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Every time Nintendo presiden t Satoru Iwata has opened his mouth, he underscored time and time again Nintendo would not be following the traditional path of a new console. R umors have persisted for weeks about touch screens, gyroscope functions, virtual headsets, and everything else under the sun. Nintendo always emphasized they weren't following Sony and Microsoft, and boy, they weren't kidding. Nintendo decided Tokyo Game Show (an event t he company typically forgoes in favor of Space World) was the right time to sit down with select members of the press and unveil their vision of gaming's future. We've seen the Revolution, touched and played with its radically differen t take on the game controller, talked with visionary designer Shigeru Mi yamoto about the reasoning behind Nintendo's new approach and we're back with our lengthy, hands-on impressions. The controller for Nintendo's upcoming Revolution home console system is a cordless remote-control-like device designed to be used with only one hand. Two small sensors placed near the TV and a chip inside the control ler track its position and orientation, allowing the player to manipulat e the action on screen by physically moving the controller itself. For e xample, you could slash an in-game sword by actually swinging the contro ller from side to side, turn a race car just by twisting your wrist, or aim your gun in a shooter by pointing the controller where you want to f ire.
An expansion port on the bottom of the unit allows for add-on hardware to compliment this "remote controller" (our word for it, not Nintendo's), like a second controller piece Nintendo demonstrated that comes equipped with an analog stick and two trigger buttons (currently labeled Z1 and Z2, for those of you keeping track). When the two controller pieces are attached, the so-called 'Nunchaku' configuration (the two bits are conne cted by a short cord) can work similarly to current controllers, just wi th the second analog stick replaced by actual movement of the Revolution controller. Nintendo also mentioned that the controller stick could be slipped inside other, more conventional controller shells, dance mats, b ongos, or other peripherals. A large "A" button sits in the prime spot under your thumb on the face of the controller, with a "B" trigger on the back of the unit for your ind ex finger. Otherwise the button configuration is an interesting mix of o ld and new: standard D-pad up top, near the power button (to turn the Re volution console on and off), Start and Select in the middle, on either side of the intriguing "Home" button (Nintendo wouldn't go into detail, but sounds like it has to do with navigating system menus, which will be important given the Revolution's promised WiFi connectivity), and two m ore buttons near the bottom labeled "a" and "b." These last two may seem uncomfortably low for your thumb until you turn the controller 90 degre es and it becomes just like an old 8-bit NES joypad, with the D-pad unde r your left thumb and "a" and "b" under your right. ") Nintendo mentioned the button names and th eir exact sizes could still change slightly before production, but what you see here is close to the final design. Elsewhere on the controller, the four lights at the very bottom represent which player it belongs to, and that hatch on the back is the battery c ompartment. A variety of different colored controllers were on display, including red, lime green, white, gray, bla ck, and silver. Finally, rumble functionality is built in to the control ler. Alright, so enough about sticks and buttons and lights-how does this craz y new controller actually work with games? To answer that question, Nint endo's legendary game creator Shigeru Miyamoto (creator of Mario, Zelda, Donkey Kong, Pikmin, you name it) walked specially selected members of the press through a series of hands-on technology demos. These were not real Revolution games (all the names for the demos are ours)-they were s uper-simple, graphically crude offerings designed solely to show off dif ferent aspects of how the controller can work.
DEMO: BLOCK BUSTER A firing-range-like contest where two players compete to see who can shoo t randomly appearing squares first. Aiming is done by pointing the contr oller itself at different points on screen, pulling the B trigger to fir e IMPRESSIONS: A great demonstration of how intuitive the controller can be -pointing it to aim felt perfectly natural, right from the very first se cond, just like with a light gun. It always shot exactly where it felt l ike I was aiming, and was incredibly responsive to even slight wrist mov ements-I barely had to move my hand at all. DEMO: GONE FISHIN' Grab a pole and lower it into a 3D pond full of fish. Keep the line stead y and when you feel a nibble from the rumble of the controller, pull it up quick! IMPRESSIONS: An interesting showcase of the controller's 3D movement dete ction-you position the fishing pole above the pond by moving the control ler forward or back, left or right in actual space, then lowered the hoo k by lowering the controller. It was a bit difficult to keep it steady i n the water, but flipping the controller up when you got a bite, mimicki ng the motion of pulling up a fish in reel life, was a little thrill tha t just felt right. DEMO: IRRITATING STICKS Two players guide rotating sticks through a side-scrolling maze of tunnel s and moving obstacles, gathering coins and avoiding touching the walls.
As a 2D game that requires exact movement (the caves get really n arrow in parts), this one reinforced how precise and steady the controll er's movement detection can be. Another interesting tidbit-if your contr oller fell outside the detection "box," the demo had an arrow pointing o ff the edge of the screen in that direction so you could get it back in the correct space. DEMO: AIR HOCKEY Exactly what it sounds like: Two players each control a flat stick on eit her side of a rink by moving around their controller, pushing a puck bac k and forth, trying to keep it out of the goal on their side. IMPRESSIONS: A bit sloppy and more sluggish than the other demos, this on e was supposed to show how you could put "english" on the puck by twisti ng the controller but in practice it didn't work as well as in other dem os (and I'm not saying that just 'cause I kept scoring on my own goal... DEMO: BASKETBOWL Two players drag or push a ball to their opponent's basket by making the ground under their controller-maneuvered cursor dip (by holding "B") or rise (by pressing "A"). IMPRESSIONS: This was oddly fun-you could try to move the ball by either making a hill next to it and pushing it along, or making an indentation for it to fall into, then using it to drag it across the court. When you got close to the basket, turning an indentation under the ball into a h ill suddenly would fling it up into the air. DEMO: WHERE'S WALDOASAUR A simple demonstration of depth perception-the player searches for a part icular pokemon on a giant map filled with the creatures (ala Where's Wal do), zooming in by pushing the controller towards the screen and zooming out by pulling away from it. IMPRESSIONS: Nothing much to say here except that, as a Nintendo rep comm ented, you can see how this might be put to use for aiming a sniper rifl e in a first-person shooter.
IMPRESSIONS: This was about all the different ways the Revolution can det ect tilting the controller. It was as if the controller was the airplane itself - as long as your movements weren't too sudden, the on-screen ac tion would mimic your movements with very little lag time. After about a minute I was pulling dramatic dives and loop-de-loops, bullseye-ing ple nty of rings.
Metroid Prime 2: Echoes, retrofitted to be compatible with the Revolution controller and its analog add-on piece (the "Nunchaku" se t-up mentioned earlier). As on the Cube the analog stick controls moveme nt, but instead of holding down a button to look around, you simply poin t the other controller in the direction you want to aim. IMPRESSIONS: At first, I was standing up and swinging my hand all around to aim - and my arms got really tired r...
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