Okay I am assuming at least half of you reading this are semi-nerds or geeks, others more so- but my point is that I consider myself pretty console and computer savvy, but even I had no idea that there were any motion activated controllers before the Wii. A point I am ashamed to admit, but yes there were these (at the time of their invention) top of the line (sorta).

One of the first was actually for the NES and was called the U-Force:

This large, unwieldy laptop-sized device that used infrared sensors to detect motion within its boxy field of view, was created by Broderbund for the Nintendo Entertainment System in the late 80s. As you can imagine, infrared motion detection wasn’t exactly perfected in 1989, and the end result was a flailing struggle to get the controller to recognize some form of movement in front of its digital eyes.

The Sega Genesis had one as well, known as the Activator. I’m guess it didn’t “activated” much. You can read more over at the PC Mag. website.