A brief history of Nintendo Innovation

Some of you may, or may not know that the ideas we see in the Nintendo products of today have been visited before.  Below is a brief overview of three past ideas that have been revisited in recent memory:

Motion Control

Motion Controls; love it or hate it, the Wii turned your Granny into an enthusiastic Nintendo gamer - at least maybe for a while.  The Nintendo Wii became the biggest selling console of all time making even the most hardened videogames ‘ruin society’ tabloid reader become a rabid gamer (maybe a teeny-weeny bit of an exaggeration).   Many families would be jumping and diving around the lounge whilst swinging the Wii-mote in an attempt to hit a virtual tennis ball and - in the process possibly breaking their TV screens.  This was made possible thanks to the technical wonder of motion control, but the Wii was not Nintendo’s first bout with the technology.  Way, way back, circa 1989 saw the release of the awesome-ness of the POWER GLOVE.

The coolest kid in the playground

Technically, not actually created by Nintendo (that credit goes to Mattel) but licensed by Nintendo for release on the NES.  Ah, the Power Glove … that cool piece of kit that snugly fitted along the arm and had a rather cheap looking controller (seemly) glued to the actual glove.  You would be the envy of all the kids in the school, right?  Quite frankly in reality, the Power Glove was just a nightmare to play with and was severely under supported with only two games released for the unique motion features of the Power Glove. 

Super Glove Ball was a 3D maze puzzle game where you controlled a virtual glove with movements of the Power Glove.  Bad Street Brawler was a beat em up that was rather limited as only a few moves could be used per stage along with the rather unresponsive Power Glove controls making the game the ultimate test of patients and endurance.  The Power Glove also made it extremely difficult and awkward to play a game that supported the traditional NES controller.  For example, try using the D-Pad and face buttons on the Wii-U pro controller with one hand whilst balancing it on your arm.   Not the easiest of tasks!

The Power Glove was probably best known for its appearance in the movie The Wizard, which provided us with the unintentionally funny line “I Love the Power Glove, it’s so bad.” That line would become an extremely popular Internet meme for future generations to discover.

It's so bad!

Dual Screen

After the runaway success of the Wii, the Wii-U could have been another console with tradition controls or just been a refinement of the Wii’s motion control technology (Motion plus plus), instead Nintendo opted for something different in the home console market and chose to release a controller with a screen embedded within.  Some argue that Nintendo have seen the success of tablets in the mobile market and have attempted to target the tablet demographic and bring them into the console market with the Wii-U.

While this may be somewhat true, Nintendo, for a number of years had been  experimenting with the idea of “dual screens.”  The idea of Dual Screens can go as far back as the 1980s when Nintendo released their Game and Watch collection of handheld game devices.  A number of the Game and Watch devices were single screen, but a few games were released under the ‘Multi Screen Series,’ such as Oil Panic, where a station helper was controlled by the player and had to catch drops of oil with a bucket from a leaking pipe and empty it into an oil drum.

During the GameCube era players could connect their GBAs to the GameCube and unlock lock extra content for certain games and also play mini-games on their GBAs.  The GBA could be used as controller for the GameCube and can be thought as a link in the evolution of dual screen experiences.

The introduction of the Nintendo DS, took the idea of dual screens even further and resulted in many creative uses of two screens from Nintendo and many third party developers.  The DS became so popular that Nintendo decided to drop the most popular handheld in history, The Game Boy, and to solely focus on the DS.

Now, not only do we have the 3DS, but Nintendo have evolved their portable Dual Screen technology and transitioned it into the home console market with the Wii-U.

We live in a world now where tablet devices are becoming a second screen as part of people's internet browsing experiences; so many people will relax in the evening in front of the TV and be browsing on their tablet.  This shows just how innovative Nintendo are as a company; the idea of dual screens now transcends gaming and has become an everyday mainstream activity. 

3D Systems

Nintendo decided to make their new handheld 3D compatible; undoubtedly the implementation of 3D must have been influenced by Hollywood’s rekindled interest in 3D film technology.   Some gamers may think that the 3DS is the first Nintendo system to allow players to add a new dimension (see what I did there) to their gaming and play their games in glorious 3D.  Although, those that are old enough may remember that Nintendo released a little device called the Virtual Boy.

Try walking around with this strapped to your head

In 1995 the Virtual Boy was released, during a time when the video game industry was going bonkers over virtual reality – oh, how time repeats itself.  The Virtual Boy was the first video game console to show “true 3D” graphics out of the box.  Unfortunately, all of the games available were not displayed in full colour, but instead just the colour red was used.  According to Nintendo the red colour was used as it would have been too expensive to produce multiple colours and would have resulted in flickering and jumpy images.

The design of the console was also rather awkward to use as the Virtual Boy was pretty much a headpiece with a really short stand.  Players had to look into the goggles of the headpiece to view the game – the problem here was that there was no way to comfortably fit it around your head, unless you were content with wrapping duct tape around your head and thus making it kind of portable console, whilst also looking like a bit of a wally.

Interestingly, the buttons on the connected controller were symmetrical, which would make it friendlier to left handed people.  Nintendo later revisited this idea of a controller that suited right and left handed people, maybe unintentionally, with the Wii-mote and nuchuck for the Wii.

Unfortunately, the Virtual Boy was a commercial failure due to a number of factors such as the high price tag, the discomfort of the headpiece, lack of games and the fact that a number complained of nausea and dizziness after using the system.

The 3DS was introduced during a time when 3D was reportedly to become the next big demand in consumer technology, 3D films were being re-introduced into cinemas, 3D TVs and 3D blu ray players were being pushed into consumers senses, with the hope that consumers would leap at the chance of indulging in the newest advances of 3D technology.

The Unique Selling Point of the 3DS, compared to 3D cinema and TV, was the fact that the 3D in the console could be seen without the need for special glasses - Nintendo used that to promote the device in television advertising, where everyday people would see the results and be in wonderment at not having to wear glasses to see the technology correctly working.  The video below shows one of Nintendo's  advertising campaigns where glasses were not needed.

There you have it, a history that shows Nintendo was ahead of its time.  They had and supported innovative ideas they believed could work – they just needed the technology to catch up with their ideas.