Although old school arcade games like Pong, Defender, and Galaga feature outdated graphics and barebones plot lines, the classic games still capture the imagination, as exampled by theconstant reinvention of the titles for today's market. Now a new iteration of one of the biggest old school gaming hits, Asteroids, introduces a fully interactive component that could breathe new life into an almost forgotten game title.
Created by Steam Carnival, Human Asteroids allows you to use your entire body as the point in space from which you shoot the basketball-sized asteroids hurtling at you from every direction. The firing mechanism is initiated by the mobile phone in your hands, allowing you to swivel around in a wheeled chair and ward off errant space rocks with the same satisfaction as you might through the arcade version of the game. The designers used a laser projector to create the field of asteroids on the floor, and a ceiling-mounted Kinect to track the movements of the player.
Appropriately, the system was recently demoed by none other than Atari founder Nolan Bushnell, who, even at age 70, still looks like a little kid having loads of fun in his natural element of gaming. Bushnell also serves as an advisor to Steam Carnival, a group that is also engaged in an effort to bring a tech-powered traveling carnival to various cities in the U.S. with other interactive games similar to Human Asteroids available for anyone to play. You can see Human Asteroids in action in the video below. VIDEO
Via Hackaday