We got ours a little while after it came out for Christmas, I think this was in 2002, and it is a core memory.
My grandmother gave my siblings and I a gift. We opened it and it was a cool GameCube game, but we had to break it to her that we only had the GameBoy and it wouldn’t work with our consoles. We went through explaining what the differences were in the different gaming consoles, and she hit us with the “I’m an old person, I didn’t know there were different consoles” bit. My dad was laughing in the background, and I thought he was laughing at her for being old and not knowing about video games. Then a few gifts later, my dad handed us this heavier box and imagine the surprise of an 8, 7, and 4 year old when it turned out to be the GameCube. My siblings, dad, and I played the shit out of so many games together.
I have vivid memories of spending hours with my little brother and sister on the floor of our living room, taking turns on Animal Crossing. We played together almost every weekend to pull all the weeds that grew in our town, since we rarely played during the school week. It was so cool when we discovered Mr. Resetti by accident. Little things like that in GameCube games made it such a cool console for kids.
The GameBoy player was so clutch! I remember getting the player as a kid and having no idea how to hook it up to the console haha. My dad and I refused to read the instructions and finally figured it out together. Once we got it hooked up, I spent weeks playing the Legacy of Goku from my GBA on the TV, and it ended up being the very first video game that I ever beat.