When I was a boy, I would sometimes pretend to drive a race car by moving my hands in front of me as though I were steering an invisible wheel while making a “vroom vroom” noise. It was an activity I thought I had put behind me until I started playing racing games on the Wii. Once again I held my hands in the air, this time holding a remote control, and moved them as though I was driving. At least the racing games make the “vroom vroom” sound for me.
Wheels to Create a More Convincing Driving Experience
Nintendo’s Wii Wheel made the action a little more realistic by giving the player a wheel-shaped shell for the remote, but DreamGear has gone one step further, creating a shell with its own base that allows you to use the Wii remote very much like a conventional video game console steering wheel accessory.
DreamGear’s wheel base has suction cups on the bottom so you can firmly place it on a coffee table. I don’t have a coffee table in front of my couch, I have a fuzzy dice ottoman, but fortunately the weight of the base caused it to sink into the foam rubber of my ottoman and keep it in place while I steered. Later though when I played on a glass-top table the wheel did not stay in place, proof that suction cup technology has not changed since I was a child and my suction cup arrows refused to stick to the wall.
The wheel can be turned to the left or the right like a regular steering wheel and can also be tilted forward or back in order to take into account some of the odd things one can do with wheels in a Wii racing game.
A Wheel with More Stability but Less Mobility
Racing games on the Wii are not bound by the normal limits of steering wheels, so DreamGear’s wheel is useless when playing a game like Speed Racer that asks you to move the remote in every possible direction. But for games with more basic controls schemes like Mario Kart Wii and Excite Truck the wheel will do most of the things you need (although in Excite Truck using the wheel means you can’t do a stunt that requires wiggling the remote back and forth). (It is possible to separate the wheel from the base for games like Speed Racer.)
The main thing DreamGear’s wheel gives the player is increased stability. After running several tracks of Excite Truck with the wheel, I pulled the remote out of the wheel shell and used it by itself. Suddenly my truck, which I’d been guiding forward smoothly, was weaving from side to side like the driver was drunk.
Whether you need that stability is another question. I thought the added control would make me win every race in Mario Kart Wii, yet I found I did about the same or even slightly worse than with the simple Nintendo Wii Wheel shell. Since these games are designed and tested by people who are holding a wheel in mid-air, perhaps stability is something these games are not designed to demand.
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