9 Times The Wii Remote Speaker Actually Improved Gameplay

Wii Party was a 2010 offshoot from Nintendo's long-running Mario Party franchise and aimed to capture much of the same mainstream audience that Wii Play did in 2007. It featured a variety of mini games and party games for 1-4 players and as of March 2016 had sold a fairly sizeable 9.22 million copies worldwide.

The House Party mode was where the Wii Remote speaker was used in the most inventive and fun way.

In a mini game called Hide and Hunt, one player gathered up all Wii Remotes and the other players were sent out of the room for one hundred seconds. The remaining player then had to hide all the remotes around the room - ideally a living room - and when time was up, the players outside the room were then invited back in to find them.

The round for the seekers would also last one hundred seconds and to help players locate the missing remotes, the speaker(s) would emit a noise every ten seconds to alert players to possible locations. Noises included horses whinnying, elephants trumpeting and cows lowing, amongst others. This game really shone when mischievous players were the ones in charge of making the Wii Remotes disappear and the search became frantic, shrieking affairs as the timer ticked down.

Another example of classic Nintendo design: simple yet effective and fun. See it in action here.