Nintendo email leaks reveal unused Wii remote control designs

It’s been a while since we’ve heard of the so-called ‘Gigaleak’, a treasure trove of Nintendo internal data which proliferated online in 2020, but that has changed today with the release of a new batch of leaked files. Anyone interested in the prototypes of the Nintendo Wii Remote?

Video game curators love Forest of Illusion and lombTV say that the last drop Gigaleak revealed a bundle of Nintendo emails from around 2006, the year the Wii was launched worldwide. Among those internal posts were several attached images of early Wiimote designs, although I’m told the context is difficult to determine as the files are not linked to specific emails in the data folder structure.

First, a few lime green gentlemen with various button locations from an email dated July 28, 2005, making this one of the first Wiimote prototypes available publicly. These are probably the most unique of the bunch, with several additional buttons not present in the final design.

I especially like the way the L and R knobs are positioned around the main panel knob in the second and third models. It is also interesting to see Nintendo experimenting by making the Wiimote a TV remote control with the circular buttons of the fourth and fifth models. It probably wouldn’t have been that comfortable, but hey, that’s probably why they didn’t succeed.

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The following images show Wiimotes that are more closely aligned with what was released with the console, with a few key differences. The buttons that would eventually become Plus and Minus were, at one point, tested as both rewind / pause buttons and indescribable arrows.

A major concern at Nintendo, according to translations provided by lombTVis that the arrows may have been difficult for adults and children to understand, as the notation had not been used for any of the company’s previous controllers. Nintendo finally went with the Pluses and Minuses because they were “easy to read for everyone”.

As with the previous Gigaleak drops, which included everything from a cigarette smoking toad at a Luigi texture in a first version of Super Mario 64– these Wiimote prototypes are a wonderful piece of gaming history that, unfortunately, Nintendo has chosen to keep locked away. Fortunately, we have leaks to fill in the gaps.