Hands-On with the Wii Controller

 

With Nintendo's Electronic Entertainment Expo press conference and the show itself looming, we had the opportunity to pop by the company's booth and try out the Wii. During our brief time, we tried out a variety of first-party titles to get a practical feel for just how the unique controller is going to work.

Though Nintendo still considered the units we were using to be prototypes, we reckon they gave a pretty good sense of the unit's heft. The controllers we had in our hands at the Tokyo Game Show were wired and weighed almost nothing. The wireless prototypes have a decent heft to them now, though. They use AA batteries, which will further add to the weight. At the moment, the main controller feels about as heavy as a Nintendo DS. The nunchaku weighs about as much as a cell phone. Holding both units in either hand feels fine, and the buttons are easy to reach.

We expect it will take time before our fingers get used to the controller's unique landscape and feel totally comfortable sliding around hitting buttons, but so far the controller feels good. The only thing we noticed was that you may find yourself gripping the main controller a little too tightly at first while playing. We reckon this will be an unconscious thing in much the same way most people playing a racing game will lean into turns without thinking or grip their controllers in a vicelike grip when walking around the sky stage in a Mario game. We have to hand it to Nintendo: Despite the Wii controller's unorthodox appearance, the thing is dead easy to pick up and play.

So there you have it. Though we'll again note that Nintendo reps stated the controllers we played were prototypes, we expect that the final units will be pretty close to what we tried. Though we expect there will be tweaking, much like the DS underwent following our first look at E3 two years ago, we have to say that Nintendo has managed to create a controller that's poised to revolutionize how games are played.