Nintendo dabbled in virtual reality in the 80s?

Awesome! A technology named after this website (or maybe it was the other way around). Let’s take a virtual trip back to the 1980s when Nintendo was ho-humming about the creation of a new video game machine. This was before the days of a PlayStation or an Xbox, before we had Wii-motes and Grand Theft Auto. Imagine if instead of that grey block of goodness we called the NES, we had a fully immersive game with virtual reality controls. This is exactly the case presented in the video above, produced by some students as part of the annual Carnegie Mellon University Entertainment Technology Center’s Building Virtual Worlds Show.

Taken from the YouTube page:

This is a live-action performance from the annual Carnegie Mellon University Entertainment Technology Center’s (http://www.etc.cmu.edu) Building Virtual Worlds Show. The performance is from December 6th, 2006, and students have TWO weeks to brainstorm, develop, and implement a virtual world, which in this case, was required of us to make an entertaining experience for a large audience.

The performance is given in McConomy Auditorium in Carnegie Mellon, via the technology of the Playmotion. The playmotion is a motion sensor technology that receives data on the user’s head and two hands.

Members of the team include:
Paul Capriolo (programmer)
M.E. Chung (designer/fx)
Carlos Pineda (audio/stage mgmt/script)
Jake Rheinfrank (artist)

Can you name all the titles included? I got quite the kick out of the frozen Mega Man jumping-between-scenes bit. Ah, nostalgia combined with cutting edge technology in the 80s. And is that a young Shiggy I see? Good times.

Short URL: http://virtualreality.ca/lil