While the Nintendo Wii's motion sensitive remote controller (Wii-mote) is a wonder of technological innovation, its Nunchuk attachment -- that tether thingy that jacks in to the wireless Wii-mote to add control options like a thumbstick, a couple more buttons and, indeed, more motion-sensitive sensibilities --, is a hopelessly underdeveloped peripheral. There are many game-playing circumstances where long-armed people (i.e. adult sized gamers) are handcuffed by the frightfully short cord that connects the two. Short-armed players (kid gamers), meanwhile, will repeatedly flog themselves silly with that same cord as their exuberant and otherwise-encouraged gestures whip Nunchuk slack up into their ecstatic little faces.

In a new generation of cordless everything, Nintendo's decision to not make a cordless Nunchuk is an embarrassment. Well, a cost-saving measure, to be sure, but still, it's stupid.

Enter the Cord Free Nunchuk adapter from Nyko, an adequate solution that modestly but effectively assuages the Wii-mote's glaring shortcoming. It's basically a sleeve that coddles the Nunchuk (sold separately) and allows the cord to wrap up neatly in its base, which is also where you plug the thing in, and which also houses a pair of AAA batteries and the system's transceiver, which communes wirelessly with a little half-inch dongle that jacks in to the bottom Wii-mote (where the Nunchuk would normally attach), adding only a bit of weight but giving the newly coddled Nunchuck a bit of heft and a new center of gravity nonetheless, which is easy enough to get used to.

None of it fits particularly tightly; you can knock the sleeved Nunchuk and/or the dongle loose if you get a little too animated with the gesturing -- and you can't use the handy rubber guard on your Wii-mote with the dongle in place. Plus, you need to calibrate/associate the two devices every time you turn it on.

Really, Cord-Free for Wii Nunchuk is just a stopgap until better solutions come along; there's a full-functioning cordless Nunchuk in the works from Nyko coming in late April/early May, though that too will feature the dongle attachment and cost more like $30 or $35 instead of this $20 duct tape-like fix. But, until then, or for the Nunchuk you already own, this does the trick well enough.