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October 10, 2006

Dorkfest.

I must say, it's good to be a dork in New York. Within the span of a week I've had the opportunity to go to Wired's NextFest, play with the Wii, and go see a documentary about the 8-bit art scene. Now technically I won't see "8 BIT" until tomorrow, but point is, I had the opportunity to but missed out on Saturday due to ticket booth incompetence. But hey, I did get to do that other stuff.

First off, NextFest was the bomb. I had never been, but Wired has bills it as the "World's Fair of the Future." After going, I can say that billing is pretty spot on. Free copies of Wired were in abundance, as were free bottles of Coke BlaK, robots, and nerds.

Obviously one of the highlights for me was the video game section. Atari had great setup, not with their own stuff mind you, but with a bunch of independent game developers. Games ranged from the weird (Brainball), to the awesome (TFT Tennis), to the awesomest (MobZombies). MobZombies was the only game I actually played, and like many things at NextFest, it was definitely beta... well, more like alpha, really. Is there anything before alpha? Anyway, it was held together with electrical tape and running off a 9V battery, if that gives you any idea what it was like. But still, it was really clever, and the dudes (kids, really) who made it were there to answer any question I threw at them. Very cool.

It wasn't all just video games, though. Jeff Han's Media Mirror was very cool. At first I thought it was just a live photo-mosaic generator; something where a video camera looks at you, and then generates a live "mirror" image of you with a library of photos on the hard drive of a computer. Upon closer inspection though, I realized that the pictures making up with photo-mosaic weren't pictures at all, but live television feeds. Dang.

The Vein Viewer does pretty much what you'd think it would do: it views veins. You hold your arm out over this big thing that looks like the x-ray machine at your dentist's office, and it projects an image of your veins onto your skin in this greenish-Matrixy hue. Pretty groovy and— unlike most things at NextFest— very practical. Oh yeah one more thing: have hairy arms? Oh, okay, I'll just hit the "hair" button. Impressive.

Panoscope 360º, was actually at NextFest in Chicago last year, has made a lot of progress. I didn't go to Chicago, but (to me anyway) it looked like the coolest thing there. This year they had three hemispheres going (the full size, a smaller 9' one, and a flat LCD version), and had them linked together to play a game. It was interesting because the Quebecians (damn you French Canada!) were big Nintendo fans, and openly admitted that their game control setup was inspired by the Wii. As cool as it was, I was slightly disappointed with their booth (err... sphere), because there was a lot of light coming in from the outside, and they wouldn't close the opening between the two halves for a better 360º experience. Oh well.

Best of show though, has got to be Jeff Han's (again!) Multi-Touch Interaction Research project. (Truth be told, GE brought Jeff to NextFest, but A] GE can blow me, and 2] I can't find a link to a GE-sponsored page about the touch screen.) I actually had seen Jeff's site earlier this year, and while I was impressed at the time, it was only once I played with it in person did I really realize how incredible it was. First off... well, wait, watch the demo video on his site... it's only three and a half minutes, and it's got a bitchin' soundtrack. I'll wait.

Mmm... Voss energy drink.

You back? Okay. So, cool, right? Very "Minority Report" (there's also some voice recognition that he's since added, but the touchscreen is way cooler). There's a neat touch screen setup at the Samsung Store in Columbus Circle, but it's not nearly as well-implemented as this, and Samsung is a huge technology company. This is some guy who works at NYU. Jeff's setup is awesome for a number of reasons. First off, it's rear projected, so unlike a lot of other touch screens, you're not obstructing the view of what you're working on while you're working on it. Cool. Secondly, it doesn't seem to be very processor intensive. As best I could tell the whole thing was running off a standard (admitted high-end) laptop PC, which powered both the laptop display and the 36" x 27" touchscreen. Thirdly, and most importantly, as you can see it can handle not just one input (i.e. a stylus), but multiple inputs simultaneously. Multiple fingers, multiple hands, and multiple fingers on multiple hands from multiple people. What really set me over the edge though, was at one point, Jeff, myself, and a few other people were all sitting around the table playing with the different gestures that the screen understands (make a fist to pan, two fingers to click and drag, et cetera...), when another person who was standing around reached in to play with the screen. And what happened when that person touched the screen? Not a damn thing. Somehow (something to do with capacitance?) the screen could tell that person wasn't sitting down at the table, and thus ignored the input. Crazy. Crazy cool. I want one. Damn you GE! (p.s. More touch screeny goodness.)

So if the touch screen was the highlight, the low light had to be the PixelRoller paint brush. I'm not even going to link to it. The guys were douchebags, they were late to show up to their own demo, and the demo was unimpressive. The technology has promise, but if you're going to bother to demonstrating it to people (nerds in particular), you've gotta have some Q&A, give people some specs, do some making-of... that sorta thing. Whatever.

Anyway, yeah, that's NextFest. I don't know if it's going to be in NYC next year, but if it is... I'm all over it. $12 well spent if I do say so myself.

Moving on to the Wii...

So it's been a week since I played with a Wii. Not my own Wii, mind you... someone else's Wii. Gross, I know.

For the past couple years, Nintendo has been putting on this "Nintendo Fusion Tour." Basically Nintendo of America (because Nintendo of Japan would never do this), finds a semi-reputable but by no means "big" band (I think last year it was Evanescence) to go on tour with around the country hawking Nintendo products on the youth of America. I can't imagine it's a big cash cow for Nintendo, and the money would probably be spent better elsewhere, but whatever.

Point is, in years previous, I imagine most people go to see the band, and then on the side there's some Nintendo systems set up to fuck around with. This year though, the band sucks worse than usual (Hawthorne Heights?), and Nintendo actually has some hardware that people care about (Wii!!!). So last week the Fusion Tour came to New York, but they had a couple days downtime before the gig, so they set up shop in the Nintendo World Store in Rockefeller Plaza last Tuesday, and let people come in and play with the Wii for free. Not too shabby. Fortunately I had put in some extra hours at work recently, so I got to sneak out for a few hours, head uptown and spend some quality time dorking out.

Anyway, around 11 o'clock, I stepped out of work and headed up to Rockefeller Plaza with my Game Boy Micro, ready to wait in line until noon when things were supposed to start. I got there around 11:30 though, and the doors were already open and people were already dweebing. Hey, I'll take it.

So by 11:45, I was playing WarioWare: Smooth Moves on the Wii. Awesome.

Now I don't mean to brag, but I nailed WarioWare. There were about 15 mini-games and a boss stage, and I beat every one of them. Now you could argue that I just have a natural aptitude for WarioWare— and you wouldn't be wrong— but I think it's a testament to the wiimote more than anything else. It was my first time using the thing, and it went off without a hitch. Not too shabby, if I do say so myself.

Regarding the wiimote, though. First off, it's much smaller than anticipated. Granted, everyone who has played with it has said this, so I knew that going in... but it still struck me as small. Conversely, it's heavier than anticipated (although that could be a byproduct of its smallness?). As for the tech inside, I think we're definitely getting our $40 worth. Everything was incredibly responsive, and WarioWare was a good test of virtually everything. There were pointing minigames, there were gyroscopic minigames, there were accelerometer minigames, and there were combinations of all three. And they were all super-responsive and super-intuitive. The only downside of all this was that the wiimote was tethered to the display unit, so I felt slightly restricted, but overall it was very cool. (Also, quicknote about the display units: I dig that the "Wii" logo is off-centered to the right, just like the game packaging is going to be... it's the little things.)

Anyway, so yeah, WarioWare, very cool. They also had Excite Truck and various Wii Sports games on site, but I figured I could play Wii Sports all I wanted once it came out, and I had no interest in Excite Truck. So that left one last game: Metroid Prime 3.

Unfortunately, after waiting in line for Metroid for a half hour, they shutdown all the Wiis so Hawthorne Heights (who?) could perform an acoustic set upstairs. Totally gay. I took the opportunity to go out to Rockefeller Plaza and have lunch.

(Fast forward one peanut butter sandwich and about three hours later...)

Ahh... Metroid. Metroid isn't due out until next year, so I figured it would be worth three hour (!) wait. Whether or not that's the case remains to be seen. I did have a fun time with it, though, that much is certain. My left-handedness was a bit of a handicap (aiming/looking with my right hand, moving with my left), but I pulled it off regardless. The nunchuk isn't used in WarioWare, so Metroid was my first experience with the other half of the Wii controller. The nunchuk is: also smaller than expected, just as white, and not nearly as hi-tech as the wiimote. It does have an accelerometer built-in though, which (at least in Metroid) gets used interesting ways. One might say I "grappled" with it well. Ha.

Anyway, yeah, that's the Wii. T-minus 40 days or so until it comes out. I'm definitely getting more excited the closer it gets, particularly now that I've actually played with the damn thing. Five hours in the middle of a Tuesday well spent if I do say so myself.

Posted by pat at October 10, 2006 10:20 PM

Comments

Posted by: Thommas Casey at October 16, 2006 07:37 PM

Posted by: Matthew Heal III at October 18, 2006 10:54 PM

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