Some of the issues

Speed Racer was an interesting title because while it was a car-combat racing game, there were no traditional weapons the player could use. Instead the car itself was the weapon, and by utilizing the Wiimote, players were required to perform a number of "Car-Fu" maneuvers.

In order to do this, we had to ensure that the controls were tight and that the player would not be required to carry out complex combinations -- as Speed Racer was meant to be an extremely fast racing game. If anything deterred from that, it just wouldn't work.

It's a Car-Fu game, but they don't use it!

We had hoped that Car-Fu would be a breeze to pick up and play and that players would be excited to use it. Imagine our horror when the first problem we encountered was that players were just not using the Car-Fu. This was a pretty big deal because Car-Fu was a huge part of the game and if players were not "getting it" then we had a problem.

The problem was that players saw the game simply as a racer, and even after an hour and half of play they would simply forget that Car-Fu was available. The way around this was to therefore remind them that this was available in the game (visibility and affordance rules once more people) but we didn't want to explicitly instruct the player to use Car-Fu, as this would break immersion.

Instead, a more subtle way was needed. So the best way of doing that was by simply showing them Car-Fu happening within the game.

This was done by simply getting the opponents to do more Car-Fu against one another, and on the player too. By giving players this reminder, they then realized that they could also do this. This also served as a way to increase the challenge, because when a player got attacked, they would instantly get the desire for revenge and charge down the infidel and carry out Car-Fu on them.

When they realized what they could then do, the enjoyment of the game simply rocketed.

They're not using the Wiimote correctly!

Using the Wiimote for a driving game was something we thought would instantly be intuitive. While the game supported the Mario Kart wheel add-on, it could also be played without it. What we didn't foresee was the way people would take it upon themselves to use the device.

The player was given a small animation showing how to hold the Wiimote, and we assumed that it was straightforward enough. However, what happened was that the majority of players perceived the animation as if it were from the top-down, and so would control the car as if they were using the steering wheel of a pickup truck.

Of course this meant that the movement wasn't picked up and it was clearly obvious that they were quickly becoming frustrated when the car would simply collide with the wall -- being totally unresponsive to their needs.

This went on for some time, and no matter how we adjusted the images or the animation, players were just not getting how to hold the Wiimote. This was getting to be a huge problem, because the game was effectively stuck in the water. Nobody could play it.

The solution to the problem was actually incredibly simple. Observing people reading the instructions, I realized that while they had the animation and the images, they had no frame of reference to them. Each person would see and interpret them differently.

Therefore, for the loading screen we put in a simple black and white image of a television screen, with the Wiimote in front of it. It was hoped that this image would act like a frame of reference for holding the Wiimote. And it worked! The next time we ran a playtesting session the players picked up the Wiimote and were able to instantly drive.