By Andrew Liszewski
There’s no paddles, no score and no ultimate goal, but Niklas Roy’s PONG! Augmented Pixel game still looks like it would be incredibly fun to play with, and hard to walk away from. He describes it as a sort of sandbox game, not unlike GTA, but not anything like it either. Built as a standalone hardware box, the game has a single video input which takes a live feed from a video camera, and a video and audio out for connecting it to a television. In fact the electronics inside are fairly simple by today’s standards, and Niklas believes his device could have easily been built back in the 70’s. Though it would cost heaps more than it does today.
Instead of paddles, the white ball seen on screen bounces around between two white lines, but it can also interact with a dark object in the video feed. So you can use your hands, fingers or anything with adequate contrast to be a makeshift paddle. The lack of scoring might make it seem like a useless tech demo, but seeing it in action below makes it look pretty addictive. The old school video game sound effects at boot-up and while playing are a nice touch too.
[ Niklas Roy’s PING! Augmented Pixel ] VIA [ Today and Tomorrow ]
