The highest price I ever saw on any other US cart RPG was Chrono Trigger at, I think, $82.99, which was EB. Nobody else charged that much for it that I saw.
I vividly recall seeing Street Fighter Alpha 2 for SNES on sale at Babbages for $90. Meanwhile the (much better) Saturn version was $50. They also had FF2 for $60 and FF3 for $70. I thiiiink Chrono Trigger was $75; I only recall that it was a bit more expensive than FF3.
Meanwhile I remember PS1 games being, at most, $50 for single disk games and $60 for multi disk games.
I don't think that anyone cares enough negatively to hate the N64 and the few who do are console war motivated. The biggest problem it has image-wise is the insane hype and revisionism by its devout worshippers.
I think that sums up the N64 pretty well; I feel it's the most overrated system of all time. There's just nothing I ever want to play on there aside from maybe Mischief Makers. Between the smeary mess graphics, the fact that damn near everything on the platform is 3D when it's still too early for that stuff to look good, and controls/camers that weren't figured out yet it's like a console of nothing but growing pains.
It certainly doesn't help my opinion that the oft times called "best game of all time," Zelda 64, is just a slower and worse version of Zelda 3. I seriously feel like it's the exact same game just in clunky 3D with
booooring combat. Find 3 things, get the master sword, world changes up, find 7 things, fight Ganon. As for the combat? Almost every enemy feels the same; wait for it to show it's weak spot then attack. If it isn't dead then repeat the cycle. It's not interesting it's just dull. I get that the game is in 3D and that a 3D world was new at the time but is there really any reason why Link has to slowly open the chest, lean over, stand up, and then watch the item spinning around in 3D? Maybe that was super cool to some people 20 years ago but I found it tedious to the then and I can't handle it today.
Yeah the Gamecube is a fun system. Like you said the controller works for just about everything, including every game you'd want to play on the system anyway.
I tend to think that the GC controller works fine for GC games but it doesn't work well for GBA games.