From A&B to Remotes & Nunchuks

This week for me has been all about the Wii.

I was interested to know what the price was, but I already knew I was going to buy it. Mainly I wanted to know how long it would be before it was mine.

The reasons are many, and go way back. The original NES stands as a testament to game design greatness. There were only two buttons and a d-pad used in gameplay. Mario ran by holding one button down, and jumped by pressing the other button. But they took that simple idea and made a challenging, classic game. Mike Tyson’s Punch Out! used the buttons as locations- the button on the right punched right, the button on the left punched left. In the Legend of Zelda, most of the challenge came in just manuvering using the d-pad to solve puzzles!

The SNES added some buttons, but tried to keep things simple at the same time. Mario could now not only run and jump, but now could fly and whack things with his cape. Link gained some new tricks, but still, the challenge was not figuring out how to use a boomerang, but how to explore this world they dropped you in.

I didn’t pick up an N64. Mario 64, frankly, confused and annoyed me. The world looked great and there was tons to do, but I couldn’t get the control scheme down. And as much as I loved Goldeneye, it was really in spite of the control system, not because of it. It was a great FPS because of the level design, gameplay choices, and equipment… but man, would it have been a lot easier to get head shots if I could have used a mouse and keyboard!

I did have a PS2- in fact, I was one of the rare few who was able to buy one close to launch, but not actually on launch. I ended up using it as a dvd player more than anything else (same as my Xbox), but the PS2 I eventually ditched. Nearly half the games I played when it first launched used the top buttons to control just the camera… so I needed an ADDITIONAL control scheme on top of the one I used to control my character… just to look at my character! (Game publishers, there is no excuse for crappy camera controls. It will doom your game.)
Gamecube was all over the place. The multiplatform stuff tended to suffer being mapped to the weird, circular GC controller from the more grid-like Xbox and PS2. The games that I own for Gamecube don’t do anything funky and hard with the controller: Smash Bros Melee (all the important stuff is done with a combination of two buttons and a direction stick), Mario Kart DD (standard race), Mario Party 5&6 (where the individual games keep it simple and vary by what you’re trying to do), and Wario Ware. (where the game itself is trying to figure out what to do, and do it fast!)

But where did this leave Nintendo? As a company viewed mainly for its “kiddy” work, and up against two industry giants, how would they compete in the new generation?

As you know, of course, they didn’t. They decided they were going to do something new. Game design by, excuse the pun, revolution instead of evolution. And like all the best game design ideas, they had an idea so simple everyone says “Why didn’t I think of that?” (Or in Sony’s case, they said, “Let’s steal it!”)

The focus is back on the controller, and making it simple and intuitive. If your character has a sword, the player should swing the controller like a sword. If they have a gun, they should point it around the screen like a gun. If they’re balancing a broom on one hand… well, you get the idea.

While it may not work out in practice, the idea is great. Your access to a game is its controller, so really, it is the most important part of the process, yet it is also the easiest to sweep aside. Video game industry take note: innovation and simplicity make your games fun. Not better graphics.