Throughout the library of early Wii games there are tons of small examples like this littered about with developers pushing the limits of the Wii remote. However, even with all of these clever work arounds, actions like swinging a sword in Twilight Princess never felt like much more than hitting a button.
The Birth of Modern Motion Controls ¶ĭevelopers at Nintendo knew that if they were ever going to be able to deliver on the promise that the Wii Remote showed in its early days, that another leap in technology was needed. Behind the scenes, they began development on a new Zelda title upon the completion of Twilight Princess. With the lackluster Motion controls being one of the chief complaints, it seemed as though developers wanted to address that problem in a big way. Unfortunately, the standard Wii Remote wasn't capable of much more. At E3 in 2008, that all changed with the announcement of the Wii MotionPlus adapter. With full six degrees of freedom, the MotionPlus allowed Wii Remotes to perform full 3D tracking just like VR controllers do today! This adapter featured a 3-axis gyroscope (gyro) that finally allowed the controller to measure rotational motion in addition to the translational motion from the existing accelerometers.
