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LGF: Dorkfest gets creative with consoles

Fringe event at the London Games Festival gives inventors a chance to show what they can do with gaming hardware and a bit of imagination.

When he felt the geek and gaming community had failed to celebrate the 30th anniversary of Pong last year, James Larsson decided to honor the game in his own way. He created a pair of touch-sensitive women's leather boots, and connected them to an old hacked Pong console, allowing players to control the Pong paddle by squeezing and groping the boots.

The British inventor and hardware hacker's "Fetish Pong" was just one of the oddities shown at the London Games Festival's InSync Dorkfest: Console Hacks last night. The fringe event took a humorous and lighthearted look at the unexpected and entertaining things people do with games machines and other gadgets.

Larsson, talking about the history of Pong and early gaming, said the inspiration for his leather-bound homage to the first affordable mainstream video game came from Nintendo's popular Wii console.

"It's interesting, that of the big consoles the Nintendo Wii is generally thought of as having the least powerful graphics and computational abilities," Larsson said. "But it makes up for this by having a really exotic [controller]."

Larsson went one better than Nintendo with tactile control in Pong and added a twist; players who miss a point are hit by a leather whip from the middle of the console, powered by a blender motor.

The Dorkfest event was inspired by the international "Dorkbot" meetings of artists, engineers and others involved in the creation of electronic art. The event not only featured old technology being hacked to new uses, but the discussion of new ideas on the use of technology, especially outside its intended boundaries.

Matthew Garrett, a developer on the One Laptop Per Child Project (OLPC), which works to put custom-made, affordable, and durable wireless laptops into the hands of schoolchildren in the developing world, explored the platform's ability as a games machine. He described the OLPC as "the BBC Micro for the 21st century," a versatile educational computer with the potential to introduce gaming culture to a whole new generation of kids. Garrett said, "It's designed primarily as an educational project, but obviously like any other computer device, it's going to end up used for games."

There aren't currently many games for the machine beyond "Connect 4," but that's something Garrett believes will quickly change as OLPC moves beyond pilot projects in Africa, Asia, and South America. He also suggested the early networked nature of the OLPC (all machines are linked wirelessly to each other), its technical limitations, and educational focus might lead to a more collaborative gaming culture than in the West.

Music for the event came courtesy of Matthew Applegate, aka "Pixelh8", and the Nintendo Game Boy. The handheld hacker and chip tuner demonstrated his Game Boy synthesizer, which played complex funky electronica compositions. Built out of old Game Boy cartridges, the synthesizer slots into any Game Boy, allowing users to manipulate the sounds to create music.

The final speaker for the event was Tim Hunkin, engineer, cartoonist, and maker of TV's "The Secret Life of Machines." Hunkin is a fan of the old arcades that introduced so many gamers to their hobby. He talked the audience through the video of his "Under the Pier Show," located in Southwold, a penny arcade featuring a number of humorous, coin-operated machines created in his home workshop. It features rides like "Bathyscape," which simulates a submarine adventure and "Mobility Masterclass," in which you walk a zimmer (walker for the elderly) across a road. All of his creations use moving parts and recorded video, being more comic simulations than games. Hunkin suggested that modern arcades have "lost the plot" and that there is a lot of scope to redefine them so they attract people: "They only seem to want to make gambling machines nowadays, so it's a good time to reinvent them."

33 Comments

  • The_Weekend

    Posted Oct 29, 2007 9:45 am GMT

    hahaha, funny article

    • Login to rate this comment
  • chakan2

    Posted Oct 29, 2007 6:54 am GMT

    "Before they introduce a video gaming culture in 3rd World countries, they should give them food, shelter and a future first..."

    We can't offshore all of our jobs if we just give them food. Duh. They don't need to eat, they just need to write our code.

    • Login to rate this comment
  • Doolum

    Posted Oct 29, 2007 5:49 am GMT

    nice little bit of info.now i know..

    • Login to rate this comment
  • Delongman

    Posted Oct 29, 2007 3:30 am GMT

    Before they introduce a video gaming culture in 3rd World countries, they should give them food, shelter and a future first...

    • Login to rate this comment
  • Giratina667

    Posted Oct 28, 2007 5:11 pm GMT

    Well said Vulpis,it's nice to see games put into impractical use.

    • Login to rate this comment
  • Vulpis

    Posted Oct 28, 2007 3:15 pm GMT

    Cool...people who remember the homebrew origins of the amusement game industry that eventually grew into pinball and then into the video game industry we know today...

    • Login to rate this comment
  • MasterChief725

    Posted Oct 28, 2007 2:05 pm GMT

    awesome

    • Login to rate this comment
  • DrMario57

    Posted Oct 28, 2007 1:39 pm GMT

    21.1 JIGGAWATTS!!!

    • Login to rate this comment
  • Devvy01

    Posted Oct 28, 2007 8:51 am GMT

    does that use a flux capacitor?

    • Login to rate this comment
  • Erikf86

    Posted Oct 28, 2007 4:11 am GMT

    That's pretty awesome.

    I like the synth

    • Login to rate this comment
  • Kyran87

    Posted Oct 28, 2007 2:59 am GMT

    Damn - shoulda gone to this.

    • Login to rate this comment
  • RaiKageRyu

    Posted Oct 27, 2007 10:21 pm GMT

    Kinky stuff

    • Login to rate this comment
  • EternalMax

    Posted Oct 27, 2007 9:51 pm GMT

    eh....it's a cool project....but no practical application. still, pong w/ boots. nice!

    • Login to rate this comment
  • nickythenewt21

    Posted Oct 27, 2007 8:05 pm GMT

    This would be fun to go to. Just to see non-developers make their own systems is cool.

    • Login to rate this comment
  • NA3D

    Posted Oct 27, 2007 6:55 pm GMT

    The people who dont get this have no place on this website, haha. This is great...

    • Login to rate this comment
  • redskinStu

    Posted Oct 27, 2007 4:09 pm GMT

    They're dorks awright.
    And I'm a dork for spending seven seconds reading this article.

    • Login to rate this comment
  • OGNeo69

    Posted Oct 27, 2007 3:06 pm GMT

    and I just wasted a whole 2 sec reading your comment mailbox..thanks

    • Login to rate this comment
  • UltimateRAGEX

    Posted Oct 27, 2007 2:40 pm GMT

    What a piece of s***!

    • Login to rate this comment
  • mailbox2112

    Posted Oct 27, 2007 2:01 pm GMT

    What is the whole point of this article? I wasted 2 whole minutes of my time reading this.

    • Login to rate this comment
  • darkchaostitan

    Posted Oct 27, 2007 11:01 am GMT

    Unless I could get one of those free labtops...
    This article was completely useless.

    • Login to rate this comment
  • BigDaddy973

    Posted Oct 27, 2007 10:36 am GMT

    WTF?

    • Login to rate this comment
  • Kaner31

    Posted Oct 27, 2007 8:08 am GMT

    yeah arcades lost their flare 10 or so years ago when they decided to quit fixing the broke down games.

    • Login to rate this comment
  • kori911

    Posted Oct 27, 2007 7:18 am GMT

    Wow, not that was really neat. Thanks for the write up!

    • Login to rate this comment
  • dorohala

    Posted Oct 27, 2007 6:29 am GMT

    I would like to go there and see the event but I dont have the time!!!

    • Login to rate this comment
  • diablobasher

    Posted Oct 26, 2007 10:50 pm GMT

    The shock vest with CoD2 is much better. I'm all for honoring old games, but Pong and it's thief 'creator' judt don't deserve to be honored. Especially after his recent comments about modern games.

    • Login to rate this comment
  • KingChainz31684

    Posted Oct 26, 2007 10:34 pm GMT

    human gets hit i am guessing hence the mention of the blender. other wise it would prolly be a half naked dominatrix

    • Login to rate this comment
  • lamprey263

    Posted Oct 26, 2007 7:39 pm GMT

    that's a really cool name for the event, I'd totally go to it if it were local

    • Login to rate this comment
  • swyg

    Posted Oct 26, 2007 7:31 pm GMT

    players who miss a point are hit by a leather whip from the middle of the console, powered by a blender motor.


    The player as in a first-person perspective on the screen, or as in literally the HUMAN player getting hit?

    It it's the latter, whoa.

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  • MasterChief725

    Posted Oct 26, 2007 7:13 pm GMT

    wow lol

    • Login to rate this comment
  • DonutTrooper

    Posted Oct 26, 2007 6:25 pm GMT

    Lives up to it's name, but it's something we live up to, every day. Be proud of it!

    • Login to rate this comment
  • Reetesh

    Posted Oct 26, 2007 6:23 pm GMT

    Dorkfest?

    Cool title!

    • Login to rate this comment
  • LINKloco

    Posted Oct 26, 2007 6:14 pm GMT

    Ha.

    • Login to rate this comment
  • Lub1

    Posted Oct 26, 2007 5:58 pm GMT

    funny stuff

    • Login to rate this comment
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