Unfolding the 8-Bit Era: 8 players, 8 projectors, and one NES [video] | Hacker News Reader

Unfolding the 8-Bit Era: 8 players, 8 projectors, and one NES [video]

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55 pointsdoener8 comments

Get rid of the need to turn your head (e.g. turn it into an extended map with the active screen still centered), and you could do some interesting things with this and adventure games like Metroid or Zelda. Imagine playing the original Metroid but being able to zoom in or out Google Maps style to show more or less of the world around the current room.

Holy cow, it never occurred to me that old side scrollers could be hacked to offer compelling VR gameplay (Though I think the brief demo at the end of the video is still sub optimal)

Hmm. I think "compelling" might be overselling it. As an installation with 8-player serial co-op, it's awfully cool, but as a single-player VR thing, it's a mildly interesting gimmick.

As far as home uses of the technology, I'm most intrigued by the potential for automatically creating screenshot maps like you used to see in Nintendo Power. :D You'd have to elide the status bar for games that scroll in two dimensions, but that wouldn't be hard.

That is pretty cool. I suppose the "8-player" does not mean simultanioues 8-players but probably 4-player max what the NES can do and there is some multiplexing going on (using an Arduino) so you can have more people round the table for crowd control. Ah, yes, found the setup diagram:

http://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2015/1...

It's described in the video. They're playing single-player games; control rotates between eight players as the game's scrolling advances. Players have to coordinate to hand off control as they cross the borders, without the in-game character hesitating and getting shot or falling into a pit. The multiplexing is done outside of the actual NES, so its native capabilities don't matter.

Why not modern side scrollers too? I guess broforce would be great on this. They should contact the developers and have them support a custom version with 8 rotating players and possibly true support for the trailing screen.

This could also be very cool on games that scroll in all 4 directions where you explore a landscape...

Take this idea, but also

• use an untethered GearVR headset,

• emulate the NES on the smartphone inside the GearVR,

• use a bluetooth gamepad

• sit on a swivel chair and - perhaps -

• replace the perpendicular walls with the inside of a large cylinder ...

sounds awesome!

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