[Via Barcade.com and Play Meter Magazine]
It’s always great to hear stories that come out of wishes granted by the Make-A-Wish foundation. This particular one deals with Ryan (last name not given), a 10 year old boy with a rare disease (also not listed what it is but it appears to make use of appendages such as his hands either difficult or impossible) whose wish it was to become a pinball wizard. Obviously due to his condition this would be a problem so a company called U Can Do Inc. modified a Stern Spiderman machine so Ryan and others that also suffer from similar conditions can play pinball. The new controls overrides the standard pin controls with large circular domd switches that can be slapped with one hand or two. If the player is
unable to use their hands, the feet may be used and if the player cannot use anything below the neck, they can be tapped with a twitch of the head. I have not seen anything like this for pinball before although I have for arcade titles (SF Rush 2049 is a good example). Ryan’s wish was granted by Fox 11 in Los Angeles, the Mak-A-Wish Foundation and U Can Do Inc.
[U Can Do Inc.] [Discuss on the Forum]
U Can Do are a great company. Really interested in your comment that video arcade games have been adapted for greater access – “SF Rush 2049 is a good example”. Would love to know more if you can tell me?
Barrie
http://www.OneSwitch.org.uk
I found this out by reading the manual for SF Rush 2049 one slow day at the arcade I managed. There is a section there where it states that the game has an option where players that don’t have the use of their feet can play where the game will do the gas for you. I checked it out and it’s an option that can be set by the operator – the only problem is that it takes a couple of seconds of not stepping on the gas for it to work (I tried it out of curiousity) but either way it lets someone enjoy the game.
Thanks very much for that. I wonder if anyone ever left that feature on…
Thought you might find these interesting:
http://www.oneswitch.org.uk/1/AGS/AGS-switch/5/arcade.htm
One switch accessible Namco arcade game (Star Trigon) and a two button accessible Namco sweet machine (Sweet Land) both with video clips.
http://www.oneswitch.org.uk/1/AGS/AGS-switch/5/arcade.htm