Eye Asteroids need no joystick

Remember when you first had a go with the game Asteroids on the Atari 2600? Boy, did that translation of the arcade game into the living room make a real impact in my life, although the graphics by today’s standards would not even be able to attract the attention of a 2-year old. Well, using a joystick to control where your little ship is supposed to fly and blast those rocks into smithereens can be quite a challenge in the later levels for newbies, but here is a new method of enjoying an old game. Aptly known as Eye Asteroids, this is the first eye-controlled arcade game that was released by Tobii, a company that deals mainly with eye-tracking tech.

Debuting at New York’s Dave & Buster’s arcade earlier this week, the game is just like the iPhone and iPad – it has one button, where you press it to start, and after that, the infrared sensors located below the display will scan your eyes and calibrate the system so that it will be as accurate as possible in interpreting where your eyes move. The moment your eyes are fixed on a target, a red laser will zap it, but you should be careful not to look at the health bonuses that cross by, while using just a little head movement will help you avoid radiation belts. If you want to play Eye Asteroids when wearing glasses, that is still possible, but the sensitivity will be inverse to the power of your prescription.

Eye Asteroids is not going to be cheap though, where only 50 units are available at a whopping $15,000 each. I guess I would rather have this in my living room than the iTree dock for the same price…

Edwin Kee
Categories: Gaming
Tags: game, games, tobii