When I learned ahead of its launch that The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess HD would forego including the original’s twenty-oh-six styled Wiimote waggle, I was deeply saddened. And, as far as I could tell, I was alone in feeling so.
Outside the likes of Wii Sports and Warioware, Wii-waggle was never universally embraced. For every gamer willing to pledge a bit of imagination a decimal boost in heartrate toward what hindsight shows us was an early attempt at how we’re now controlling games in VR, there were just as many condemning the hassle, effort, and general sense of gimmickry attached. I can’t blame them; rampant shovelware certainly didn’t win Nintendo’s white rectangle favor, and I would know. I personally watched my cousin receive a Wii and the game Chicken Shoot for Christmas, play it for five minutes, and return it for an Xbox 360. When it comes to being freed from shrinkwrap, Link’s Crossbow Training never stood a chance.
As many know, it was the late-cycle Skyward Sword that brought the hardware its deliverance, but by then the zeitgeist had fled, and the Wii U would soon arrive. I won’t recap that console’s recent history, but its portrayal here tells most of what you need to know.
Knowing all of this, at yesterday’s reveal event of the hybrid Nintendo Switch, Nintendo did something I’d worried it never would – it doubled down on motion controls.
Not everyone is happy about this, but I’m thrilled. Let’s consider Nintendo’s Joy-Con attachment controllers for a moment – the ones that latch to either side of the central Switch tablet. We’ve known the Joy-Cons to be generally functional and convenient since their first trailer appearance, but what I didn’t see coming was a genuinely impressive bit of tech housing more doohickeys and thingamabobs within a small frame than I would have thought possible. I was expecting hollow, cheap-feeling “shells,” and instead what we’re seeing is something else entirely.
A conceptual breakdown is, I think, what does these impressive knobs the most justice. Within the Joy-Cons, you essentially have:
- Standard Wii Remote capability (via “IR motion camera”)
- Wii Motion Plus capability (ie, Skyward Sword 1:1 motion)(Via gyroscopes + accelerometers)
- Distance and motion detection (not found in Wiimote or Motion Plus, no sensor bar needed)
- NFC embedded in analog stick for amiibo scanning (right Joy-Con)
- HD Rumble, likely similar to Apple’s “Taptic Engine” (left Joy-Con)
I’ve seen complaints regarding price of both the Switch ($300) and the cost of additional Joy-Cons themselves ($80 for a pair), but when you consider the above, it strikes me as not terribly far from fair. After all, a single Wii Motion Plus remote goes for $40 MSRP, and when you ad the plastic-husk nunchuk, you’re already closing in on $60. Meanwhile, Sony has repurposed PS3’s Move controllers for PS4 VR with minimal functional improvements, and currently has them tagged at $100 for a pair. When you consider that two Joy-Cons are essentially two Wii Motion Plus remotes, contain additional tech the Wiimote lacks, and serve as far better SNES-pad imitators than the Wiimote ever did, I think the cost is plenty justifiable, if maybe not quite ideal. Luckily, two are packed with the console anyway. Thankfully with wrist straps.
To me, motion controls aren’t just about achieving 1:1 onscreen mimicry. That’s nice, but I also like when they’re implemented tastefully. Motion’s application in a game like Super Mario Galaxy, with its flick-to-star-launch and pilot stick monkey ball balancing, co-exist nicely alongside familiar Mario mechanisms of control. Beyond that, I’ve always enjoyed the ability seperate my hands from a single pad and move them independently. It bothered me that Nintendo might have abandoned this with Switch, but alas, both it and motion controls are here to stay.
It’s easy to criticise the double-down strategically, but reduced to the most basic terms, the Wii succeeded and the Wii U did not. During yesterday’s Tokyo Nintendo Switch event, Shinya Takahashi proclaimed enthusiastically (for him) that the Switch includes DNA from all past Nintendo devices, and from the touching of DS to the waggling of Wii-wands, the local multiplayer of Super Famicom and beyond, I’d say he’s absolutely right. Noticeably, what’s missing is Wii U’s ability to manage maps and inventory via a tablet controller while action unfolds on the TV, as Switch needs to be docked to be played when not in portable mode. I’ll miss this feature, but I can understand Wii U’s exclusion from Switch’s amalgamation of heritage for now – it’s hardly been a lifecycle Nintendo’s top minds want to spend much time reliving. And, at least, the Switch does iterate on the idea of a dedicated gaming tablet.
Twilight Princess’s motion controls lacked precision and 1:1 movement mapping, but with the right attitude and a willingness to develop obscure (and probably otherwise worthless) muscle memory, there was a truly satisfying flow to them. If you move majestically rather than flail, the sword swipes feel natural, almost like playing underwater, and combat takes on a liquid smoothness not found in any Zelda prior or since. It was, at least to 16-year-old me at the time, a quite literal Nintendo Revolution.
It was Satoru Iwata who spearheaded initiatives like touch and motion gaming, and I’d worried the noble persistence he’d inexorably fused with seeing through his contributions might have passed on with him. Instead, we have Switch – an amalgam and coalescence of a century-old toymaker’s heritage, and a doubling down on a control scheme both loved and loathed by so many. Thankfully, if anything motion gaming has become more in-vogue in its own absence. I used to worry about looking foolish waving wands playing Wii Sports. But when the alternative is waving wands *and* strapping plastic VR goggles to your head, well – in 2017, dual-wielding colorful Joy-Cons may be more fashionable than anybody ever imagined.
