New Wii-tatchment - Racing Wheel

[Reginald]

The first un-official attatchment for the Wii controller is something pretty inevitable and I imagine by the end of the Wii's life there will be several different varieties. It's a Racing Wheel.

EDIT: Picture 2 showing some concepts and also the wheel with the Wii-mote inside.

The attatchment comes with a slot for the Wii remote and supposedly buttons but I can't see any on that picture. The wheel is made by a company called Thrustmaster.

It comes packaged with GT Pro Series, a game from Ubi-Soft (another example of their devotion to the system) but it will also work with Monster 4x4: World Circuit and the racing sections from Spongebob Squarepants. I imagine that many future games will use a steering wheel attatchment of some sorts and I'm surprised Nintendo didn't jump in first with an official one.

So now, what with 4 Wii-motes, 4 nunchuks, 4 Zappers, 4 VC remotes and several hundred other unofficial Wiimote attatchments, my game controller cupboard is going to need to be a bit bigger.

The GT game itself (first Wii screenshot):

Over 80 lisenced cars and several different racing modes including Championship/Career, Quick Race, Versus, Replay, Time Attack and something called "Drift Mode."

Several other pieces of Wii information have been released today including:

• Splinter Cell: Double Agent will have a Wii iteration, somewhere between the current-gen versions and next-gen versions graphically. Such inspired uses of the Wii-mote include, yes, you guessed it, lockpicking.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
• Disaster: Day of Crisis' development is "reaching to its climax" and we will be hearing more about the game soon. Perhaps it's a surprise launch title, the big game properly unveiled at the Wii event next weekend? :E
  
• Rumours are heavily circulating of a new Tim Schafer game for the Wii.

The Wii just gets better and better and I am really growing towards Ubi-soft with all the support they are showing. I make it 7 launch titles from Ubi-soft alone. Although I think two have been delayed.

 

[Insano]

Lovely.

 

[Majestic XII]

"Rumours are heavily circulating of a new Tim Schafer game for the Wii."

If this is true, then I don't know what I will do... other than playing this game and cry of joy.

 

[Tamer17]

Wow , a wheel...Let's get excited!

The SS of the GT game looks HORRIBLE! It looks like a mid-90 aracde racing game.........

 

[Baserape>]

This device looks as interesting as playing air guitar to the smiths.

/slits wrists

 

[Noobulon]

Picking locks and slitting throats with the remote... now that could be amazing.

It all depends on whether Ubisoft bothers to sort out a proper control scheme with the remote.
If they did a proper job of it, Splinter Cell could be superb.
Hopefully they won't just port the GC game and bolt on some crappy added features "waggle teh remote for special attax!"


In other news - that racing game looks absolutely munt.

 

[Absinthe]

The game is cel-shaded and quite stylised in its visual approach. It's not aiming for total realism.

That's fine and dandy, but it still looks horrid.

 

[Slacker]

That's fine and dandy, but it still looks horrid.

Seriously, that could pass for a ****ing DS game.

 

[Zeus]

Wow that racing games graphics look like a friggin gameboys graphics.

 

[The Brick]

Cool a racing wiil !

 

[Majestic XII]

Are you sure you got that screenshot from the racing game right? Looks like a late PS1 game.

 

[Reginald]

Are you sure you got that screenshot from the racing game right? Looks like a late PS1 game.

It's the screenshot with the interview on IGN. But I agree, it does look shitty. It could look really nice in motion; if you look at GTR for PC, the game is moving so fast that you don't notice the crappy roadside graphics.

 

[-Psy-]

Great Concept

 

[Agent.M]

Not to sound like a broken record but DAM that racing game looks like a sega genesis game!

 

[_Z_Ryuken]

It actually looks like Dreamcast graphics.

It looks worse than Auto Modellista.

 

[AmishSlayer]

Tim Schafer didn't ring any bells when I first read it but they went off just a second ago.

The man behind Full Throttle, Grim Fandango, Psychonauts, etc

This is good news if true.

 

[KU_]

The racing game looks horrible visually, while on the other hand Splinter Cell looks very nice visually. Also, to the original poster-In the last picture of the steering wheel attatchment you can see the buttons sticking up from the Wiimote. Look at it as if you were looking at a horizon, it's a black Wiimote in there. You can easily make out the D-pad.

 

[Reginald]

Also, to the original poster-In the last picture of the steering wheel attatchment you can see the buttons sticking up from the Wiimote. Look at it as if you were looking at a horizon, it's a black Wiimote in there. You can easily make out the D-pad.

That's the buttons sticking up from the Wii-mote, I know. But according to the news source, there are buttons on the wheel too. Maybe they just got the info wrong.

 

[Iced_Eagle]

The game is cel-shaded and quite stylised in its visual approach. It's not aiming for total realism.

Splinter Cell looks pretty good (there are more screenshots at IGN), but what baffles me is why they are basing it off of the current-generation builds. Sure, the Wii hardware is closer to the GameCube's than the XBox 360's, but it'd make more sense to use the higher-end version as a base and then downgrade accordingly, rather than just putting higher-polygon models and better textures in GameCube code. Oh well. Still looks great, and looks like it features some bloom lighting the Cube version won't have. It'd be great if they could get it running at a solid 30 frames per second at all times, if not 60. I doubt it, though.

They're basing it off GameCube code because it is just so much easier to get the game up and running that way.

The PS3/Xbox360 branches are written to support multi-core which the Wii doesn't have.

GameCube/PS2 support the other single CPU model.

I'm not sure what there is to get mad about and why it will baffle you... There really isn't a difference between Next-Gen and Current-gen besides some different features.

Overall though it's just a matter of how fast they could get the game working on the Wii and the GameCube version made it really easy for them to do that.

 

[Murray_H]

That's the buttons sticking up from the Wii-mote, I know. But according to the news source, there are buttons on the wheel too. Maybe they just got the info wrong.

If there isn't you could just buy an old steering wheel from a scrap yard and blu-tack the remote on. Probably be cheaper....

 

[Dekstar]

Indeed, I'd think the remote would work as a steering wheel anyway, and since there's no "clip" for it to attach to say, a desk, then I honestly can't see much point in it over just holding both ends of the wiimote horizontally.

 

[Bad^Hat]

Looks groovy, as long as it's cheap (atleast relative to a fully-featured racing wheel).

Also, note that the racing game pictured was going to be packaged with the wheel, so I wouldn't be expecting anything top notch...

Cool a racing wiil !

F*cking LOL. Get in touch with their marketing department, now

Indeed, I'd think the remote would work as a steering wheel anyway, and since there's no "clip" for it to attach to say, a desk, then I honestly can't see much point in it over just holding both ends of the wiimote horizontally.

Yeah, I'd hope there would be a clip otherwise it's largely pointless over just using the remote. The remote looks fairly intuitive on it's own for steering in stuff like Excite Truck and Downhill Jam, but the wheel (so long as they include a way to attach it to something) could be a great option if you were playing a racer that demanded more precision. And hopefully it'd snap back into a centred position when you let it go so you wouldn't have any trouble lining yourself up on the straights.

Personally I think it's an awesome idea that takes good use of an existing peripheral, and it really shows off the wii-mote's flexibility even more.