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Revolution Controller Revealed (For Real)

Wii

Really. In all honesty. We heard from Nintendo themselves. It's really cool, and it hasn't been done before in gaming. They were telling the truth. I'm just building suspense now by delaying the next paragraph, and also ensuring that anyone reading the RSS feed has to open the real article. Ooh! How exciting!

It's a remote. There's a D-pad, a big 'A' button on top, and a big 'B' button underneath. There are also two smaller 'a' and 'b' button lined up vertically towards the bottom of the controller. There are 'Power', 'Start' and 'Select' buttons, as well as a mysterious 'Home' key. By the smaller 'a' and 'b' buttons, there are four little lights, which shows you what player you currently are (for multiplayer).

So? What's new? What's "revolutionary"? Where's my control stick? The answer: gyroscopic control. The console itself knows where the controller is in 3D space, so you can control your character/pointer on-screen by moving up/down, in/out and left/right in mid-air! It also has a tilt sensor built in, so you can do barrel rolls and tip towards the ground for great control. In a demo game, you were rquired to hold the controller sideways, like aeroplane wings, for controlling a Pilotwings-esque ring-collecting minigame.

At the bottom of the controller there's a port, to which you can connect peripherals; a bongo one has already been hinted at by Shigeru Miyamoto. The other part of the controller that was shown off was an attachment consisting of a control stick and 'Z1' and 'Z2' buttons. This was wired in, but the controller as a whole is still wireless. And it has rumble.

The controller is one sexy little machine - not dissimilar in style to Apple's iPod Shuffle. It suits the sleek Revolution system very well. On a side note, the chances of it being actually called Revolution seem slimmer and slimmer - at the Tokyo Game Show, the system wasn't branded at all. There's four colours of controller we've seen so far - silver, white, red and lime green. All rock.

So you're wondering how to play your downloaded NES games? Well, to be honest, we don't know. Presumably there's capabilities (or peripherals) available that will make it happen, but if not, there's always the Gamecube controller ports at the back.

Can you imagine the gameplay possibilities? There was a video that revealed the controller that presented lots of great ideas (without any game footage - the film camera was the 'television', with the actors staring straight at it). So, you could chop food, go fishing, slash at enemies in Zelda, zoom in a sniper rifle, swat flies and more! Steer Mario Kart! Throttle a motorcycle by twisting! The possibilities are endless, and in the hands of the developers.

It's just one exciting development in the Revolution's life cycle, but we can't wait to find out more. Check out the hi-resolution pictures we've attached.

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