Say what you will about Nintendo’s little purple lunchbox, the Gamecube, but it was home to many delightful experiences from Super Smash Bros. Melee to The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess. We now know it was also home to one of the very first Nintendo Wii remotes as well thanks to the recent listing from [Kuriaisu1122] on Yahoo Auctions. The prototype Wii remote is a wired design and features a proprietary Gamecube controller cable. Notable differences include the two buttons toward the bottom are labeled ‘B’ and ‘A’ respectively. This shows that Nintendo always intended to have players hold the remote sideways in order to play Virtual console games. The large white button next to the directional pad is unlabeled, and along the middle are the traditional ‘Start’ and ‘Select’ labels on either side of ‘Home’. However, these all would go through multiple revisions on the way to the final design. Interestingly there is an Ethernet jack at the base used to connect accessories. That connector would eventually become the often maligned “Nunchuk interface”, but what modder wouldn’t have loved it if that Ethernet port had carried on to the final design? Much like the “invaluable” Mario Party 6 microphone, the prototype’s IR sensor bar communicates via the Gamecube memory card port. The auction listing featured a photo size comparison of the prototype sensor bar is around four inches wider than the final design. Missing from the prototype Wii remote is the small tinny speaker, but that always seemed like an after thought anyway. Credence as to the controller’s validity was given in a tweet from WayForward’s James Montagna who said on Twitter, “Wow, it’s the prototype Wii Remote & Nunchuk! I remember seeing these back when it was still known as the Nintendo Revolution!”. Montagna would go on to post photos of the Wii remote from E3 2006 that featured ‘Back’ and ‘Pause’ buttons where the plus and minus buttons would ultimately reside on the final design. These photos of the missing links in the evolution of the Wii remote help fill in the design process at Nintendo. They also further the idea that Nintendo always wanted players to measure each of their new consoles’ processing power in “X number of Gamecubes duct taped together”. [via Nintendo Life] For more on the console formerly known as the Nintendo Revolution, check out this incredible Wii console mod in an Altoids tin featured on Hackaday.<doc-sep>Nintendo somehow got us on board with a console named “Wii,” but we still like to think of a reality where it was called by its codename, the Revolution. A Japanese auction for what turned out to be the original controller prototypes for the hardware inched us closer to that timeline this weekend, showing off the Revolution-mote that never quite was. A Yahoo Japan user sold off a Wii sensor bar, remote and nunchuck for around $660 on Saturday; both they and the bidder have since shared numerous photos of the collection. A lot of what we see above is similar to what Nintendo ended up going with for the Wii. The main differences, other than the obvious GameCube connections and gray color scheme, may be more subtle. But WayForward's James Montagna chimed in on Twitter to verify and contribute to the finding. He tweeted his memories of checking out the prototype from the codename Revolution days. "There’s so many cool details on this," he wrote. "My favorite detail, however: the +Control Pad, A Button, and B Button molds all come from Game Boy Advance SP." He also posted his own photo of another version of the remote, which features a different B button than what Nintendo went with. This one is from 2006: Never before documented anywhere online that I've seen, so perhaps it's newsworthy; prototype Wii controllers had PAUSE / BACK buttons instead of + / - Buttons! I took these pictures of the controllers Nintendo used at E3 2006. pic.twitter.com/TMl6bkIzXn — James Montagna (@JamesPopStar) October 28, 2018 Yes, with the excitement of these cool, random finds comes nostalgia: I remember my disappointment when I came home to the news that the hard-core Revolution was actually going to be the toddler-babble Wii. But these pics highlight that the name doesn't matter; Nintendo was onto something unique even before it settled on that name.<doc-sep>
A piece of gaming history was dug up this weekend, and Nintendo fans should get a particular kick out of it. Readers, say hello to one of the earliest Wii Remote prototypes: これがやりたかった！Revolution用のリモコン、ヌンチャクを入手しました。ゲームキューブコントローラーの端子を使っているのでゲームキューブに取り付けることが出来る！(使えないけど…。)#レトロコンシューマー愛好会 pic.twitter.com/6FTaXrET1EOctober 27, 2018 See more The controller was listed for auction on Yahoo! Japan , eventually selling for a respectable 74,000 yen (about $660 / £515). But of course, the real fun comes from spotting all the little ways the controller changed as it morphed from this prototype to the final product. There's the gray color scheme and the fact it connects to a GameCube, of course, but there are plenty of other, more subtle details as well. For example, WayForward designer and director James Montagna pointed out on Twitter that the buttons are actually molded from the GameBoy Advance SP. Montagna also noted that later prototypes had pause and back buttons instead of the + and - buttons the Wii would eventually adopt (the prototype which was sold via auction features Start and Select, so this design went through a few revisions). Here's a more advanced Wii Remote prototype. Overall, they're wider than the final Wii Remote + not as long. The B button is flat, and not hooked like a trigger. It uses Century Gothic font for the button labels. How many other differences can you spot? There's quite a few! pic.twitter.com/WlhIvCZoUQOctober 28, 2018 See more These prototypes come from a time when Nintendo's next console was known to go by the codename "Revolution". At the time, many thought it would simply be another graphical leap forward, just like pretty much every console manufacturer had done before. No one suspected just how different the console would be, nor how it would come to dominate the market for years as Nintendo leveraged the Wii's simple design and low cost to grab the attention of a wider audience. But from these prototypes, it would seem that Nintendo knew for awhile it needed to take a different path. Pretty cool!