wiimote
News
Latest Wiimote Attachment: Baby
6:00AM Owen Good | Fans of hardcore child-rearing sims will no doubt find PubCompany’s Wii-exclusive “Baby and Me” to be a day-one purchase this year, promising a revolutionary new peripheral in which you stick a Wiimote inside a baby. More »
Culture
OK, This Wiimote Mishap? We’re Calling Not Fake.
10:30AM Owen Good | That infamous “Mama!!!” video where the Wiimote destroys the flat-screen has been endlessly debated: staged or real? In this, it’s safe to assume the Home Shopping Network did not intend to smash its own TV showing off Wii Tennis. More »
News
New Nintendo Patent Looks Like Picture Pages 2.0
7:00AM Owen Good | A new patent application Nintendo has filed in the U.S. tips its hand to a potential new focus for the game-maker, and no, it is not core gamers. More »
WeeP5: Badass Case, Same Old Rate of Fire
12:00AM Owen Good | When Nintendo says it puts more smiles on more faces, I’m sure it’s not including the maniacal grin one must get blasting away raving Rabbids with this gangsta MP5 mod. More »
Rice Using WiiMote To Research Motor Skills Learning
10:20AM Stuart Houghton | Researchers at Rice University make heavy use of high-end motion capture systems (glued on ping-pong balls and all) when studying how humans acquire and improve motor skills, but perhaps a WiiMote will do the job. More »
The Conduit Already has MotionPlus, WiiSpeak, Sequel
4:00AM Owen Good | High Voltage chief operating officer Eric Nofsinger told MTV Multiplayer that The Conduit, due out March 2009, will support MotionPlus and WiiSpeak, and alludes to an already-planned sequel that will make greater use of those capabilities. “We’re hooking it [MotionPlus] up,” Nofsinger told Multiplayer. “We want to support it. Probably for this version of the game there’s not going to be a whole ton of really extensive use of the Wii MotionPlus. For the sequel to the game, we definitely do want to incorporate more melee and things like that. We want to support it.” Earlier this month, reports said High Voltage would push to start work on a sequel once they got a publisher for the first, and that an announcement of the publisher should be coming soon. The Conduit Already has MotionPlus Support, WiiSpeak Too [MTV Multiplayer via GoNintendo] More »
Wii-mote Jog Through Google Map Tokyo
10:00PM Brian Ashcraft | A Japanese modder has mashed Google Maps with the Wii-mote to create “Tokyo-jogging”. It works pretty much like Jogging in Wii Sports: Users put the Wii-mote in their pocket and run in place. Instead of running through a Nintendo created background, users can jog (in place) through the streets of Tokyo. The interface looks somewhat slow — but there’s potential here! Tokyo-jogging [Official Site via Digital World Tokyo] More »
More Wiisearch: Helping Stroke Patients
3:00AM Owen Good | It seems like we these “health researchers using Wii in study” stories about once a month but, anyway, Oxford University, last I heard, was a pretty good school. And they’re looking at the Wii as a means to help stroke patients relearn simple tasks. The study is a little more subtle than other research involving the Wii (training surgeons, for example) — the motion sensors might be useful for monitoring patients’ progress in physiotherapy. Apparently, one of the biggest challenges patients face is constant discouragement from not being able to see, or really understand, the progress they’re making. The motion sensors can also tailor exercises to a patient’s range of motion. The research is based on a previous study in which motion-capture technology was used to analyse the walking patterns of children affected by cerebral palsy. The Wii’s sensors offer a scalable way to examine and monitor patients. It’s envisioned that patients would first be examined using a full-camera setup in a lab, and then switch to a home monitor that incorporates cheaper motion sensors such as those found in the Wii. There’s a video of this at the link below. This isn’t the only instance of consumer technology leading the way in other fields of serious research. Not by a long shot. For example, my favourite Nobel Prize winner, Dr. Carl Wieman of the University of British Columbia (formerly Colorado), used diode lasers like those found in CD players to help create the first Bose-Einstein condensate in 1995. Sometimes, you send a guy into space and get back Teflon, Tang, Velcro and Dippin Dots. And sometimes you develop Wii Sports and get back new forms of therapy. Stroke Patients to Test Sensors [BBC] More »
