Hasta La Gadget!

Shoulder buttons? Never heard of ’em. Give us all our buttons in a nice rainbow-shaped array and a big stick for our southpaw and leave us well enough alone. Hori, the company behind the most righteous Tekken 6 arcade controller, is back with a Street Fighter-inspired effort for the true enthusiasts out there. This new deck is a direct copy of the Sanwa arcade cabinets housing Street Fight IV, meaning you can finally take your epic fighting skills home without fearing the misshapen things other people call controllers. PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 versions of the Real Arcade Pro Premium VLX will be shipping by the end of March, and you can hit the Joystiq link below to find out how to import one for yourself.

Hori Real Arcade Pro Premium VLX has a name to match its size, price originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 05 Feb 2010 08:42:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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XCM’s Fire gun controller for the PS3 might look like something you use for aiming at precise segments on your screen that happen to contain the heads, torsos or legs of your enemies; you know, like a light gun. Instead the controller is a motion-sensing affair, with dual analog controls along for the ride — more of an augmentation of traditional console controls than a replacement. We’ve seen this fail miserably before (see: SIXAXSIS), but we’re willing to give XCM the benefit of the doubt. The Fire controller is supposedly “70 percent done,” and there are a couple demo videos after the break. We still want a GameGun.

Continue reading XCM Fire takes the “light” out of light gun, still looks sufficiently violent

XCM Fire takes the “light” out of light gun, still looks sufficiently violent originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 17 Jan 2010 18:03:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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You didn’t think CES was over, did you? Saving a true gamer’s delight for last, we went along to meet with Microvision’s reps today and were introduced to its PicoP laser projector and gun gaming peripheral. The projection tech employed here is unique, as each pixel (848 x 480 resolution) is itself an RGB laser reflecting off a mirror which flips 60 times a second. What that results in is a permanently focused projection, no matter how much you wiggle, jiggle or maneuver the projector. The whole thing fits within 6cc and was designed to be embedded into phones. We snapped a few pics of the standalone projector and then moved on to the rifle gaming controller. Come along after the break to check out our hell-raising skills on video, as well as some more in-depth impressions of the hardware.

Continue reading Microvision laser projection gun hands-on

Microvision laser projection gun hands-on originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 11 Jan 2010 11:16:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Alright, we got a chance to check out iGUGU’s Gamecore setup, and we’re simultaneously impressed and disappointed. The fact that for $80 you can get all the hardware necessary to beam your PC video to your TV wirelessly and control games with a full QWERTY wireless controller is just plain great. We also love the form factor of the controller, since it’s basically a clone of the Xbox 360 controller — a little shameless, but our hands and fingers don’t seem to mind. Unfortunately, the drawbacks are many. First and foremost, iGUGU’s software is pretty abysmal, and for all its seeming attempts at simplifying access to games and media in a “TV friendly” manner, it only serves to complicate such actions. The second problem is that we’re just not sure a trackball could really serve to satiate the desire of most PC games for a mouse control. We tried out a FPS and would’ve much preferred a joystick nub for aiming the camera, and while there’s an accelerometer built into the controller, it felt overly sensitive in the racing game we tested — and has rarely been proven to be much beyond a gimmick in the console world outside of very specifically targeted software. That said, the Xbox-style triggers and shoulder buttons are great, and the QWERTY keyboard is uncomfortably cheap but very usable. Perhaps for lower-impact games that don’t involve the precision of a shooter or a racer we could see this working, but we’re unconvinced we’d really enjoy the majority of the “27,000 available PC games” at this thing’s disposal. Check out a video of it in action after the break.

Continue reading iGUGU Gamecore hands-on

iGUGU Gamecore hands-on originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 06 Jan 2010 16:06:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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We’ve seen plenty of far-fetched EMG-based input methods, like the concentration-demanding, head-based NeuroSky controller, but Microsoft Research is asking for a patent that involves much simpler gestures — and might actually make a bit of sense. As demonstrated in the video after the break, Microsoft’s connecting EMG sensors to arm muscles and then detecting finger gestures based on the muscle movement picked up by those sensors. It does away for the need of a pesky camera (or Power Glove) to read complicated hand gestures, and can even sense modified versions of the gestures to be performed while your hands are full. Microsoft’s developing a wireless EMG sensor module that could be placed all over the body, and while like all Microsoft Research projects this seems pretty far from market, there’s a small, optimistic part of us that could see some of the benefits here for controlling mobile devices. And boy do we love controlling mobile devices.

Continue reading Microsoft Research patents controller-free computer input via EMG muscle sensors

Microsoft Research patents controller-free computer input via EMG muscle sensors originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 03 Jan 2010 09:10:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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