Terry McMahon's Awesome Blog

These days, it seems every time Nintendo comes out with a new product or idea, the typical reaction goes the same way. The first reaction is shock, disappointment and amazement that Nintendo has just made the most outrageously terrible decision in the company's history. After thought, reflection, and trying out the idea in full, then you realize: wait a second, this is incredible. It was true of the analog stick on the N64 controller, it was true of the Wind Waker cel-shading, and it was true of the dual-screen touch-pad DS handheld.

And it's totally true of the controller for the upcoming Nintendo Revolution, unveiled yesterday in Japan. Believe it or not, it looks and plays like a remote control. Seriously:

If you're anything like me, you're thinking, oh my god, what on earth are they trying to prove. There were plenty of ridiculous-looking controllers in the early days of home video gaming, and it was actually Nintendo whose NES controller was the first to fit well in your hands. And now this?

But that's the funny thing: there are actually three ways to use this new Nintendo Revolution controller, and the first is exactly like the NES controller itself. Look back up at the new controller, and look at the direction-pad at the top, and the lower-case b and a buttons at the bottom. Now imagine the controller turned around sideways. Best I can tell, the only reason those buttons are there is so you can play like you were using the original NES controller. How hot is that?

But if you're sharp and with it (in which case. incidentally, you've probably seen the controller already), you're probably thinking, "Terry, that's great, but for video games today you need an analog stick." True. That's why the Revolution controller has a plug-in they actually do call "nunchuk style."

Now, this looks like a major innovation, and it is, but it's not as big a difference from the current Gamecube controller as it might appear. Analog stick on your left, buttons on your right. The difference is that the Revolution controller has split them up, so now you have your hands separated. Not a bad idea, right? (Also, please note: if the next part blows your mind too much, you can actually plug your old Gamecube controllers into the Revolution and they'll probably work fine.)

So if you're really sharp, then you're wondering, "well what about the second analog stick? How am I supposed to change camera angles in Zelda?" Well, here's the really amazing part. Forget about the plug-in analog stick for a second. The remote control actually comes with gyroscopes in it, meaning the system will be able to detect motion and shifting angles in the controller itself. As a result, for a lot of games you'll be able to play with just the remote control: when you want to move right, you move the controller right. When you want to move down, you move the controller down. Here, take a second to let that sink in: you're actually moving the controller around to move the characters on screen.

That's when I started to realize Nintendo has really thought this through. Now imagine the left-hand analog stick combined with the moving remote controller, which now can function as the right-hand analog stick. For an example, consider the Metroid Prime game they're working on for Revolution. With your left hand you've got the analog stick, with which you make Samus run around, and with your right, you've got your gun: you point with the controller, which now detects your angle, direction and hand movement, and you use the right-hand buttons to shoot. I know I, personally, have always had trouble with first-person shooters, because I never got the hang of controllers moving in two directions at once. Now, I'm pretty psyched: this looks genuinely intuitive.

That said, there's a lot I don't know about this new controller. As best I can tell, you've only got access to two buttons at once, and for a game like, say, Zelda, where you generally can deploy three or four different items with the touch of a button, I'm not sure how it'll work. Maybe one item will be the B button, another item will be up+B, and another one will be down+B? I say it might even be a superior approach to force distinctive movements into different items. Unfortunately, at this point, who knows.

The other downside is that this new controller makes third-party support much more difficult, though this may be what Nintendo was planning all along. EA Sports is going to be making games for the X-Box 360 and the Playstation 3 based on their standard controllers, and this is, you know, not going to translate. If third-party game publishers really, really tried, I bet they could make awesome Revolution versions of their games. Will they try? I doubt it, which I suspect Nintendo knows too. Nintendo has been saying for a while now that the current direction of video games - coming up with slightly better graphics to appeal to a narrower and narrower selection of 12- to 25-year-old guys - is not a long-term strategy. Nintendo has talked a lot about creating intuitive, creative, and widely appealing games, and they're backing it up with a lot of weird-but-fun stuff recently like the Nintendo DS, Wario Ware, and this Nintendogs thing. The real surprise from yesterday is that we thought, previously, that Nintendo was still going to give lip service to Madden, Mortal Kombat and even probably most of their own games as currently structured. Now it seems Nintendo is completely dismissing video games as we know them. Again, I don't expect Revolution games, once we get used to the controller, will be that much more awkward to play, but I suspect from here on out we're no longer going to think of Nntendo as a conventional console manufacturer. In other words, I'm not sure Microsoft and Sony are even in the same industry anymore.

So, bottom line: there are a lot of people saying this may mark the beginning of the end for Nintendo. They may be right, but I don't believe it. This controller is fucking awesome.