Soapbox features allow our individual writers and authors to voice their opinions on hot topics and random stuff they’re chewing on. Today, Francisco reviews a small Joy-Con attachment that could help set the upcoming “Switch successor” apart…
Nintendo can’t resist a tempting hardware innovation. Think the Game and Watch’s D-pad, the sleek shoulder buttons of the SNES, or the Wii’s revolutionary motion controls; and we’ve barely scratched the surface of its long legacy of cutting-edge video game controllers. Despite their efforts, one hardware feature eluded Nintendo for decades.
This powerful tool can cover miles in the blink of an eye or take you from a satellite view to the lowest ant in an instant. Sakurai introduced this for the GameCube. Nintendo issued a patent For this in 2015. Your finger may fall within the reach of one at this moment. What long-overlooked miracle do I mean? Computer mouse scroll wheel.
Today’s creative sandboxes do the hard work of inventory management and menu creation, maximizing our existing UI inputs, first widely seen in Microsoft’s IntelliMouse in 1996, and it’s well-placed to make its belated debut on Switch 2. could ‘.
It’s time to spin the wheel
My first argument is pure convenience. We’re used to the familiar compromises that multi-platform games use to compensate for the lack of a scroll wheel. Directional or radial options can move between weapons and powers in quick-select menus. Instead of scrolling through a long list, the shoulder buttons turn the pages of your inventory or can change the camera zoom in Civilization VI.
For all its incredible capabilities, Tears of the Kingdom faces all sorts of limitations that existing controllers simply aren’t designed for.
Once was enough. Now that crafting menus and full inventory have seeped into any genre you can name, it often feels like you’re spending as much time on glorified tables as in the game world. Of course, you can hide fatigue – like Personality it does so with remarkable audacity – but as we increasingly drown in menus, it becomes necessary to facilitate the low-level drag that lies beneath these endless grids and lists.
We saw in the last Direct that even the upcoming top-down The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom is embracing sandbox elements; Part of the game, unfortunately, I’m not looking forward to is how to use Tears of the Kingdom’s never-ending “quick” menu – scrolling through that thing looking for the right Chuchu Jelly is an embarrassing chunk of my 80 hours of playtime. This issue has been long enough. Especially when it’s so easily improved by scroll wheel accuracy.
By comparison, holding down the analog stick is like spinning a roulette wheel; with random and minimal speed control. Go over the limit and you have to flip the stick back 180 degrees to go back. The directional buttons provide a less palatable option, more tension to hold, more bothersome to enter the exact sequences to simply select the right Minecraft item.
A designer tool for the creative world
The biggest issue is that when you think about it, the 3D revolution happened on our screens, not our controllers.
Even with the analog stick, when Link transformed into the wondrous 3D Hyrule in Ocarina of Time and Mario stepped into the magical Mushroom Kingdom in Super Mario 64, we still got to navigate 3D locations with 2D inputs. Up or down. Left or right. But many variant angles in between. At heart, it’s no different than working with a UFO catcher, pressing a button to interact with the third plane of motion.
Most of the time we do, but we still don’t have the precision we need for 3D object manipulation with creative modes that require the player character and the ability to control any number of in-game objects. There’s a reason the mouse wheel is an essential tool for graphic and level designers: it adds a whole new dimension.
For all its incredible capabilities, Tears of the Kingdom faces all sorts of limitations that existing controllers simply aren’t designed for. The Ultrahand made me haphazardly spin wooden planks like a novice nunchuck fighter, a devastating threat to myself and anyone within a 20-meter radius, doomed to create useless piles of rubble rather than engineering feats for centuries.
Add a scroll wheel to the mix and watch those problems melt away as Princess Zelda appears in the distance of the Gerudo desert. It is not necessary to switch between objects raised between three axes. Even better, with natively rotating input, you can now rotate objects with a precision that even Zonai’s sticky gloop and Nintendo’s polished physics detection system can’t achieve.
It’s not just Link who benefits. Lots of Minecraft, Fortnite and Roblox prioritizing mobile and PC over consoles, addressing this challenge has given Nintendo the opportunity to make the Switch 2 a destination for an untapped market of creative gamers.
Date with fate (Game).
Comfort and design tricks are great, but are they enough to justify such a bold new feature? What else can a scroll wheel do?
Some obvious examples come to mind: In last year’s diver/restaurant sim Dave the Diver, it’s easy to imagine using a wheel to angle an underwater harpoon or precisely tilting a faucet while serving green tea to Dave’s sushi customers. Elsewhere, it can be used to carefully test Link’s bow tension before firing a detonator bomb arrow.
For more insight, you only have to look at Panic’s Playdate, a yellow slime achieved with a rotating side-mounted crank that quickly attracted a lively development scene eager to explore its possibilities.
A crank isn’t a wheel, but they work on the same rotating axis, and it shows how a little hardware tweaking can make the Switch 2 claim to be the home of unique mechanical experiences you won’t find anywhere else (at least). Until Steam Deck v3 tries to muscle in).
Early Playdate releases give a taste of these new ideas: Balanced brewing cast players as a barista on a unicycle, tasked with delivering coffee orders while dangerously spinning his wheelie back and forth. And for Cranky’s Time Travel AdventureKatamari Damacy creator Keita Takahashi opts for the fourth dimension, not the third: his game has you playing a robot racing toward a hot date, cranking you back and forth in time, realigning yourself along the timeline. The obstacles that come between Crankin and his true love, Crankette.
Recently, Lucas Pope, creator of Return of the Obra Dinn, was drawn to take advantage of this hardware and was recently released. Mars after midnighta typically complicated title that uses exclusive Playdate and a variety of tricky crank controls.
The Switch’s successor deserves equally unique titles from developers of this caliber who are excited to explore these new possibilities. Plus, we know how Nintendo’s world-class designers will run riot after the wonders they’ve worked with motion and touch controls – I’m especially keen to see what WarioWare can come up with.
There are valid concerns. With the Joy-Con drift’s failed past, adding another chance for mechanical failure to its successor might seem like a risk. Finding the right ergonomic placement can also be a bigger challenge. Personally, I agree with Sakurai: the shoulder buttons that turn into clickable wheels add functionality without additional buttons, and certainly beat the rear position, like the Nintendo 64 controller’s ‘Z’ button.
I’m sure Nintendo’s developers can make it happen if they put their mind to it. As they say, “Where there’s a wheel, there’s a road.”