Augmented Reality II

When I was younger and full of pent-up rage without any obvious outlet, I invented in my head a gun. This gun looked a lot like the one that came with the NES for use with the game duck hunt. In fact, it looked exactly like it, only it was hooked up to a box that connected to your TV. I know the question forming in your mind: Did that box look anything like the NES. The answer to that question is no. My box was black.

The crucial difference, though, was the fact that my box was intended to merely alter the signal from conventional broadcast TV, with the aim of making it look like you could shoot characters in your favourite (or least favourite) shows. How I wished I could shoot Stonefish from Neighbours and take his woman for my own. How I longed to send Otis the Aardvark shuffling from this mortal coil. Now, 15 years later (thanks, fast moving technical progress. Thanks a lot.), my fantasies are about to become a reality. And not just for TV characters, Oh no! With the wonders of AR, already extolled here, I can pretend like I am shooting various household objects which have aroused my wrath. Cupboard getting you down? Don't worry, turn on your iphone, open the application, spend 5 minutes setting the relevant settings then exact your revenge by producing a picture of the cupboard with a semi-realistic hole through it. Wonderful. This is why the state funds people's university educations.

Bread and Circuses

In the 20 odd years I have been playing computer games (is our generation the first to have grown up with this ubiquity?), the trend has been for more. More enemies, better graphics, sound that comes fro, like, behind you and, best of all, realistic physics. Its a bit of a surprise then, that one of the best games to have graced my screen recently looks like it could have been made in 1987, and requires only one key to play. Canabalt is set in a, I assume, dystopian future where buildings are procedurally generated and people are controlled by only one button. That button is 'jump'. The rest of the time the citizens run blindly towards their deaths far below on the mutant-overrun streets. The suits look pretty good though, so it's not all bad news on the horizon.