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Classic Games (Games) Entertainment Games

Atari 2600's Mind Maze Exploits Your ESP 25

Posted by simoniker from the ghostbusters-academic-research dept.
Thanks to Atari Age, who point to the AtariProtos site's new information about the unreleased Mind Maze for the Atari 2600. The writers have spoken to original designer Howard Scott Warshaw, also famous for Yar's Revenge and the cataclysmic E.T. for Atari 2600, and "...apparently Mind Maze was based on the unproven theory of ESP (Extra Sensory Perception) and was an attempt to create a mind reading game for the (also unreleased) Mindlink controller." The updated preview, based on a recently unearthed prototype, reveals: "Supposedly, the headband was to read the player's Alpha and Beta waves in an attempt to help predict their actions. However, since the Mindlink was really just a sensor that detected muscle movements in the player's forehead, this was complete bunk."
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Atari 2600's Mind Maze Exploits Your ESP More

Atari 2600's Mind Maze Exploits Your ESP

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  • Similar experience (Score:4, Interesting)

    by dtfinch ( 661405 ) * on Friday November 21, 2003 @02:41AM (#7526720) Journal
    While working for the shareware distributer RocketDownload I had to review a similar game, but it didn't involve headbands or other forms of input. Just a random number generator moving something that you're supposed to try to control with your mind. Give it long enough and it'll always arrive somewhere. What a crappy day that was.

    With a headband to control it through slight muscle movements, that sounds like a great way to impress your friends. Too bad it never took off.

  • Innovation (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Hedonist123 ( 681091 ) on Friday November 21, 2003 @02:42AM (#7526722) Homepage
    Sure it was a bunk idea, but at least they were trying to be innovative way back in the day. I wish more companies would try stuff like this now. Of course, with going for the sure-fire dollar, stuff like this just isn't going to happen anymore. I long for the days when every game was a crapshoot, so companies had to be innovative.

    hed.

    • Re:Innovation (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Babbster ( 107076 ) <aaronbabb@@@gmail...com> on Friday November 21, 2003 @03:38AM (#7526822) Homepage
      Innovation like that gives us (and, more importantly, video game companies) items like the PowerGlove which usually turn out to work badly...of course, the specific kind of "innovation" referenced in this story gives us things like the miracle of spoon-bending and The Psychic Friends Network.

      It reminds me of the days when I could astound easily astounded people by reading tarot cards. I used the Arthurian tarot (because the deck looked cool) and had a whole spiel about why I considered it superior to other forms of tarot. To make a pretty short story longer, I became quite adept at identifying what was going on with people's lives by interacting with them over a deal of the tarot and some of the simple-minded really believed my malarkey - at least I wasn't charging money.

      Getting back to your point, I would submit that innovation in terms of controllers does happen, though it tends to be more practical, particularly in the area of rhythm games. Dance Dance Revolution would be nothing without the dance controller pads and Samba de Amigo was all about shaking the ole maracas. Heck, I used my fishing controller on the Dreamcast quite a bit (yes, I was one of the few).

      Designing new and innovative game controllers is expensive and there needs to be a good reason to do it. Too often, they turn into curiosities which are unprofitable, unworkable or both.

      • I became quite adept at identifying what was going on with people's lives by interacting with them

        Are you sure that Slashdot is the right web site for you?
    • "I wish more companies would try stuff like this now."

      Hmm, let's think.
      • Nintendo Rob
      • Nintendo Power glove
      • Sega Activator
      • Nintendo U-Force
      • Gameboy Printer

      Why would you want these things to come back? Do you know how many Christmases have been ruined because children wanted these horrible things?

      There is a "modern" version of the Activator that Future shops in the city have, setup on Soul Calibur 2. It's just as horrible and gimmicky as the original Activator that was supposed to make Eternal Champions s

      • I once owned a Nintendo ROB, and yes, that was craptacular. I had both games for the thing and neither one was worth more than about 10 minutes of your attention before you started cheating by pressing the buttons that the robot was supposed to work.

        However, I'll disagree about the Microphone argument. The original Famicom had one, the N64 did, and the Dreamcast did (others, I don't know). As far as I know, the Famicom never used it. I never heard of the N64 one, but at least with the Dreamcast it was use

        • Yea, it's getting better. My point was that no one was buying them. I have all the microphone games out for the older systems, but I collect such things :)

          N64's Microphone game was "Hey you, Pikachu!" The N64 voice module was required for them, it did all the language to input conversion. Seaman, as you pointed out, did all the processing on the Dreamcast itself. Alien Front Online, the other DC microphone game, only used it for online voice chat.

          Some other microphone stuff includes: on the Xbox, Rai
        • The microphone on SOCOM for ps2 makes the game

          a) much more convinient(i.e. less annoying menus to cycle through)

          b) More realistic (yelling commans to alpha squad is a lot cooler than pressing the triangle button)
      • what the heck is the activator? Anyone have a link for a site with a REAL description? I googled (not very long - 2 pages) and only found text about people selling them.
        • Read about it here [vidgame.net].

          "Sega Genesis Activator Ring. The ring was made of eight different sections that corresponded to buttons on a regular Genesis controller. Specially configured Activator games were Eternal Champions, Streets of Rage 3, Mortal Kombat CD, and Greatest Heavyweights. Eternal Champions, Mortal Kombat, and Street Fighter II: SCE were pack-ins. Many of the Genesis's library of games worked with the Activator. MK-1659"

          They also have a picture, although not the one from the box showing a kid kick
        • I have the ring part of one of these in storage somewhere. It's actually kind of cool looking, another relic of the 80s future that never was. I never tried it out as a game controller, assuming it would be as hard to use as the Powerglove (which I do not like despite the "it's so bad" factor), and the Konami voice-activated lightgun headset.

          There's a couple for sale on eBay if you want to have a look [ebay.com].

    • Re:Innovation (Score:2, Interesting)

      by h0mer ( 181006 )
      You don't think Steel Battalion was a 'crapshoot'? I've got a great idea, let's make a complicated mech game, include a HUGE specialized controller with it, and we'll sell it for the same price as the actual system!

      Needless to say, Capcom definitely took a risk with that one. I'm fairly sure that any stores who happened to get the package, sold out of them. Steel Battalion 2 is coming soon!

    • I'd say a recent and rather more successful innovative input device is the Eyetoy [eyetoy.com].

      Sure at heart it's a cheap'n'nasty USB camera, but it's something that hadn't been used to control games before and which a rather large number of people actually seem to consider fun, at least more fun than rapid eyebrow twitching.

      • Any way to back up that it's successful actually? It just came out fairly recently, and I sure haven't seen any numbers on it. Not that I'm complaining though, I like the innovation of it, though the GBA had something similar to it.

        hed.

  • reminded of U-Force (Score:2, Interesting)

    by heliocentric ( 74613 ) *
    I'm reminded of the U-Force for NES.

    Man, the commercials made that look awesome, and I gave into the hype and got my own light-sensing board with some switches. ::yawn::

    Long story short, it "stinked," but I found the unadvertised joystick part of it highly fascinated. It had central post that sort of rested in a depresson on the base and it had two buttons, when you pressed them they made a plastic part on the bottom move. Sort of like a choke on a carbruetor, and this movment activated a white part/bla
    • I was always fascinated by that U-Force. How exactly did it work, and why didn't it function correctly? I always assumed, like the Power Glove, that it worked ok, but was plain stupid.

      • Re:reminded of U-Force (Score:5, Informative)

        by heliocentric ( 74613 ) * on Friday November 21, 2003 @03:24AM (#7526796) Homepage Journal
        It worked by a series of light sensors. From the drawing you'd think 8 total, four on each "side" from one in each corner. In reality it only had 6 I think, two of the spots weren't life. There were also A/B buttons along with start/select and several slider switches to set which setup (pin out) you used.

        It wounld sense the change in light of you moving your hand over a spot.

        It sorta worked, but it had problems with misreads (not reading an actual movemens) and false positives (reading the shadow cast by accident on another sensor).

        You could lay it flat and play games like metroid my moving your hands all over, but you looked like a DJ on smack. It had the 90 degree setup where it would sense combinations of moves, but I don't recall what that was for. Tyson was the only one that used a slightly more open setup - like 100 degrees. As I never had that game I can't really say what that got you, but commercials indicated you could punch at the thing and it would register it was a punch in the game.

        The stick I mentioned earlier was for flying/driving games and the buttons would trigger the sensors for A/B buttons. But, the ability to leave them constantly depressed (for RC Pro-AM) was impossible. If you had something that A would decrease throttle (B to inccrease) for example, I guess it might work, but nothing like that comes to mind. instead of it sensing the direct movement of the stick it relised on the sensors in the board to see that you were twisting the stick or not and was just as reliable as without the stick (see problems listed above).

        I came across it a few years ago in the orginal box. I took it out and I had carefully put everything back, including the foam between sides. It still had that new U-Force smell, something I have never experienced since, but I do associate with a lame failure.
  • Are they going to release a security patch?
  • ESP=Gullibility any way.
  • ESP eh...BRB. My spidey sences are tingling.
  • A while ago on Slashdot, I found a story which I can't remember the title of dealing with a new-agey looking game that read brain waves to play the game. It included such things as levitating and controlling water or something, and the various activities would be done by using various mind-states, ie. meditation. Does anybody remember the name of this game? Is it out yet? How is it?

  • "You mean you have to use your hands? That's like a baby's toy"

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