At this year's disappointing E3 convention, just about the only buzz from the Nintendo keynote was the announcement of the Wii MotionPlus. It's a gyroscope module that plugs into the base of the Wiimote which is supposed to give it 1:1 responsiveness. In other words, the players' motions in 3D space are duplicated in realtime on the screen.

But wait-- doesn't it do this already?

Not exactly. Most people don't realize that the current Wiimote, which uses a combination of an infrared camera and a three-axis accelerometer, is actually not that accurate at translating players' motions. Instead, the Wii relies heavily on software to interpret the data and implement the player's intentions. As anyone who owns a Wii can attest, it's not always very good at this.

Current Wii games, like Red Steel, here, rely on pointing and relatively simple motions. This offers a fair illusion of responsiveness, but is far from the 1:1 accuracy that the MotionPlus promises.

So now, nearly two years into the Wii's product cycle, Nintendo is up to it's old tricks-- with a new twist, perhaps. Sell the Wii as the cheapest next gen platform, then make people buy extra peripherals to get a fully-functional system.

It's an interesting strategy, really. Pirates may be able to make copies of the new Wii Sports, but what about the hardware it requires?

I was over at a friend's house last night, doing design research (read: drinking bourbon and playing video games), and found myself momentarily distracted from my pleasant Kentucky-style buzz by the jaw-dropping visual assault Super Smash Bros. Brawl for the Nintendo Wii.

Nintendo draws on its deep stable of characters to create a tightly branded interactive experience.

O! Insidious Nostalgia

Super Smash Bros. Brawl is a branding tour de force. Level designers Kazuhire Irie, Takeshi Suzuki, and Kou Arai have situated the game as a living history of the Nintendo product line, adopting a wide range of design styles to recreate elements of Nintendo's extensive mythology in a way that allows the player to simultaneously:

1. indulge in the thrill of recognition
2. have an enormous amount of fun game-playing
3. be spoon-fed nostalgia for the commercial products of yesteryear, or else feel an immense need to play catch-up ("Why would they have a level from Earthbound? I never played that.") as part of a not-so-subtle upsell. All the original games are available for $4-5 directly from your Wii.

Visually meshing the old with the new, you can see the living history of 30 years of Nintendo.

These three things in combination provide an almost narcotic Gestalt effect that all branding and identity designers could learn something from. It's branded fun.

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