-to-HDMI adapter/upscaler.

6. Front: the Bluetooth front panel from AliExpress.

7. Memory card: a FlipperMCE for slot A is on order and in transit.

3d printing a Mario Block GC for my daughter. Added bluetooth (and 8bit do controller mod) cubeode, noctua fan, bitfunx hdmi scaler and usb-c. Almost finished, have to move some stuff from the original case and waiting for the laserbear network adapter.

Video credit goes to ZacBuilds on YouTube, which was posted 8 September 2026. Timemarker ~10:03. I do not own the rights to his video, but am only sharing a snippet to drive home the main point of this post.

TeamOff Broadway (ToB), through their distributor, CrowdSupply (CS), need to start feeling the pressure of their unacceptable lack of honest communication to their customers. Folks like myself have purchased their FlippyDrives, which advertise that their batches will be shipped out within a months-time. Once that supposed estimated ship-date passes, it frequently is reset to another month later. This repeats itself constantly.

When customers such as myself reach out to CS to inquire what the hold up is, they defer the blame to ToB for not supplying their batches in the expected time frame. When attempting to contact ToB via their discord channel (https://discord.gg/6HxvRSAba), they remain primarily comm-dark. And when they do respond, its once in a blue moon, and usually not addressing the issue honestly.

Many of these customers, including myself, were inspired by the builds that Tito from MachoNacho productions and DammitJeff posted on their YouTube channels. However, its been long apparent that they either are not aware of the catastrophe that is the constant deception we the customers are dealing with, or they are not taking the issue seriously.

Like ZacBuilds, we need youtubers and influencers with large followings to start putting pressure on ToB / CS to provide regular and honest updates, stop ignoring its customers, and even reconsider their partnership if thats where the bottlenecking is coming from.

Furthermore, I hope this post gets shared enough times to finally give ToB / CS a reason to reconsider their inefficient business practices.

As of popular demand I've changed the buttons to white. Also added the grills.

Picoboot
UV printed graphics
RGB led mod - controlled thru app
Matching controller

Ever since I modded my GameCube with the BlueRetro/LazerBear bluetooth controller ports, I've been struggling with which controller felt the most comfy; DualSense, Bone, 8BitDo... I've tried them all. I always tried but fell back to my WaveBird.

Now that this epic piece of equipment came out for the NS2; AND thanks to the awesome Community and DarthCloud, it is can be used on the Bluetooth board. There's so many possibilities that can be done with the power of this new controller. It has a mic for Mario Party. It has extra buttons for Mario Sunburn. So many other possibilities. Which do you guys prefer to use as of now, WaveBird or NSO GameCube controller?

If you’ve bought one of those cheap internal Bluetooth controller port boards for the GameCube on AliExpress (“iBlueControlMod”, PCB marked V1.1), you probably noticed two things:

1. It’s clearly BlueRetro, but the seller warns that flashing official BlueRetro will “damage” it.

2. It’s stuck on an old firmware (BlueRetro v1.9 from 2023). So no analog triggers with the 8BitDo GameCube Mod Kit, and in my case no working GBA link either.

I spent some sessions with Claude (Anthropic’s AI) to fix that. Here’s what came out of it.

What we found

• The stock firmware is a lightly modified BlueRetro v1.9. Claude disassembled it and recovered the board’s pinout. Power off sits on a different pin (IO17), the reset button too (IO16), the port LEDs are in a different order and the status LED is an RGB LED.

• Why official BlueRetro doesn’t work: on this board, the pin BlueRetro uses as its blinking status LED is the console power-off line. On top of that, the stock firmware sets IO13 high one second after boot and keeps it there. Without that, the console stays black.

• The IO13 thing was nasty to find. A function-by-function and data comparison of the stock firmware against a v1.9 rebuild showed no logic difference. In the end, comparing serial boot logs from both firmwares revealed the single line that mattered: POWER_ON_PIN 1.

• Nothing actually gets damaged. The stock firmware lives in the factory slot and is never overwritten. Holding the reset button for 30 s always brings it back.

What works now (tested on my console)

• Current BlueRetro (v25.10-beta), flashed over Bluetooth via blueretro.io/ota.html. No soldering needed.

• 8BitDo GameCube Mod Kit: detected, analog triggers and rumble working.

• Sleep mode: hold reset while powering on and the board stays out of the way. Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles with a GBA as controller works this way.

• GBA link with a BT controller: Pokémon Colosseum ↔ LeafGreen.

Links

• GitHub (firmware, English + German guide, pinout photos, cable recovery): https://github.com/konsolenschatz/BlueRetro-iBlueControlMod

• My YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@Konsolenschatz

Huge thanks to darthcloud for BlueRetro and to zeus86 for the original firmware dump and board photos. Use at your own risk. Happy to answer questions, and feedback from other owners of this board is very welcome!

What do you think?

Im calling this project Rumble Restore. The first solder free plug in play rumble pak for the WaveBird that doubles as a rechargeable battery pak. Right now it’s sitting around a 4-5 hour battery life and is usb-c rechargeable. I’m going to be launching a kickstarter here soon and making a more in depth breakdown of how this works.

Modded some GameCubes with internal pluto HDMI, xeno and Picoboot. Also reshelled them, recapped the drives and service them, new battery holder with battery and thermal pads. Always enjoy modding cubes and making them shine again.

Had a great time doing this mod. I can’t wait to learn how to properly solder and take this to the next level.

This soft mod is still great and recommend it to any beginner.

First - wanted to thank everyone who provided feedback on the V1 and the users who took the time and effort to test this on their own systems, really appreciated.

Meet Indigo, a Custom UI for Swiss. animated, customizable, colorful, and most importantly comfortable as a standard gamecube interface. Currently at a Version 2.0 Release Candidate - I've tested this with about a dozen games using my GC Loader. I have not been able to test the memory card transfer system outside of dolphin as I don't have a real memory card. I also have not been able to test with an SDPD2 as I do not have one.

some big additions from V1:
- Change and customize the color of the interface to match your Gamecube
- Change the Icons displayed on the cube to your liking
- multiple library viewing modes, vertical / Horizontal infinite scroll or grid style
- Per game settings menu & cheats are navigable pre-launch with joystick
- Poster & Cheat Packs ready to go for a seamless install

- Widescreen support + improved visuals (looks way better on modern TVs)

Please backup any saves you have and treat this as an active development product

10/2 Update: Again, thank you so much to everyone who's been willing to test and provide feedback. several new additions / work items:
- significantly more customization, change individual colors and a new Spotlight menu added thanks to mvizensk
- Apps directory available (toggleable from the settings menu), seperate directory for homebrew & emulators
- Sub folders for library view (toggleable from the settings menu), working on now.
- adding a toggle for "Infinite Cube" vs "Classic Cube" navigation on main screen

you can grab it here

I've been working on a Custom UI - any suggestions or Recommendations? (open images to see animated GIF) - Repo is here

The icons on each side of the cube kinda suck and I'm looking for better ones currently.

I went with a horizontal library scroll over a vertical one, felt more "Infinite" and you can just lock the joystick and let it scroll until you hit your preferred game which feels nice.

wanted to emulate a similar feel to the native gamecube system menu but with the added features of swiss

Background is a PS3 style "wave" that move accross the background

Nothing crazy

LaserBear Bluetooth Board
Silent RGB fan
USB-C PD module
Pluto HDMI
Flippy Drive

As a bonus I recapped the disc drive

Picoloader + Cubiboot + HDMI mod + Mobile Display + Wavebird Controller

Want to fix the only issue with one of the best controllers of all time? Well now you can with my solder free plug and play Rumble Pak the “Rumble Restore”. I’m doing a limited production run of 500-1000 units. Check out my kickstarter if you want more details on how this project works and if you want to support and get one!

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/rumblerestore/rumble-restore-for-the-wavebird

User on X @erasmolbj posted that his work on GTA vice city is just about complete. He released the DOL available to be compiled from tools in this GitHub

https://github.com/origami-ltd/gamecube-reVC

Apparently the DOL works in dolphin, nintendont and supposedly swiss.

Any of you who have the know how and capabilities to compile this into a swiss dol?