This guide will show you how to connect a Nintendo Wii Remote to a Windows PC so you can use it to play games on your computer.
Nintendo’s Wii controller is an interesting piece of technology. One of the great things about it is that it connects with Bluetooth. Which, lucky for us, means you can connect it to any computer that has bluetooth! Even if your computer didn’t come with bluetooth connectivity, inexpensive adapters can be purchased online or at your local computer shop.
So, for this post I’m going to show you how to use a Wiimote for playing NES games. There is much more that you can do with the Wiimote, but I just think this is a perfect (and simple) use for it. So let’s get started!
First, you need to get your wiimote into discovery mode. You do this by pressing the 1 and 2 buttons. The blue lights at the bottom of the wiimote should be flashing. You may have to keep pressing these buttons until the wiimote connects with your PC. Now, on your PC, right click your bluetooth icon and click Show Bluetooth Devices. If there is no bluetooth icon in your task bar, go to your control panel and double click Bluetooth Devices. Click Add when the window (shown below) pops up.
In the window that comes up, check My device is set up and ready to be found and click Next. While it’s searching, make sure your wiimote’s lights are still blinking! It should find the select the wiimote after it’s found and click Next. Now select Don’t use a passkey and click Next (but make sure the lights are still flashing!) Click Finish when it’s done.
We’re already almost done! Now all you need is GlovePIE, a program that will let you actually use your wiimote! You can download it here. Just extract the contents of the zip into a new folder and run GlovePIE.
It may look intimidating but it’s actually really simple. Just go to File and Open and navigate to the WiimoteScripts (which was included in the zip), look for NESController.pie. Click Run and your wiimote should be able to control NES Emulators! I tested it with the default settings in VirtuaNES and it worked great! Since a lot of Nintendo games are playable on your PC, you can have a lot of fun testing it out.
GlovePIE comes with may more scripts for you to try out, so have fun with it! It’s only a matter of time before we have some games on the PC to play with the Wiimote, but in the meantime, enjoy all of the things GlovePIE already allows you to do!
