6 Amazing Video Games Almost Destroyed By Terrible Mechanics

Once more, the Nintendo hardware curse strikes an unwitting game down to the dust. When it came to Skyward Sword, the highly anticipated Zelda game that followed Twilight Princess, Nintendo was drunk on the success of the Wii. I had one, you had one, your granny had one, and we’d all learned long before Nintendo did that the motion control gimmick wasn’t really going anywhere.

But, hyped up on their own juicy, arm-flailing technology, Nintendo went with an ambitious motion control combat system for Zelda: Skyward Sword. Here’s how it works: 1) Try and follow the game’s instructions to control Link with precise motions. 2) Fail at doing that. 3) Manically wave your arms around like a 19-year old white girl at her first rave. 4) Repeat for every fight over the next twenty hours.

Nowadays, Skyward Sword is remembered as ‘that motion controlled one’, rather than for its stunning graphics, brilliant dungeon design (some of the best in the series in fact), and rich, franchise building lore. It’s a brilliant game, but that just doesn’t matter when doing literally anything is a tedious endeavour in of itself.