Inside a new London video gaming venue, players become part of the game itself, running through a projected PAC-MAN maze, racing electric karts, and fighting off an alien invasion.
‘Arcade Arena’ uses projections, tracking sensors, and live performers to turn familiar arcade-style games into physical experiences people play together.
The game PAC-MAN Live Experience at Arcade Arena London keeps the familiar rules of the original arcade version. Players collect pellets and fruit for points, avoid ghosts that can cost them lives or points, and take on a series of timed challenges. Up to 10 people can play at once, competing as their own versions of PAC-MAN inside the projected arena.
Matt Stubbs, director of creative at Little Lion Entertainment and who helped develop the PAC-MAN Live Experience, says, “When you’re playing PAC-MAN on the arcade machine, it’s top-down, and you are guiding PAC-MAN around the maze, trying to escape from the ghosts and picking up the power pellets. With this version, you become PAC-MAN. And also, it’s multiplayer, so up to 10 people can be PAC-MAN. Step into the shoes of PAC-MAN, and you enter the space, and it’s like you’re in the game. You are sort of down the fiber optic cable of the game, and you are immersed in the game itself.”
The technology tracks each player as they move around the room.
Infrared trackers on the players’ vests are read by sensors, while projection technology changes the floor beneath them and the virtual stadium around them.
That means the system knows when a player has collected a pellet, hit a fruit target, crossed into danger, or been caught by a ghost.
Stubbs says, “I’ve got a real thing about getting people out of their bedrooms again, getting people out of their houses and bringing people together, socializing and enjoying something together as a group of friends, family. Not wearing headsets, not wearing VR headsets, seeing it all appear in real time in real life.”
This article and video were provided by The Associated Press.