Kinetris offers an interactive, innovative way to showcase some of Kinect’s possibilities.
Conan Chen, a user on Vimeo, recently uploaded this video of him playing a game of Tetris on the Kinect. It has now been dubbed Kinetris, and the video shows clips of Chen using his hand motions to control and adjust the bricks as they appear in the Tetris grid.
The first thing I noticed was that it must be a very preliminary version. Chen’s image in the back, although displayed at good quality, also includes a somewhat choppy outline of his surrounding environment, which doesn’t exactly suit the clean look of Tetris. This wasn’t my greatest concern, as I’m sure if Kinetris does take off, the image will be replaced with either just a computer generated graphic that follows your movements or a more clean, restored version of you.
The bricks seemed to fall awfully slow! Chen was waiting for a good while before needing to adjust another brick. I’m sure this will change as well, because the hand movements allow for a far more interesting way of control. With that said, I’m pretty sure that the buttons on the Gameboy or Nintendo will still be faster than all these hand movements, as they’re just a click away whereas the movements and gesture take quite a bit of time for the Kinect to register. I can see the second hand or even the leg and foot coming into play. This would be quite funny, especially if different pieces required different combinations of body parts.
Kinect has certainly come a long way, from a minor concept to a full-blown system that has developers, students, and gamers clamoring to try it out and develop on it. I’m still quite amazed at the speed which this technology was adapted at, although I guess I shouldn’t be as the Wii has already been around for a longer time.
If you’ve got an Xbox 360 and Kinect, give Kinetris a try. I’m not sure exactly how, although I’m sure Conan Chen will give you a chance to demo it if you really asked nicely.
If you liked Kinetris, have a look at Hadoukens on the Kinect and Kinect with the Veltrobot.
Via: Crunchgear
