It has been documented through Nintendo patents that development of the Wii began life as an accessory to the Gamecube, now a Japanese collector by the Twitter handle SpamerRP posted photos of his recently acquired Gamecube prototype Wiimote and Nunchuk. According to his Twitter thread the prototypes can't be used on commercial hardware, I assume he'd need a Gamecube dev kit used for early Wii development plus early prototype Wii games.


https://twitter.com/spmrp/status/1056030564002582530?ref_src...

That looks amazing, really cool. The remote doesn't look to different from the Wii Remote we eventually got, but this is an awesome find.

This is really awesome. I wonder if this went through would we get just dance 2019 on the gamecube.

That's super cool!  English article here:

https://arstechnica.com/gaming/20...

I've always had a hunch it was meant for Chibi Robo until Nintendo decided to build a new system around it.

D-pad and A/B buttons look identical to DS Phat parts.

No speaker.

8P8C (aka "RJ-45") connector.

Thanks for sharing. I'm surprised by the ending price ($663 USD); would have expected such first-party prototype hardware to sell for more.

This is the only, real follow-up question to this discovery.

I remember these! Ubisoft had them at a press event when they first showed their Wii titles. I don't believe these were ever prototyped as Gamecube accessories for retail, if that's what people are thinking: it's more that the first "dev kit" for the Wii was for devs to start playing with the controls using the Gamecube hardware while they waited for the real kits to get made.

Don't be so sure. When Sony and Microsoft were both talking about their next-gen hardware (PS3/360) Nintendo made a very public statement that they had no intention of joining them and would instead extend the lid of the GameCube with innovative new accessories for game experiences you simply couldn't have on competing systems regardless of how powerful they were (similar to Nintendo DS versus PSP). This was in the era of Guitar Hero and Dance Dance Revolution.

Sure enough, you suddenly started seeing stuff like Mario Party 5 with the mic, DDR Mario Mix, Donkey Kong Jungle Beat with Bongos, Odama with the controller-mounted voice control, Donkey Kong's, etc.

It seems clear to me that the Wii Remote was originally intended to be an IR splinter for Chibi Robo, but they realized that it was far too innovative to be relegated to a subset of a failed system's small library. With some extra features (wireless, accessory port, accelerometers, etc) it could be the standard controller for a whole new platform based on the GameCube.

An accessory originally intended to extend the life of the GC ended up getting the GC rebooted as the Wii instead and it enjoyed far more success than anyone could have predicted. Looks like they made the right call.

Awesome find and I remember this years ago on assemblergames,pretty wild I must say.
https://assemblergames.com/thread...