The Controller as a Sword

The idea of standing in your living room swinging a remote control like a tennis racket—or a broadsword, or a pump-action shotgun—sounded ridiculous until it didn’t. Nintendo’s Wii was still months from release and I was already convinced it would change something basic about the relationship between body and game. Not the graphics, not the processing power, but the physical grammar of play.

Most console generations felt like the same conversation getting louder. More polygons, faster load times, bigger worlds. The Wii was proposing something different: that you should feel slightly stupid playing it, at first, because you’d be using your actual arms. The Rayman launch trailer made this obvious—absurd, completely joyful, the kind of game that doesn’t care if you look like an idiot.

I wanted to wave a fake sword around my room and pretend to be saving something. That’s a legitimate use of an afternoon.