Computer company HP has just revealed a new handheld gaming unit called the MScape. This unit uses GPS location-based technology to make the actual world a sort of game arena.
The Sci Fi Tech blog says that "the handheld's screen acts kind of like a lens through which the real world is rendered just like a video game." It sounds like preset GPS locations trigger (flag) graphics or gameplay when the player comes across them.
It makes more sense coming from HP: "Mediascapes are mobile, location–based experiences that incorporate digital media with the sights, sounds, and textures of the world around you. A mediascape blends digital images, video, audio and interactions with the physical landscape. Games, guided walks and tours, and destinations are among the mediascapes created so far. Download a mediascape onto a portable device, and see how your landscape comes alive as you move through the environment."
This is still just a prototype, and no production details have been released.
How do you feel about going outside, running around, and looking "through" a handheld game unit to see the world? Would this be something you'd be interested in?
[via Gamasutra -- thanks, Justin]
Dale North is Destructoid's Editor-In-Chief, a founding editor, and specialist in Japanese gaming. An accomplished musician, Dale was reporting from Japan during the earthquakes of 2011. Luckily, he got the fuck out alive and is home in America now with his wife and beloved corgi, Einstein. Dale is also a co-founder of Destructoid's sister anime site
Japanator. Likes Corgis, Sega Saturn, PSP, iPhone, Photographic tools.
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Contest:
4:44 PM on 09.27.2007
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Like running around with something hitech in our hands is safe.
i can imagine games that are like a mmorpg only that "in the wild", you running with the device around your city and actually walking from a place to the other for rewards and stuff.
Is a very cool idea.
A - Buy HP Handheld
B - Go outside
C - Pwn.
D - Get a kiss from an angel.
I hope I didn't miss anything?
It will sadly never take off, even if it is a pretty cool idea =\
News from the future:
"HP's MSpace, the popular and revolutionary handheld game, has been recalled due to 413 deaths-all were people who ran into traffic looking for the third treasure chest."
Or an even better one:
"HP's MSpace has completed its mission of eradicating everyone who the head of HP has deemed "subhuman." He is renaming the world HPLand and is establishing a dictatorship of the world, which he will head. All hail HP!"
Have you ever seen that episode of The Simpsons where Homer decides he's going to get in shape? He straps on running shoes, puts a sweatband on his forehead, dons a white tank-top and darts from his house to the left. The screen blends to a tired Homer, who has collapsed onto the sidewalk from exhaustion... in front of ned Flanders' house.
That, only not so funny, would be me with a MediaScape; I'd smile and dart for the first objective, only to fall over wheezing eleven meters later.
Funniest fucking thing I've read all day.
One minute, you're sitting on your clean-cut lawn in the suburbs and the next, you're being held-up at gunpoint for your milk money and credit cards.
What would be even funnier is if GPS glitched out and kids started running off cliffs and building tops. It'd be like lemmings all over again.
Games are something most of us do on our spare time when we're tired of standing up at work, or whatever. Unwind on the couch, maybe? This is just...no. It's nothing I'd do, anyways.
Shit YES I want to be running down the street with this on!
But i think really would take the shit out of the concept.
Cars, holes, shitty GPS, other people, robbers, poo on the floor, everything goes against the concept. You can´t walk thorugh life staring at a little screen, not even if it transmits what´s outside, cause our field of vision is higher, and real life is actually dangerous.
I want that...NAO!
lol or someone can make a virtual boy mod. jack bros ftw.
The concept looks really cool, and as WDot says, it's tailor-made for ARGs, which I'd totally play. However, it seems kind of ambitious, and I don't know if technology is at a point where realizing the full scope of this project is possible. If they pull it off, it will be awesome, but it has to be done right.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gizmondo
http://www.ubergizmo.com/photos/widescreen_gizmondo.jpg
except this one was made by members of the Mafia and with little advertising, haha.
This ones by HP and may fare a little better
If I can use it to find my way around Vegas, NYC, wherever, and still use it to geocache or just go backpacking, along with whatever games they decide to create, then I'm freaking in...
Yeah, I live by Chicago, where a few blocks can mean a radical change in the neighborhood like any major city, so that actually CAN happen! One of the richest neighborhoods is only blocks away from the worst housing projects in the city (and also home to the movie Candyman)
First level, you get a peck on the cheek.
Second level, you get tongue.
Third level, you get to cop a feel.
Fourth level, you get dry humped.
Fifth level, you get a hand job.
Sixth level, you get blown.
Eight level, you get full blown sex.
Ninth level, well, no man's even had the energy to go for that level afterwards.
I mean... shit. That would be pretty damn sweet.
Man, would that be FUN in a videogame event of something. Like PAX. =)
What is this "Outside" you speak of?
I am unfamiliar with it.
That is all.
Where will HP be then?
My idea is to mark the most buisy roads and making the player looking around before crossing, making it a lava steam with briges or something.
I would love to play a Dead Rising like game on it inside this town i live in, now that would be awesome.