It certainly seems that Nintendo might be enjoying taking a trip down memory lane. The DS is reminiscent of the old Donkey Kong Game & Watch, but could Nintendo be pulling a similar trick with the Vitality Sensor? An interesting post by the Game|Life blog suggests that the Vitality Sensor is the spiritual successor of the "Bio Sensor" Nintendo released along with Tetris 64 back in 1998. The "Bio Sensor" was an ill-fated project which never made it out of Japan and was only compatible with Tetris 64. It worked by attaching itself to the player's earlobes and measured the pulse. Increasing or decreasing the heart rate would cause the speed of the blocks to change respectively.

The Wii Vitality Sensor, Nintendo’s strangest announcement of its E3 lineup, seems even stranger when you know that it has its roots in a nearly-identical Nintendo 64 device.

Produced by Seta and released in 1998 alongside Tetris 64, the “Bio Sensor” did exactly what the Wii Vitality Sensor does — reads a player’s pulse as they play a game. It did it by clipping onto their earlobes, rather than their index fingers. In this particular title, you could have the game of Tetris either speed up or slow down as your heart rate increased. The former game mode would allow you to relax when things got too tense, and the latter would force you to control your reactions if you didn’t want the game to get uncontrollably difficult.

A clever concept, but one that ultimately went nowhere — Tetris 64 didn’t even make it out of Japan. One wonders if Nintendo has more compelling software for the accessory, this time around. If it does, it didn’t show it at E3, making the Vitality Sensor announcement a stumble for the company: An old device with no new software isn’t going to get anybody’s pulse racing.

McClubbin via wired.com »