The uncanny valley isn’t a phenomenon restricted to depicting organic things – as you bring a control scheme for any virtual instrument or tool close enough to the real thing, the points at which its control diverges become all the more startling. The use of the Balance Board to control a skateboard could be one such example.

Right now, Skate It on Wii permits a variety of inputs: the Remote by itself, or in conjunction with either the Nunchuk or Balance Board. However, developer Black Box has suggested that it would love to put all the control on the Balance Board itself. While it simulates much of a skateboard’s control, jumping on and flipping a Balance Board is obviously out of the question – meaning that you would have to use the peripheral in some non-intuitive way, possibly ending up with a jarring mixture of abstract and directly representational control schemes issuing from the one peripheral.

Developers on hand to demo the game at a recent EA event obviously recognize this risk, and were keen to stress that the notion of putting control entirely on the Balance Board could easily remain just that: a notion. If anything, the current control schemes are several degrees more accessible than the game’s 360 incarnation. Holding the Remote horizontally, you tip left or right to adjust your direction, lifting it up and rotating it in various ways to perform jumps and tricks. It’s almost too easy, making the challenge of the game simply one of positioning and timing.

Already a benchmark for accessible control, the Skate series looks set to go one step better with its Wii outing – so long as a board-shaped peripheral doesn’t trick the developer into thinking it should make a simulator rather than a videogame.