Flash vs. Wii

Hello everyone! I’m a new writer here for Expansion Port, name’s Ian Snyder, but I’m sure many of you will know me better as Captain_404. You’ll probably see most of my posts ranting about either Nintendo or Flash games, and now I’ve managed to combine both.

Now, to the point!

I don’t think anyone outside of the Flash dev community would know this, but Nintendo has been quite reserved in regards to Flash developers. We have been limited to using mouse coordinates and a pretty lame excuse for a click in making games. No z-axis, no B-button, not even a little d-pad love, and while wiicade may boast over 100 flash games that can be played on your wii, how many of those aren’t rips of some random game for PC. Perhaps it’s too early to really start seeing games, but it’s safe to say that The dearth in wii-specific gameplay is because of Nintendo attitude toward flash.

There is a way to use the wiimote to its full potential though. It’s through a special mod that hooks up a wiimote to a pc to be used like a mouse for a roarin’ good time. With the specific mod that I tried (on a friends computer, not mine) it was possible to map certain buttons on the wiimote to be keyboard keys, such as d-pad = arrow keys, thus making it possible to play previously unplayable games with the wiimote. In regards to flash support, Nintendo is really shooting itself in the foot.

The game N was a beautiful example of what the wiimote can really do. They keyboard scheme that N is forced to use is very uninvolved, very lifeless, as are all such control schemes like this. In order to adapt N to the wiimote, just assign the right buttons to keys and BAM! Finger lickin’ good fun. N is amazing on a PC, the physics, the style, and the gameplay all mesh to make an entirely wonderful experience. But when played with a wimmote held NES style, N becomes something of a dream.

But this isn’t the only great game you’ve been missing out on, flOw, which is confined to the pc and ps3 do to it’s flash 8 status, is also a great example of a game that was made for the wrong platform. (only because sOny snatched up the game though, not because flOw likes ps3 better) The game is basically the same experience, but not confined by the maximum tilt of a joystick. Another play-like-a-dream game is Valo and it’s respective, still unfinished editor, which is only made worse on the wii by large amounts of lag. (I’ve done all I can…it’s playable at least) Running in Safari on a mac, I encountered no such problem. This is probably a game that will end up much better next generation of Nintendo home consoles.

In conclusion, flash on the wii has a lot of untapped potential, I mean a lot. The game N alone proves what platformers can truly do on wii. Nintendo would do itself a ton of good by letting Flash devs to use all the wii remote buttons, even access to the acceleration values on the wii remote. I think that once a second generation wii comes out, with increased processor speed, Flash can really soar to new heights on wii, not to say it can’t now, but Nintendo is severely crippling it, it’s a shame too.