Ten Top Wii MotionPlus Ideas

With the anticipated Wii MotionPlus accessory just around the corner, we explore some ideas on how gaming can be redefines with it.

There's plenty to love about Wii MotionPlus.  The notion that your actions can be nearly 100% matched to those of your character onscreen in real time is the stuff gamers dreamed about years ago.  For the first time ever, Nintendo is even letting top third party companies support their accessory before they do themselves.

While EA Sports is bringing out the obvious applications we'd expect MotionPlus to use at the device's launch, there's a lot of question about what we can expect developers to do with MotionPlus.

Clearly, this is an opportunity to hope for sword fighting, golf, and tennis.  But gamers can begin to wonder: What else?  Here are some of our top ideas (both serious and not) that could make for a compelling gameplay experience with MotionPlus.  We'll be waiting for our checks, Mr. Game Developers.

1. Abstract music-based games

Do you like Rez? Bit.Trip.Beat (below) on WiiWare? How about Groov, the addicting XBLA community game? There are a small amount of artful games where your character's interactions, button presses, and collisions end up adding to the game's soundtrack in techno-blippy ways. The experience can be so enthralling that one may wonder why more games don't attempt to incorporate this sort of experience more often.

Sure, it has its place, but why not intricately include this sort of musical interaction with the slight movements MotionPlus detects? Would you give Wii Music another shot if it had MotionPlus-caliber accuracy? While we're at it, Rhythm Heaven could find a good fit on the Wii with similar controls.

2. Irritating Stick

Seriously, this could be irritating, and fun.  Similar to the Balance Bubble mini-game challenge from Wii Fit (below), Irritating Stick is a difficult maze game based on a quirky Japanese TV show. Guiding a stick through narrow passages, as Irritating Stick showed Playstation gamers, isn't as easy as it seems. Add in MotionPlus controls so gamers can guide the Wii remote through a timed 3D space, and you've got yourself an interesting WiiWare game.

3. Hockey

I shouldn't be the first to bring this up. Not enough games have you gliding across the ice to score the winning goal for your team in a unique and addicting way. MotionPlus feels like a natural fit for the sport of hockey, which requires an impressive amount of talented stick handling that could be within reach with the device.

4. Lacrosse

This is a sport not properly done in video games. A simple game of Lacrosse with MotionPlus support could give people the opportunity to get to know this great sport. MotionPlus could easily detect the swinging motions that a player would make with their stick in the game.

Different Lacrosse techniques like drop-stepping, shuffling, cradling, and different passing, dodging, and shooting skills could easily be replicated to some extent on the Wii.  Even if most of the actions were assigned to buttons, the idea of being able to accurately swing the Wii Remote to score a goal could give the sport a new home in the video game world.

5. Paddle Ball for WiiWare

This one is for the people who's cats chewed through the string. This could be treated as more of a tech demo for MotionPlus, but every tilt and movement could change the movement of the ball onscreen. Add in support for the Wii Remote speaker and slight force feedback and you may not know the difference between the game and the 99-cent paddle ball your could have bought. Bonus cup and ball mini game!

6. Echochrome-like depth games

I once got a toy that had a ball in a clear cube.  The cube was a maze, and I had to constantly rotate the cube to get the ball from the entrance to the exit.  Aside from determining that I was quite an exciting child, this should spark a new game idea for MotionPlus developers to grab hold of.

With the combination of IR technology, ball-in-maze games have a new axis to roll around with. By pivoting your remote around an IR point on the screen, tilting and twisting the Wii Remote could move a three dimensional maze around.

Even without the use of IR and just relying on the MotionPlus' use of 3D space, maze games have a bright future ahead of them.  Something simple like Echochrome could work brilliantly on the system using these controls.

7. Survival horror game mechanics

Silent Hill, Alone in the Dark, Clock Tower, Resident Evil; all these game series work in different ways to scare the living bejesus out of gamers.  Survival horror producers have worked hard to bring the same suspense to games that Hitchcock brought to his films.

With games having that keen element of interaction, sometimes a button press doesn't elicit the same jumpy reaction that more immersive controls could warrant.  Sure, "waggle" is never the answer, and a gesture-based twist to open a door may not be either.  Some developers are getting the right idea, however.  Konami will be using the Wii Remote's IR as a flashlight in the upcoming re-imagining, Silent Hill: Shattered Memories (below).

Why not use MotionPlus?  A near 1:1 control input in the split-second moments that could save or lose your character's life could provide the level of suspense gamers need in this genre.  Waving around a flare, wiping a

foggy mirror or window to reveal the twisted things you'd find in a good Alone in the Dark game conceptually gives me goosebumps.  Could MotionPlus help reinvigorate this genre?

8. Cooking Mama

I'm not going to lie, this was Ian's idea.  Even so, it's a good one.  Cooking Mama has tried to carve her place in the Wii, but most of us knew better.  The gesture-based controls don't work as wonderfully as the stylus-based DS controls, and the intense multiplayer amounted to a dull roar for many.

Were Mama to get a new set of knives with MotionPlus compatibility, well then we'd be in for something great.  In the world of simulation games like Cooking Mama, the simulation aspect is key, which is quite different from imitation.  Of course a new game wouldn't feel like we're really carving a turkey, but it would certainly simulate the experience in a much better way than past games have.

While we're cooking up these ideas (and puns), throwing in some solid, intense multiplayer would be fantastic.  Perhaps Mama's kitchen can be more sandbox-like, and allow players to grab items from the kitchen and cook up something wonderful... or lethal.

9. Trauma Center

Speaking of lethal, new MotionPlus controls for Trauma Center could do a world of difference.  Just imagine: precision-based video game surgery.  So far, the Trauma Center series has done a great job nailing the precision factor of their games, in using the touch screen on the DS and the IR of the Wii Remote.  But cutting your patient open using IR doesn't feel right.

Like carving a turkey in Cooking Mama, players could slice into their patients, and use the IR and/or face buttons to "lock" on different elements they are interacting with.  IR would still be used for the laser (pew, pew), but MotionPlus could open up even more medical tools for you to play with.

Players could accurately perform CPR, the Heimlich Maneuver, or even test reflexes.  Even the thought of making the real motions when suturing your patient makes this a must-have game.  Get to it, Atlus!

10. Build and destroy games like Jenga

Jenga for Wii is one of the worst-rated games available on the console. MotionPlus could save a game like it, giving a natural hand movement for building structures without the need for IR, like Boom Blox uses. There's a bonus, however, as holding the remote horizontally in both hands and pushing it down like a handle can result in detonating the bomb that destroys your structure. Even with the incredible amount of physics the game could utilize, it could make for a large, and popular WiiWare game.

But why leave it at Jenga?  Harmless in-game destruction is appealing.  Give a gamer a building and a dozen ways to tear it down, award them millions of points, and you've got yourself the best game ever.

Don't like our ideas?  Fine, but we want to hear yours.  Tell us, what ideas would you like to see made into MotionPlus-capable games?