The anticipation had filled the night air with magic. I’d invited a few friends over because this was going to be an event too big to enjoy alone. I’d scheduled an entire week’s worth of vacation around this night, and a Double Gulp from the local 7-11 ensured that it would be a long and memorable one. I remember carefully slicing open all the retaining stickers (after taking pictures for posterity) and marveling at the pearly plastic ensconced in fitted cardboard. After years of promises, speculations, and jarring name-changes, the Wii was finally out. Unfortunately, three years since, things didn’t turn out the way I pictured.

Oh, to be young and foolish.

Playing Wii Sports that night filled me with sublime hope. Bowling, golfing, and tennis-ing delivered every tactile experience I could’ve asked for. I still remember that night fondly, partially for the great time I shared with close friends, and partially because it was a time of such hope and anticipation. Wii Sports seemed to deliver the experience that gamers had expected from Nintendo’s new console. It seemed precise, immersive, and responsive. What’s more, it was a launch title, a mere glimpse of wonders to come. Surely, we thought, once those capable developers donned their lab coats, goggles, and clipboards, they would push the tech to new and exciting levels - surely.

However, the years since haven’t seen bigger and brighter. In fact, games struggle to even be as immersive as the Wii’s hallmark title, let alone surpass it. Wii Sports was more of an elaborate wool-pulling than a promise of future achievement. As I’ve since learned, the Wii Remote’s tech is actually clumsy in that it detects acceleration rather than tracking movement. A swing of the Wii Remote registers in terms of ’I moved right’ or ’I moved down’, rather than ’I moved six inches left and rotated 45 degrees’. This ham-fisted tracking reduces game input to a binary register (either you moved left or you didn’t) so any input tied to this is functionally no different to pushing a button. This reduces motion controls to being a button-replacement, equal parts novel and annoying.