Bad Touch! BAD TOUCH!!!

There have been all sorts of crazy rumors flying around the 'net about Nintendo's Revolution. Depending on what you read, the console won't use a TV, will use gyroscopic controllers, or shoot out holograms. Now, I don't usually let rumors get to me (especially Nintendo ones, since they tend to be the craziest), but a scary one keeps popping up -- the idea of a buttonless touch-screen controller. I can't imagine any way that such a thing wouldn't be a colossal blunder.

There are two main reasons why this would kill the console right out of the gate, and they seem so obvious that you'd have to think Nintendo would have realized them, too:

1) A touch-screen gives no tactile feedback. As anyone who has struggled through the touch-screen control in Mario 64 DS can attest, moving your character is much harder when you can't feel exactly which direction, and to what degree, you're pressing. You're constantly repositioning your thumb in that silly "thumb strap", or having to take your eyes of the game to look down and figure out what the hell you're doing.

2) The supposed benefit of the touch screen would be that developers could create a custom control scheme -- with unique "button" placements on the screen -- for each game, opening the door for more creativity. While that sounds interesting at first, think about it -- it'd be like having to learn to use a new controller for every game you play. The company line at Nintendo is that gaming has become too complicated, that it's too intimidating for newcomers. Anyone who's ever tried to get a non-gamer to play a game knows that learning to use a controller can be a huge hurdle. So, constantly changing the way a controller works would really put these people off.

Not to mention that this would be gaming's all-time greasiest controller with all that flesh pressing. Gross.

Lending weight to this rumor is a quote from a Nintendo higher-up that the Revolution won't (or "may not" -- can't remember the exact wording) use the traditional A and B buttons. While the pursuit of a true "revolution" is exciting and to be applauded, it's also risky. Here's hoping that Nintendo isn't so desperate in its battle against Sony and Microsoft that it would be quirky just to be quirky. Nintendo has a good track record of putting gameplay above all else, so I'll give them the benefit of the doubt for now. (Virtual Boy and a long list of "innovative" dud peripherals aren't making me very comfortable, though.)