We’ve got nothing but love for arcade games that came out of a school project this week. Seriously – if you have one out there then send us a link to info on the game and I’ll be happy to post about it when I get the time. Personally I’ve always been fascinated by ‘homebrew’ projects. As an avid Atari collector I have quite a few in my collection that spans from the Atari 2600 to the Atari Jaguar. They are usually an effort of love that takes a lot of hard work to make something that likely will not be noticed amongst the masses and when it comes to arcade games you really have to be hardcore to get these thing off the ground as you have to do 
more than just design the game and in the cases of these school projects they design the hardware and the controls.
Anyways, onto the project. Called ‘Bionic Roshambo’ by Kieran Nolan for his master’s degree project in Interactive Media, it takes rock, paper and scissors and makes it into an arcade game by using custom built glove controllers. No they aren’t modified NES Power Glove’s – they actually detect what hand gesture you make to use in the game. While the game is fairly simple I think that this sort of technology could be enhanced and integrated into other uses for arcade gaming as well, which is another strength that arcades have is in the flexibilty and creativity one can institute in the controls.
Here is a very short direct feed video of the gameplay; also below is a link to the website with more information along with the thesis attached to the project. Unfortunately the pics on the site are rather small but at least you can get an idea of what it’s like.
