Everyone knows about it. The designers are going nuts, the gamers are going nuts. I’ve been having mental explosions since this morning and that’s been most enjoyable.
The Nintendo Revolution controller has been unveiled. It’s very, very, very important.
I don’t quite have time to articulate the mental explosions right now – and indeed, many people are hitting the same nails on the head as me. Gillen is probably the most succinct:
“If you don’t like the Revolution controller, you are fundamentally part of the problem and killing the fucking art form”
He is fundamentally right.
E. Randy | 17 Sep 2005
I just posted this on Barbelith, but I’m so impressed with how long it’s taken me to realise it that I figured I might as well say it here, too.
Lots and lots of people have been presuming that the controller was going to feature a touchscreen display. That presumption based on nothing more than a lack of imagination on their part – the DS has a touchscreen, therefore the Revolution must also have a touchscreen.
And just a tiny bit more thought would have led them to realise that having a touchscreen in the palm of your hand will make controlling anything on a TV screen some feet away, on a different plane of vision, an absolutely nightmare and possibly one of the least comfortable or intuitive interfaces ever, yeah?
Well, they were kind of right. The Rev controller is a stylus, or a virtual finger, and it turns your television set into the touchscreen display.
Every single DS game is now theoretically possible on the Rev. Only it’s not just limited to that, because the ‘stylus’ can recognise motion independent of the touchscreen.
In short: fuck me.