Right, let me tell you about the time the entire gaming industry collectively lost its mind over wiggling controllers about like demented orchestra conductors. This would be around 2006, and I’d just managed to get my hands on this peculiar white box called the Wii after queuing up outside Game in Manchester city centre like some sort of gaming refugee. The things we do for new technology, honestly.
I’d been gaming since the Spectrum days, yeah? Proper gaming, with keyboards and joysticks that stayed firmly planted in your hands where they belonged. So when Nintendo rocks up claiming you need to wave a remote control around to play tennis, my first thought was “this is either brilliant or completely mental.” Turns out it was a bit of both, wasn’t it?
The thing is, that first go on Wii Sports was genuinely magical. I’m not ashamed to admit it. There I was, a grown man who’d spent decades mastering the art of button combinations and analogue stick precision, giggling like a schoolkid because swinging my arm made a little digital bloke hit a tennis ball. It felt revolutionary – finally, gaming that my mum might actually understand without needing a PhD in controller ergonomics.
And bloody hell, did it work on the general public. Suddenly every household in Britain had one of these things tucked under their telly. My local Argos couldn’t keep them in stock for months. People who’d never touched anything more complex than a TV remote were suddenly discussing their bowling averages and tennis serves. It was like watching an entire generation discover fire, except the fire was interactive entertainment and came with a wrist strap you were supposed to actually use but never did.
I remember bringing mine round to a family do that Christmas – proper British family gathering with three generations crammed into my aunt’s front room, everyone slightly uncomfortable and making small talk about the weather. Twenty minutes after setting up the Wii, I had my 75-year-old nan absolutely demolishing my teenage cousin at bowling while shouting “HAVE SOME OF THAT!” like she was Muhammad Ali. Gaming had somehow broken through decades of “that’s just for kids” prejudice in one afternoon.
But here’s the thing about revolutions – they tend to run out of steam once reality sets in. The honeymoon period lasted about as long as it took for developers to realize they could shovel any old rubbish onto the Wii as long as you waggled the controller occasionally. Suddenly every game required you to shake the remote to reload your weapon, or wave it about to cast spells, or perform some other arbitrary gesture that added absolutely nothing except wrist strain.
The Americans, not to be outdone, launched their own motion control nonsense. Microsoft came out with Kinect – this camera thing that was supposed to track your entire body. Sounded impressive until you realized it required about half your living room as empty space, which in my Manchester terrace meant moving furniture into the kitchen just to play a game. My neighbours probably thought I’d taken up interpretive dance based on all the flailing about at odd hours.
When Kinect worked, fair play, it was quite clever. Dance Central became the go-to party game, mainly because watching your mates attempt hip-hop moves after a few pints never gets old. But when it didn’t work – and this happened more often than Microsoft would like to admit – it was like arguing with a particularly stubborn toddler. “XBOX, PLAY GAME,” you’d shout increasingly desperately while the bloody thing just sat there ignoring you completely.
Sony jumped on the bandwagon too with Move controllers that looked like something out of a low-budget sci-fi film. Glowing orbs on sticks, they were. I bought them, naturally – can’t help myself when it comes to new gaming tech, much to my wife’s despair. But Move never really figured out what it wanted to be. More accurate than the Wii, supposedly, but lacking any games that actually took advantage of that precision. Ended up gathering dust in a drawer faster than you could say “waggle to win.”
The problem became apparent pretty quickly if you were actually trying to play proper games with these things. I attempted Zelda: Twilight Princess with motion controls and gave up halfway through when my wrist started feeling like I’d been operating a pneumatic drill all day. Turns out there’s a reason traditional controllers evolved the way they did – they’re actually quite good at what they do, and you can use them for hours without requiring physiotherapy afterwards.
Don’t get me wrong, motion controls had their place. Sports games made sense – swinging a controller like a tennis racket felt natural enough. And for people who found traditional controllers intimidating, motion controls opened up gaming in ways that genuinely mattered. I saw this firsthand when helping out at a local community centre – elderly folks who couldn’t manage the complexity of a standard controller were happily bowling strikes on the Wii. That accessibility aspect was brilliant, absolutely brilliant.
But for serious gaming? For the sort of experiences that keep you glued to your chair for hours at a time? Motion controls were about as useful as a chocolate teapot. Try playing a strategy game by waving your arms about, or attempting precise platforming with gesture controls. It doesn’t work, does it? The novelty wears off quickly when you realize you’re working harder to achieve less precision than you’d get from a simple button press.
The physical toll was something nobody talked about enough either. “Wii elbow” became a real medical condition – repetitive strain injury from pretending to play sports rather than actually playing them. Had to explain that one to my GP, which was about as embarrassing as you’d expect. “So you hurt yourself playing pretend tennis, Mr. Thompson?” Yes, doctor, yes I did.
Looking back now, the whole motion control craze feels like one of those technological fads that swept through the industry because everyone was terrified of being left behind. Like 3D gaming or those awful FMV games from the CD-ROM era. Seemed revolutionary at the time, but in hindsight was solving problems that didn’t actually exist for most people.
The technology wasn’t really there yet either. Even the best systems had noticeable lag and accuracy issues that broke immersion the moment your character did something completely different from what you intended. Nothing kills the magic quite like swinging a tennis racket and watching your on-screen player decide to bowl instead.
These days, motion controls have settled into a more sensible role – they’re there when they make sense, ignored when they don’t. The Switch uses them occasionally, but doesn’t make them the entire point of the system. Games like Breath of the Wild use gyroscopic aiming as a refinement tool rather than the primary control method, which is exactly how it should be done.
Virtual reality is probably where motion controls finally found their proper home. Makes sense in VR – you’re in a 3D space, using your hands naturally feels right. But waggling a remote at a flat telly? That was always going to be a temporary novelty at best.
I still keep that original Wii hooked up in the spare room, mind you. Not out of nostalgia – well, not entirely. Sometimes when mates come round and we’ve had a few drinks, firing up Wii Sports bowling still brings back that original magic. For about twenty minutes anyway, before we remember why we stopped playing and go back to proper games with proper controls.
The motion control revolution promised to change everything, but mostly it just reminded us why traditional controllers exist in the first place. Still, it got my nan trash-talking at video games, and for that alone it deserves some respect. Even if we all look a bit silly in hindsight, waving those plastic wands about like we were casting spells instead of just trying to play tennis.
John grew up swapping floppy disks and reading Amiga Power cover to cover. Now an IT manager in Manchester, he writes about the glory days of British computer gaming—Sensible Soccer, Speedball 2, and why the Amiga deserved more love than it ever got.
