One-switch Accessible Dance Dance Revolution

The rough video above demonstrates an off-the-shelf solution for C-SID owners for one-switch dance gaming. The video would have been a lot more fun if you'd seen someone pogo-ing on a single pressure mat to play, but I wasn't going to put myself up for public ridicule. I don't dance if I can possibly help it. It's not a good thing to witness...

Anyway, the solution is to use 3x Stereo headphones splitters/2-into-1 adapters and 3x 3.5mm patch leads (stereo or mono both work) available from the likes of Maplin.

The game is Konami's Dancing Stage Fever on PS2, and demo'ed with old-fart music that I quite like on Easy first then Difficult second. Great features are contrast control options and the ability to play a song through no matter how many arrows you miss. This then enables the game to be played by anyone where you simply try to better your own best score, or that of a group. 

Low Force / Pressure PS3 Joystick

The video above showcases a very light pressure joystick being used alongside some switches to play Gran Turismo 5. This uses a LEPMIS PS3-SAP interface with the Low Throw Low Force Analogue Joystick and switches. This set-up could work equally well with the Ultra Light switches from Marblesoft.

Something Special

Updated info on Something Special cribbed from the SpecialEffect Accessible GameBase: "To celebrate the 100th episode of children's Makaton based television show, Something Special, the BBC launched a fantastic accessible on-line area.

It includes UK signing, symbols, songs, art activities, stories and of course games.

Almost all of the games work nicely in a cause and effect manner. Some are switch accessible, some for the keyboard, some eye-toy like for using the web-cam and some point and click accessible. That covers all the main input devices so far as I can see.

The most accessible of these games are in the Something Special: Out and About section, being Balloon Pop, Spotty Bag, Dress Up Mr Tumble and Tumble Faces.

Hugely recommended for very young kids, and anyone with an interest in Makaton, which is a reduced version of British Sign Language created to support learning disabled people.

Update: For anyone interested in the creation of the Something Special games and their highly accessible nature take a look at the following links:

BBC Internet Blog overview and design principles plus senior designer Ian Hamilton's own page on this work."
 

Skoog Skores

The latest free upgrade (1.30) to the Skoog musical instrument brings "Skores" to life. Within this new feature, you can select a song from a drop down menu, then play guided by a flow of coloured shapes. It works really well in practice and will help a lot of musicians who find traditional music scores far too difficult.

Excitingly, I hear rumours of a one-side to play musical Skores in the works. Can't wait to see and try that out.

All I Want for Christmas...

...actually, I might pass on these for the moment, thanks. Via "this isn't happiness".

SpecialEffect at REPLAY 2011

Replay was an exhausting ear-blistering pleasure. It was a privilege to run the SpecialEffect stand populated mostly with games using simplified control methods mostly from my personal geek-a-tronic stash. So what did we have?




1. A dance mat game using alternative controllers. These included single-switch play and a "pogo-dance-mat". In the end,  Dancing Stage Fever on a standard TV just couldn't compete with DDR:UK's real coin-op dance machines positioned opposite, so the slightly shoddy Gottlieb Pinball and very brilliant Destruction Derby took the slack.


2. A one-point or one-press to play game. Shenmue Duck races raised some grins. I guess not everyone was expecting bow-tie wearing ducks. We played so that if you got a top three place, you won a prize. Including 1989 Nintendo bubble-gum. Tasty. That got swapped at times with Tekken 6 that got bashed within an inch of its life. Amazing how tough those accessibility switches are. Thought the table would collapse at one stage.


3. Atari Ms.Pac-Man played against a single ghost (there's normally four coming after you) using a one-handed ASCII Grip controller. Other times I ran Cookie Monster Munch using the Kids Controller. Googly. Star Trigon got an outing here too.

4. Vectrex Minestorm. Quite a few people were left very confused by this. I had a single switch on a Flexi mount. Some people thought the Flexi was a joystick and were wiggling it about.  Others thought the switch was a steering wheel. Later I put a switch on a Trabasack. Some people started to wiggle the Trabasack thinking it was some kind of motion sensitive controller. Nope. It's a one-switch game. Just play!


5. Pure one-switch games: Fotonica and Space Invaders. Both went down pretty well. People found Space Invaders very hard with just one-switch, so after a while I turned off the Space Invaders shooting at you. Wished I'd had the bass thump in effect, but it was loud enough there I guess. Ears took a few days to return to normal.


6. The un-game "Doodle-City" in Atari's I, Robot. This was to show off a free-play and no pressure area of a game. Atari did it first here with their art-toy. When this wasn't running, Uo Poko was up showing off a super-colourful multi-player one-switch playable game.


Most popular of our games was Tekken 6 for sure. And no red-ring of death for the Xbox nor melted Vectrex I was happy to see. On the stand I met some great people, such as the two Andy's from Ovine of Whacka Monty fame, Nintendisco and Mark of the inspirational Games Britannia. I was also chuffed to bits with the inclusion of "A Brief History of Accessible Gaming" in the Replay magazine available at the show.


Away from the SpecialEffect stand, tireless volunteer James Harkness beavered away getting a hugely enjoyable after-show party sorted with proceeds going to SpecialEffect and GamesAid.


And self-indulgently, I loved Blackpool's five miles of illuminations and was plenty impressed by the tower. Games I most enjoyed playing were mentalist Bishi Bashi Special, laser-disk Astron Belt and Badlands (one-switch), Pole Position whilst throwing bugs and glitches at me and the brilliant range of pinball machines. So huge thanks to the organisers Dave, Matt and Gordon and all others that supported us at Replay. Nice one.
 

50 Words for Snow

Thanks to Michelle Hinn for pointing me to a place to listen to Kate Bush's absorbing and relaxing "50 Words For Snow" LP. Wonderful.