Assignment 5: Vicarious VR

Description

Before this project even started our producer already had a specific vision in mind. He wanted to create a game that uses giant video game controllers so big that they would take two people to operate. With the idea of the platform set, the challenge became to find a game that would work well with it. I pushed for a unique game since I've personally never liked the idea of forcing collaboration by making two people do together what one person can do better on his own. In my experience, cooperative gameplay works best when two players do together what neither could have done alone.

During the design week we tried tirelessly to come up with a unique cooperative experience, but it eventually became clear that if we were building giant controllers, and they would likely be Nintendo controllers, that we would have to use Nintendo's iconic character Mario in some way. After much more brainstorming, the decision was made to do a remake of the original Mario Bros battle game.

Choosing such a simple game was supposed to make things easy, and the basic structure was not too difficult, but we decided not to stop with the basic game and created a total of five levels each with their own enemies and hazards. We also had the less time to work on this project than any other since one week was mandated for design and most of another week saw half of our team missing while they worked at IAAPA. Compounded with some pipeline issues and the complexity of the game this ended up being my hardest project of the semester. This gave me a good taste of what the often talked-about "crunch time" in the video game industry is all about.

Of course, the real stars of this project were the controllers, which Andy, who I worked with on Duck Hunt, did a brilliant job of constructing. The controllers were so good that whatever anything on screen took a back seat. The game did play great, but it was somewhat hard to play when two people were trying to control a single character.

The total package was very well received and ended up being showcased in the end-of-semester show.

Movie

SuperDuperMario.avi (13MB), a screen capture of two people playing the game from the keyboard. This movie requires the xVid codec to play.

Screenshots