What In The World Is That? It’s A Prototype Controller For Nintendo Land.

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Nintendo Land began development around the same time as the Wii U. While Nintendo’s hardware development group was still in the process of settling on a concept for the Wii U, the team developing Nintendo Land was busy conducting its own experiments with the idea of a second screen for console games.

 

This was their first experiment:

 

That’s the Wii Zapper with a miniature screen wired onto it. While this prototype itself didn’t go anywhere, it did result in Nintendo’s decision to add a gyro-sensor to the Nintendo 3DS, which would allow for motion control.

 

The second prototype was much closer to the Wii U GamePad itself:

 

That’s a monitor attached to two Wii Remotes with double-sided tape, and wired together along with a pair of analog sticks. About 30 pieces of experimental software were designed using this makeshift Wii U GamePad, and it was this prototype that eventually led to the development of Nintendo Land.


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Author
Image of Ishaan Sahdev
Ishaan Sahdev
Ishaan specializes in game design/sales analysis. He's the former managing editor of Siliconera and wrote the book "The Legend of Zelda - A Complete Development History". He also used to moonlight as a professional manga editor. These days, his day job has nothing to do with games, but the two inform each other nonetheless.