Welcome to March, everybody! I know it’s a couple days late, but March is great because it puts you that much closer to spring. And what’s so great about spring? It’s not winter. Snow is for old ladies who have no need to go outside and kids who enjoy sledding more than they enjoy being not cold. I’m not one of those kids. So, happy March, and here’s to warm weather!

 

Anyway, I’d like to direct your attention to the video at the top if you haven’t already looked at it. It’s a really cool concept, and I hope to see it in the future of gaming. If you absolutely refuse to watch the video (which I finally figured out how to embed!), then it’s basically about a cool little computer program this guy makes that changes the perspective of what’s on the TV screen based on where your head is located. He uses the Wii tracking technology to accomplish it, allowing anyone to experience this really cool 3-D effect by downloading the program off his website.

 

The concept looks really, really (gotta have two for emphasis) awesome. I mean, imagine applying this technology to video games. You want to peer around a corner to shoot the bad guys, you actually move your head to change your view. But I guess the Xbox Kinect could theoretically do that, too, if it actually had good games (although Sonic Free Riders looks pretty good; I’ve always been a fan of racing games). But anyway, the most exciting this about the “head tracking” is that it gives you the most realistic looking 3-D yet, and it doesn’t even need a special TV.

 

So, yes, the head tracking sounds all great and wonderful, but if you do apply it to video games, there is one thing I take issue with. It’s not that only one person can see it as 3-D–no, that can be fixed with a helpful setup called “split screen.” What I’m afraid of is wanting to play a really addictive game late at night and being too tired to move anything other than my fingers. You gamers know what I’m talking about. It’s 3 a.m., you’ve consumed more Mountain Dew than you’d like to admit, and you’ve been playing the best game in the world for the past 6 hours. There is no way you’re going to have enough energy to take a deep breath after a difficult boss, much less move the upper half of your body to look around a corner. I experienced something similar when playing Twilight Princess on the Wii. So many lost hearts that could have been avoided if only the attack command had been just a simple button…