Play Panzer Dragoon With a Wii-mote On Your PC
The 3D Rail Shooter genre seems like a natural fit for the Wii and the Wii-mote’s lightgun-like capabilties. And what better series from the rails shooter genre than Panzer Dragoon (and Rez, but I’m trying to stay on topic)
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At this point, we’ll be pretty lucky if we see a Panzer Dragoon game on the Wii anytime soon, but until that day comes, you maybe be able to experience the next best thing by putting together a little hack on your PC. Since the keyboard can be a bit cumbersome for Panzer Dragoon, the Wii-mote may be quite an improvement.
See Panzer Dragoon in Action Wii-Style
Tiger from Global Domination wrote a custom control script (more detail later) to adapt the Wiimote to Panzer Dragoon’s controls. He writes… “In this version of the script, the motion controls demand a lot of movement and rotation of the wrist, but that will be addressed in future revisions. Being based entirely on digital commands and emulation of keyboard commands makes the motion less smooth than it would be in a game natively designed around the Wii Remote’s motion sensing. The GlovePIE scripting community has come up with some inventive ways of getting a more analog feeling out of such controls, and I’ll also look into adopting some of those techniques in future revisions.”
What You Need
- A Windows PC
- A compatible Bluetooth Adapter
- A Nintendo Wii Remote
- GlovePie Input Adapter Software
- The Panzer Dragoon GlovePie script
- A PC Version of Panzer Dragoon
Connecting the Wii Remote
- Make sure you have a Bluetooth adapter for your PC.
- Go to Control Panel –> Bluetooth Devices and click “Add” a new Bluetooth Device
- Hold down 1 + 2 on the Wii remote to begin the syncing process.
- Check the box next to “My device is set up and ready to be found”, then “Next”
- Click on “Nintendo RVL-CNT-01”, then click “Next”
- Select “Don’t use a passkey”, then click “Next”. You may need to hold down 1+2 on the Wii remote again here. If you’re successful, three LEDs will be flashing on the Wii remote.
Using GlovePIE Wiimote Driver
- Download and extract GlovePIE to a directory, then open “GlovePIE.exe”
- Open “TestWiimote.PIE” from the File menu (It should be in the default displayed folder).
- Hopefully your Wii remote is still blinking. Click “Run” near the top of the GlovePIE window.
- Push on the D-Pad with GloverPIE being the active window. You should see values changing in the toolbar on the bottom-left corner.
- Change to the Panzer Dragoon Wiimote Script
- Leave the script running and open up the game
Unfortunately, I don’t have a Wii-mote, nor do I have an extra $40 to buy one for this purpose. But I could see this being a very attractive hack on my Media PC. If you are interested in some other games to try, you can see similar hacks from Tiger for playing House of the Dead 3 and Alien Hominid with the Wiimote on the PC.
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If by “natural fit” you mean “huge pain in the ass”, then yeah, sure.
I’d much rather see a new Panzer Dragoon game on the PlayStation 3 or the XBox 360.
Rez? DONE!