This is for anyone who doesn’t yet own a Wii, may have a PS2 but feels they’re missing out on all that oving about malarkey when playing your games. Do you remember the GameTrak that came out 4 years ago? Basically it was a device that sat on the floor with two strings on gloves which you wore. The device could then track where your hands were in 4d space and let you play golf and one where you punch people in the face. It’s still probably cheaper than joining a golf course or brawling after 10 beers on a Saturday night I suppose.
Well, now they’ve made three games, each with their own peripheral which lets you control the game. One’s a driving game, one’s a pool game and the other’s called Realplay Puzzlesphere. What you get is a Marble-Madness type game and a controller that looks like the jack from a game of bowls, with a d-pad and a red and green button on it. Rotate the ball in your hand and the ball on screen moves in that direction, thanks to a Mercury sensor. Press the green button and it applies the brakes to slow the ball down.
Realplay Racing is a pretty simple racing game with a small lightweight steering wheel.
Finally, Realplay Pool comes with a small pool cue, again with a d-pad on the handle so you can line up shots before cueing for real.
These are all going to retail at just under £30 each and be sell well before Christmas as presents that still buy games for PS2 owners, and considering 40% of all software sold is still for the PS2, these will sell, but I’m sure they won’t be used for more than a couple of hours of distraction.
My main criticism with all these games is that so much effort has been made on the peripheral, someone forgot to make the graphics any good in these games or make you actually play it for any other reason than you’re not using a joypad. Imagine if all Wii games were just you changing channel on the TV using your remote – just because you were holding something shaped like a remote!
They also plan to roll out Bowling and a new golf game, as well as tennis, so there’s something there for everyone. Personally, I still connect better with games using a joypad, I think these are for the casual gamer.
