Soapbox features allow our individual writers and contributors to voice their opinions on hot topics and random things they’ve been chewing on. Today, Francisco is mulling over a little Joy-Con accessory that could help set the upcoming “Switch successor” apart…
Nintendo can’t resist a tempting hardware innovation. Think the Game & Watch’s D-pad, the SNES’s nifty shoulder buttons, or the Wii’s revolutionary motion controls; and we’ve barely scratched the surface of its long legacy of pioneering video game controllers. Despite its efforts, one hardware feature has 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 it for the GameCube. Nintendo filed a patent for that in 2015. Your finger may be within reach of one right now. What long-neglected wonder am I referring to? A wheel for moving a computer mouse.
With today’s creative sandboxes struggling to manage inventory and craft menus, straining our existing UI inputs to the limit, this tool, first seen way back in 1996 on Microsoft’s IntelliMouse, would be well-positioned for its belated debut on the ‘Switch 2 ‘ ‘.
It’s time to turn the wheel
I first argument is pure practicality. We’ve gotten used to the familiar compromises that cross-platform games use to compensate for the absence of a scroll wheel. Directional or radial options can be moved between weapons and powers in the quick select menus. The shoulder buttons turn the pages of your inventory instead of scrolling through one long list, or they can change the camera zoom in Civilization VI.
Despite all its amazing capabilities, Tears of the Kingdom runs into all sorts of limitations that existing controllers simply aren’t designed for.
Once was enough. Now that menu crafting and packaged inventory have infiltrated any genre you can name, it often feels like you’re spending as much time in glorified spreadsheets as you are in the game world. Of course, you can disguise boredom – like Persona works with such a notable semblance — but when we’re increasingly mired in menus, mitigating the low-level drag that underlies these endless grids and lists becomes a necessity.
We saw at the last Direct that even the upcoming top-down The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom also adopts sandbox elements; one part of the game I’m sadly not looking forward to is how it uses Tears of the Kingdom’s endless ‘quick’ menu again – scrolling through the thing for the right Chuchu Jelly makes up an annoying chunk of my 80 hour playtime. This question has been going on long enough. Especially when it’s so easily improved by the precision of the scroll wheel.
By comparison, holding the analog stick is like spinning a roulette wheel; randomly and with minimal speed control. Go overboard and you have to flip the stick back 180 degrees to reverse. The directional buttons are an even less palatable option, more effort to hold, more hassle to enter precise sequences just to select the right Minecraft item.
A design tool for a world of creators
The bigger problem is that, when you think about it, the 3D revolution happened on our screens, not our controllers.
Even with the analog stick, when Link appeared in the wondrous 3D Hyrule in Ocarina of Time and Mario stepped into the magical Mushroom Kingdom in Super Mario 64, we still continued to navigate 3D spaces with 2D inputs. Up or down. Left or right. Regardless of the many different angles in between. In essence, it’s no different from controlling a UFO interceptor, with a button press to interact with the third plane of motion.
We often manage, but with creative modes that require the ability to control the player character and any number of objects in the game, the precision we need to manipulate 3D objects is not yet there. And there’s a reason why the mouse wheel is a key tool for graphic designers and level designers: it adds a whole new dimension.
Despite all its amazing capabilities, Tears of the Kingdom runs into all sorts of limitations that existing controllers simply aren’t designed for. The Ultrahand had me haphazardly spinning wooden planks like a novice nunchuck fighter, a destructive danger to myself and anyone within a 20m radius, doomed to create piles of useless rubble rather than engineering achievements for the ages.
Add a scroll wheel to the mix and watch those problems melt away, like seeing Princess Zelda in the distance of the Gerudo desert. You don’t need to switch between levitating objects between three axes. Even better, with a naturally rotating input, you can now spin objects with a precision that even Zonai’s sticky gloop and Nintendo’s slick physics detection system can’t quite achieve.
It’s not just Link who benefits. With a large number of Minecraft, Fortnite and Roblox by choosing mobile and PC over consoles, addressing this issue encourages Nintendo to make the Switch 2 a destination for an untapped market of creative gamers.
(Game) date with destiny
The practicality and design tricks are great, but are they enough to justify such a bold new feature? What else can the scroll wheel do?
Some obvious examples come to mind: in last year’s diving sim/restaurant Dave the Diver, it’s easy to imagine using a wheel to adjust Dave’s harpoon underwater, or precisely tilt the spout when serving green tea to Dave’s sushi customers. Elsewhere, it could be used to carefully calibrate Link’s sinew tension before firing a devastating Bomb Arrow.
For more ideas, just look at Panic’s Playdate, a yellow lil’ handheld device with a rotating side-mounted handle, which quickly attracted a vibrant development scene eager to explore its capabilities.
The stick isn’t a wheel, but they work on the same rotating axis, and it shows how a little hardware tweaking could make the ‘Switch 2 home to unique mechanical experiences you just can’t find anywhere else (at least until Steam Deck v3 tries to jump in).
Early Playdate releases give a taste of these new ideas: A balanced drink plays a barista on a unicycle, tasked with delivering coffee orders while dangerously spinning his unicycle wheel back and forth. And for Crankin’s Time Travel AdventureKeita Takahashi, the creator of Katamari Damacy, opts for the fourth dimension rather than the third: in his game, you play a wind-up robot chasing a hot date, a stick guiding you back and forth through time, adapting to the timeline to avoid oncoming obstacles between Crankin and his true love Crankette.
More recently, The Return of Obra Dinh creator Lucas Pope has been drawn to take advantage of these hardware capabilities and recently launched Mars after midnightA Playdate exclusive and a typically intricate title that uses a variety of tricky controls.
The Switch’s successor deserves equally unique titles from developers of this caliber, excited to explore these new possibilities. Plus, we know for sure how Nintendo’s stable of world-class designers would rave, after the wonders they’ve done with motion controls and touch – I’m especially curious to see what WarioWare could cook up.
There are valid concerns. With the Joy-Con drift’s unfortunate past, adding another chance for mechanical failure to its successor might seem like a risk. Finding the right ergonomic position can also be more of a challenge. Personally, I agree with Sakurai: the shoulder buttons turned into clickable wheels add functionality without additional buttons, and certainly beat the back position like the ‘Z’ button on the Nintendo 64 controller.
I’m confident that if they put their mind to it, Nintendo’s developers can do it. As they say, “Where there’s a wheel, there’s a way.”