Sensor strip. A light little plastic box with the longest and thinnest cable in the world. An annoyance for any Wii owner who has ever had to move their console. What was it good for?
The sensor bar doesn’t have much. A small device that emits some infrared light. If the Wii Remote is pointed at one, it recognizes that the TV is there. It’s not high-tech. It is known that its functionality can be replicated with two candles. Cheap, cheerful, reliable.
The Wii’s motion controls weren’t always implemented in particularly complementary ways. Anyone who’s ever had to pull off a special move by aggressively shaking the remote or perform intricate mid-air maneuvers by tilting the controller will be happy to tell you. But has anyone had any issues with it showing?
The concept of point and click dates back to some of the earliest electronic games. Not just the mouse-clicking of adventure and strategy games, but beyond the trigger-clicking of the early lightgun and electronic shooting games that inspired them. More than a decade before it introduced the NES Zapper, Nintendo was already running businesses for electronic clay pigeon shooting in abandoned bowling alleys and later brought out the home equivalent which projected flying ducks onto player walls. Pointing and shooting are more deeply rooted in Nintendo’s DNA than the D-Pad, representing some of their first work with electronic entertainment.
While the Super Scope’s limited commercial impact and concerns about presenting itself as a family-friendly brand may have deterred Nintendo from pursuing the technology for a decade and a half afterward, the light weapon was a huge success in arcades at the time, through games from developers such as Namco, Sega, Midway, Taito and Konami.
The Wii’s marketing focus was on the accelerometer, but the secret was in the infrared sensor.
A diverse library of titles has steadily built on the technology, from the pioneering 3D design sensibility found in games such as Virtua Cop and Time Crisis, to the live action laser games of Mad Dog McCree and Who Killed Johnny Rockto later technological experiments like Silent Scope and Police 911. It’s a critically important part of gaming history, and one that was soon forgotten as arcades died out and consumers replaced their old CRTs with HD Ready TVs.
The Wii’s marketing focus was on the accelerometer, getting people out of their seats to bowl, dance and generally gesticulate wildly, but the secret was in the infrared sensor. It’s what made navigating the main menu so intuitive, aiming the crossbow so fast and satisfying in Twilight Princess (not to mention Link’s Crossbow Training), and brought whole new genres to the console. Giving the controller a feel where the player’s screen is allowed for a whole new set of intricate actions, even hardened gaming veterans became believers in the technology when they saw its application in Metroid Prime Trilogy and Resident Evil 4: Wii Edition.
The excitement for the Wii Remote was so great that Nintendo re-released a number of GameCube titles as ‘New Play Control’ versions. The success of these titles varied, but the generally accepted highlights of the series were the new versions of Pikmin 1 and 2, which used pointer controls to target your Pikmin — a feature that was so well received that it was featured frequently in the original Wii U version of Pikmin 3.
Pointer controls also inspired ports of older titles such as the lightsaber games, The House of the Dead 2 & 3 Return, Ghost Squad and Mad Dog McCree, and point-and-click games such as Broken Sword and LucasArts’ Telltale Games revivals in Monkey Island and the Sam & Max series. Even games that were designed with a touchscreen, like the DS’s Another Code and Trauma Center, would get pointer-centric sequels on the Wii. Genres that weren’t considered viable releases for home consoles for years have finally found a home again. The technology even led Nintendo to re-release its most famous lightsaber game, Duck Hunt, on the Wii U Virtual Console with Wii Remote support.
Fast forward to 2017, and the Wii U — which, let’s not forget, had a ‘sensor strip’ built into the GamePad itself to allow off-TV pointer play and compatibility with the Wii library — is considered a commercial failure and a mark against Nintendo’s reputation. The Wii is now deeply unfashionable, and the company wants to distance itself from the branding. The Switch would have no sensor bar, and the IR functionality is reduced to an infrared sensor at the bottom of the right Joy-Con.
That we didn’t lose something valuable there? The growing popularity of the Switch and the variety of titles on the eShop have meant that all sorts of unusual games have found their audience. Genres that were considered unsellable in the 2010s are now thriving. Nintendo brought ports of first-party games that once had IR pointer support to the console. Pikmin 3 Deluxe and the Galaxy version of Super Mario 3D All-Stars attempt to replicate the intuitive, reliable controls of their original releases via the Joy-Con’s gyroscope, but without the sensor bar, they lack a real-world reference point to maintain precise tracking. Skyward Sword HD also suffered from the loss of the sensor bar that helps maintain the gyroscope-based position of the sword.
You only need to compare the routing of the original World of Goo to the Switch port to get an idea of how much more reliable infrared technology is. Unless a bright light source is interfering with your sensor strip, of course, but we’re told real players only play in damp, darkened basements, so they shouldn’t be bothered by inconveniences like glittery Christmas tree decorations. Or, you know, sunlight.
So there are cons to IR, but they just don’t outweigh the pros. Gyroscope-based cursors inevitably wobble, lack accuracy compared to the IR equivalent, and need to be reset and recalibrated frequently. Gyro controls can work well, especially when supplemented with analog aiming, like in Splatoon or Metroid Prime Remastered, but your Switch doesn’t know where you’re pointing your Joy-Con or where your TV is. Gyro targeting is a compromise.
Perhaps there is a future for pointer controls, IR or otherwise, after all. Proponents of the gyroscope have been so persistent that even Sony is starting to support the technology in major titles like The Last of Us Part I and God of War Ragnarök. There’s also a glimmer of hope for fans of light weapons with the PC edition of The House of the Dead Remake gaining support for Sinden Light Gun, which works with modern TVs, unlike your NES Zapper and other traditional light weapons. Gamers have discovered that the Switch Joy-Con can function as a spare sensor strip, so while Nintendo has ditched the strip itself, it hasn’t completely forgotten about the Switch’s IR technology — it’s just limited to new ‘cameo’ functions in the Lab series, Brain Training, 1-2 -Switch and a handful of other titles.
Nintendo has re-released old controllers in the past, and Nintendo Switch Online subscribers can pick up Bluetooth versions of the NES, SNES and N64 pads to use on their Switch. We still don’t know exactly how Pikmin 4 controls the Switch, but we miss the accuracy of old-fashioned IR pointing. Maybe it’s up to us to let Nintendo know we still care about these things. Some of us may still have a bitter taste in our mouths for terms like “marjan” and “shovel”, but maybe we just need to… recalibrate a bit.
Let us know below if you’re missing the precise and spindle cable of the sensor strip/Wiimote combo and the games you’ve been enjoying the most.
