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Wiimote Straps
By Jacob Cohen | April 24, 2007
So there was a deal recently where Nintendo offered to replace the strap on the Wii controller, due to reports of the strap breaking and sending the remote flying through windows or television sets or wherever else. I’ve played the Wii, and I have to wonder exactly how these people were managing to do this.
The Wii remote is not any harder to grasp in the hand than say, a standard television remote. I can’t even imagine swinging my arm hard enough to generate enough force to cause me to lose my grasp on the remote. It just isn’t possible.
So the next question. What if you were confused about what you were supposed to do during the bowling game, and actually let go of the remote instead of just releasing the button? Again, the forces generated are not that great. The strap the Wiimote comes with is still a decent bit of nylon cord, it would take much more force to break this than simply letting go of the remote at the end of a swing.
I have a theory. Two theories, actually. The first is that some people did not use the wrist strap at all, considering it unnecessary. Then, they lost control of the Wiimote which flew through their living room window. Not wanting to tell their parents about their humiliating stupidity, they broke the strap and claimed it was a defective strap that caused the remote to fly loose.
The second theory is that they discovered that you can achieve a much greater angular velocity on your Wiimote if you hold it by the strap and whip it through the air. They were having great fun driving 600 yards in golf or smashing the baseball out of the stadium until the strap broke. Since the remote was held only by the strap and was not gripped in their hand, it flew away and through their TV. Again, not wanting their parents to know the real reason why there was a Wiimote sitting in the remains of a $1200 TV, they blamed a defective product.
I don’t have any facts to back up these theories, of course, but having played with the Wii myself, I find the stories of the remote flying out of the hand with sufficient force to break the strap to be highly unlikely. Less likely, I think, than either of my theories.
Topics: General |
