Hands-on with Nyko's Winter 2008 peripherals

By Andrew Yoon
Do you have really, really, really long arms? Good. Because the Nyko Wireless Nunchuck is perfect for you. It's one of the many peripherals we tested with Nyko in San Francisco. Surprises were few and far between. But perhaps that's a good thing — we found that everything they offered worked as one would expect. The Wireless Nunchuck works just like the official corded variety, It may work a bit too well, in fact. We left the Wii Remote in one room, and ran across the office to find the Nunchuck still operated. Unnecessary? Yes. But a great display of how well this peripheral is designed.

The Cord Free accessory allows players to use their existing Wii Nunchucks and turn them into wireless ones. Once again, the range is excellent. There is one gripe we have about this peripheral, though. It makes the Nunchuck much too heavy.

The Perfect Shot from Nyko is a nice alternative to Nintendo's Wii Zapper. In fact, we prefer Nyko's solution over Nintendo's. Unlike the official peripheral, this cradle only carries the Wii Remote. This makes assembly much easier, and leaves your left hand free to hold on to the Nunchuck (wireless, or wired). We played Umbrella Chronicles and found that having the Nunchuck free made reloading a lot less disorienting. No need to have the aim cursor jump around the screen wildly — just a shake of the left hand was all it took. Most importantly, the gun has a nice weight to it, making it feel well-constructed.

The Frontman series of guitars are, once again, rather unsurprising. The guitars feel much more than Guitar Hero than Rock Band (for many, that's a plus). Nyko is also manufacturing a series of guitar straps that'll also work on real guitars. Being able to toggle between Rock Band and Guitar Hero modes (on PS3) is a nice plus.

The Charge Base 2 is an interesting peripheral for PS3. It looks like a robot, but it's actually a cradle for up to two PS3 controllers (SIXAXIS or DualShock 3). It'll charge the controllers while they're in the cradle. It gets the job done, and its design certainly makes it a conversation starter.

Nyko had a ton of gadgets and gizmos to try out, and all of them seemed well constructed. This is certainly a far cry from the days where third-party accessories were mostly junk. Unfortunately, one peripheral was largely noticeably absent: the Wii Party Station. Unfortunately, it was quietly canned due to its unusually high production costs. Too bad. We asked for a sample prototype, but apparently, there's only one left in the world. What a find that would be for eBay ...

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