Nintendo flexes

A couple weeks ago Nintendo revlealed the new controller that will be shipping with the Nintendo Revolution (which I will hence forth be calling NR). You can read all about it at 1up.

I am going to admit I hated it when I first saw it. In general I hate TV and with TV comes remotes. Thus remotes are evil. Plus I have grown up holding a piece of plastic with two hands not one. But....

I have spent some time looking into the controller and just plain thinking about it and it actually has grown on me. In fact it has grown on me so much that I believe now NR will be my system of choice for gen7. There seems to be a lot of misunderstandings of what the controller can do so I wanted to post my findings and predictions and hope maybe I can convince a gamer or two along the way that just maybe the new controller doesn't completely suck.

First of all its important to understand the expander port at the bottom of the controller. In many of the pictures you see a analog stick attached to a small white box then a wire running to the controller itself. This can be removed. That is the whole point of the controller, to be able to change the controller design very easily. Nintendo has gotten the custom controller business lately. More and more games seem to be shipping with custom controllers. The extender port allows Nintendo to continue this trend in a big way. If you never have tried a game with a custom controller than I suggest going and getting Donkey Konga for Gamecube. Custom controllers are very fun and allow you to interact with a video game that has been previously impossible.

Lets say you hate the remote and everything that it represents. Well, because of the expander port you do not have to deal with it. It would be very easy for Nintendo to release a standard controller that had a Dreamcast-ish slot in the top you could plug the remote into. The remote would only stick out a inch or two. This way all of us who miss two handing it can pick up one of those (for a very cheap price).

Getting passed the extender port brings us too the postition and tilt sensors. This allows so many new ways to interact with games. I believe this will allow many genres of games to feel more "real". The most recent issue of EGM talks about the experience of playing some of the Demos. The one that stood out in my mind the most is for metroid. The analog stick was used for movement and the remote was used for looking and aiming. Imagine that for a second. Imagine how amazing a fps would be. There is a trigger on the bottom of the remote, and a rumble pack installed inside it.

Your moving down a hallway when a bad guy pops out you point your gun(remote) at him and pull the trigger. When you pulled the trigger the gun in your hand gives a hard push back. On the screen your player fires a plasma ball which is traveling in the same direction you just fired.

Its the Time crisis arcade machine mixed with Doom 3. Personally I think this way of interacting with games is much more emersive than just pounding circle. The NR controller will revolutionize how we interact with games, and will open up hundreds of possibilities for games that could have only existed in our imaginations. I can't wait.