"Worlds of possibilities" for Wii board

By Robert Purchese Published 30 May, 2008

Ubisoft "closing gap" between you and game.

Shaun White Snowboarding creative director Trent Ward believes the Wii Balance Board offers developers "worlds of possibilities".

He's responsible for the Wii version of the freshly-unveiled extreme sports title from Ubisoft, which has been built specially to use both balance board and Wii remote - not one or the other.

Ward feels the pressure-sensitive pad and motion-sensing combo has helped him "close the gap between game and player", and claims there are "tons" of things he can do with the Board.

You'll feel like a pro snowboarder after you're finished with the bite-sized challenges in Shaun White, apparently, and no it is not tiring and nor will it teach you to be a real snowboarder because yes he has tried.

The Wii version of Shaun White Snowboarding is a completely separate game to the PC, 360 and PS3 offerings, incidentally, both in terms of premise and the mechanics involved.

Ward says you have to treat the Nintendo console specially in order to be successful; a port would have been rubbish, apparently.

Both versions looked rather fun in their own ways. Check back soon for our full thoughts on both.

Shaun White Snowboarding is due out on PC, 360, PS3 and Wii this Christmas.

Picture of Robert.

About Robert Purchese

Bertie is Eurogamer's Senior Staff Writer. When he's not hunting down news stories he's often found playing with his kids or gabbling about fantasy games and strange online worlds.

Read more articles from Robert by visiting the Robert Purchese archive page.

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Comments (13) Latest comment 4 years ago

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  • Rirekon #1 4 years ago

    "you have to treat the Nintendo console specially in order to be successful; a port would have been rubbish"

    QFT!

    It's good to see that some Devs are finally picking up on this, let's hope everyone else catches on soon too.

  • Garibaldi #2 4 years ago

    Sounds like the exact same enthusiasm we had for the Wii itself, making it sound as though everyone had a wave of ideas all ready to be exploited, but in the end we had very few examples of such innovation and a whole lot of game like Raving Rabbids.

  • aine #3 4 years ago

    "worlds of possibilities" = more games you can play with your arse
    something i, for one, am in favour of

  • Wyrm #4 4 years ago

    I reckon the possibilities are actually quite limited.

  • cyber_nicco #5 4 years ago

    Think of all the things you could do! You could do snowboarding. You could do surfing. Maybe you could do skateboarding.

    Hmmm. Let's see... You could do snowboarding!

  • Nithron #6 4 years ago

    Jet Set Radio? How would a rollerblading game work with a single board-based controller?

    I guess they could redo it with skateboards... But that'd kinda suck.

    On the other hand, Wii Remote graffiti, now that would be awesome

  • dk_rare #7 4 years ago

    Wii will be king of sports games, it seems. From selecting football players on pitch with the Wiimote to snowboarding/skateboarding/surfing/skiing with a "virtual board" and leaning with the 'mote, boxing with technical skills and swings, tennis/table tennis, baseball, throwing and passing an American "football", it seems the possibilities are limitless.

    There is so much more to do with the Wiimote in other games too, like literally "throwing" a grenade with physics unique to each throwing action, flying aircraft, soul calibur style weapon fights, RTS selection of units... the list is limitless.

    Could even have virtual segway game!

  • Mudo #8 4 years ago

    Sounds like a limited gimmick, but I suppose it adds a selling point to their otherwise derivative mediocre games.

  • dk_rare #9 4 years ago

    @Aspic

    A better example of jumping would have been the ski jumping game in Wii Fit.

  • Nithron #10 4 years ago

    Yeah, only, rollerblading is nothing like snowboarding. In snowboarding you control your movements by redistributing your body weight, while gravity and momentum push you forward. So, you're tilting yourself around, and your avatar onscreen is doing the same thing.

    While rollerblading you move your legs independently to propel yourself forward, and you control yourself much like you do walking, by the movements your legs are making. Sometimes you control yourself skate/snowboard style, once you have momentum, but the majority of the time, you're really not.

    So you'd be tilting your body around to control where you're going while the character onscreen was skating around, with a totally different, unrelated movement. What would the point in that be? It'd basically be like standing on a giant D-Pad.

    On the other hand, replace the rollerblades with a skateboard, and your idea is awesome.

  • Davemanz #11 4 years ago

    Worlds of possibilitiis, more like.

  • MrGilder #12 4 years ago

    Worlds of possibilities - if you can find one that is!

  • secombe #13 4 years ago

    Didn't Ubisoft make all those really shite games around the Wii launch?