[Stream] Grill-Off with Ultra Hand!
2On the tail end of an impromptu stream session, I decided I'd not yet had my fill, so I fired up the ol' grill and the extensomatic Ultra Hand.
As for the requisite background information, Nintendo was originally a card, toy, and physical game company before this whole "video game" fad happened. (I mean, have you ever heard of something so ridiculous? Games... played on video?! Sirrah, sirrah! How deliciously absurd!) So this is one of their historically significant little trinkets, the Super Hand! ...I don't think you'd actually want to use it for grilling, though.
You may recognize it as the basis for some microgames in the WarioWare series, particularly since WarioWare uses references just about everything else imaginable, and just some of it happens to be Nintendo-relevant. That might also help explain to the curious some of the non-video game references found in the otherwise mostly video game-exclusive 9-Volt and 18-Volt segments.
Anyway, this game seems to have a lot in common with the old-fashioned Game & Watch games in terms of how it plays and feels... except Game & Watch is far more leisurely and easygoing. Y'heard me. Game & Watch at least gives you three mistakes before you're given the ol' Game Over screen.
Anyway, the thing I like absolutely best about this game is its controls. Yeah, I know, it seems like the sort of thing that ought not be too precisely registered, but it works. Very well. This is the kind of thing that results when a game's controls are very carefully and tightly crafted to effectively detect and translate the user's inputs to the game behavior as expected. It sounds simple enough to say, but then again, it's fairly amazing how infrequently you see such an obviously necessary element get the kind of attention it deserves. Frankly, it's sad that only Nintendo's own first- and second-party games tend to get this level of meticulous care ...and the extreme number of fairly careless gesture detection examples out there give all games by all developers and even the hardware itself a rather undeserved stigma across the board. Nevertheless, there exist plenty of games from all sorts of developers that demonstrate quite the contrary.
On the other hand, I have to say that the diagrams suggesting how you're meant to hold the controller feels a little confusing and counterintuitive... which is weird, since the device itself that you're meant to be mimicking the operation to is fairly self-explanatory, no? ...well, maybe I'm just weird like that, but, uh... surely I'm not alone in thinking back to old-timey cartoons and all manner of crazy contraptions of quirky convenience and imagining that something like this is entirely reasonable.
And just think: this device is a very REAL toy. I want one. I don't know why, and I'd probably never have any sort of situation that even COULD allow for its application, much less make for convenience over cobtrivance... but I want one. Don't worry, that feeling will pass when some new shiny object distra-- ooh, look over there~!