Hasta La Gadget!

R2 is squealing at me. Honest-to-God stormtroopers are standing guard nearby. Perfect conditions to prove that I’ve outgrown my Padawan pants, and can now move a plastic ball with my mind like a real Jedi.

Since I’m no Yoda, I still need my EEG headgear-which Jedi Uncle Milton built for me and sells as the Star Wars Force Trainer. It picks up my brain waves from sensors on a wireless headset and beams them to the receiver, which moves a floating ball in a tube only if I concentrate just so.

Just as Obi-Wan taught me, I relaxed my mind, unfocused my eyes, like trying to decipher the Snowspeeder Magic Eye poster I had hanging above my bed back home. No dice.

But just as the nearby goblin with flames for hair began to mock me, up it spins. Oh, there it goes, oh glorious Force! The ball is spinning! But R2, being unable to contain himself whenever shit starts levitating around him, of course ruins my concentration with his incessant beeping. But I did it, I really did it.

In all honesty, I think Qui-Gon may have been behind a nearby curtain, giving me a bit of a boost. Because from the point before the ball started spinning to when it took to the air, the only thing I did was cross my arms in disgust. Maybe that’s the sneakiness of the force—or maybe I only mesh with the DARK SIDE. Time to go drink a few dozen Midichlorian smoothies while I think things over.

The Star Wars Force Trainer, and EEG-like brain wave game that kind of works, will go on sale later this year for $100-$130. Video by the level-31 fire-headed Dark Side goblin also known as Matt Buchanan [Toy Fair 2009]

So yes, you know the drill: the economy reeks, we’re all tired of the daily dose of bad news. Engadget’s trying to counter-attack a little bit of that hurting, so here’s the deal: we’re going to hand out a new gadget every day (except for weekends) to lucky readers until we run out of stuff / companies stop sending things. Today we’ve got a set of eight Star Wars Mimobot USB flash drives on offer — each drive is 1GB, and man are they cute! Read the rules (no skimming — we hate that!) below and get commenting!

Special thanks to Mimoco for providing the drives!

The rules:

• Leave a comment below. Any comment will do, but if you want to share a tale of heart wrenching economic strife, that’s good too.
• You may only enter this specific giveaway once. If you enter this giveaway more than once you’ll be automatically disqualified, etc. (Yes, we have robots that thoroughly check to ensure fairness.)
• If you enter more than once, only activate one comment. This is pretty self explanatory. Just be careful and you’ll be fine.
  
• Contest is open to anyone in the 50 States, 18 or older! Sorry, we don’t make this rule (we hate excluding anyone), so be mad at our lawyers and contest laws if you have to be mad.
• Winner will be chosen randomly. The winner will receive 8 1GB Mimobot flash drives. Approximate value is $240.
• Entries can be submitted until Friday, February 6th, 11:59PM ET. Good luck!
• Full rules can be found here.

Filed under: Announcements

Engadget’s recession antidote: win a set of Star Wars Mimobot USB drives! originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 06 Feb 2009 12:07:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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I f***ing love Star Wars. I also love not spending a whole lot of money.

TV Games is gonna hook you up with another goodie. It’s dropping a Star Wars game that lets you take control of a few spacecrafts from the movies.

The graphics are no competition to those of the Xbox 360 or PS3, but this game comes with a cool controller, it’s only $30 bucks and it’s fun to play. Look for it in Q1 of 2009.

Post by PJ Jacobowitz

For PCMag’s full CES coverage, go to http://www.pcmag.com/category2/0,2806,2235882,00.asp.