It used to be a gentle pleasure to watch non-gaming idiots play racing games, leaning from side to side and rotating the controller as if it’s going to do anything. But now gaming has caught up with human intuition. This is Excite Truck, and it’s bloody wonderful.

In fact, it’s the best thing on the Wii. There it is. It’s better than Zelda. Yes, it is. Shut up. It is. Because it’s more than just a ‘normal’ game with a bit of pointing for the sake of it.

Only two buttons are really used: one to accelerate, and ‘mash the d-pad somewhere’ to boost. Brilliant. Technically there is a brake button too, but if you’re reaching for that then you’re not having enough fun. Cornering is handled magnificently by wanging the remote around, with entirely natural nuances controlling drifting, position in flight and so on.

The whole structure of the game is engineered to force you to have as much fun as possible. There’s a points target for each track, and although there are points to be earned from winning, that’s not enough. You have to smash, crash, drift, fly, fly through rings, and narrowly avoid hitting trees to earn big points. And yes, all of that is a great deal of fun in a massive truck.

Whether intentionally or not, the difficulty of the points targets varies hugely. Some took us a good dozen attempts, then many more to get the prestigious S grade; others were an instant S. But this works in the game’s favour: enough toughness to provide satisfaction, but not enough to bring frustration to the party. Actually, there’s no sign of frustration at all: not once did we give up on a track, and it’s always possible to see where more points could come from when required.