You’ve probably got some old receipts crumpled up in your pocket. But the printer that makes them can also be used to play a game.
The game, called Receipt Racer, was developed by Joshua Noble and undef, comprised Martin Fuchs and Philip Whitfield.
Receipt Racer uses a thermal printer to generate a race track. The printer can spit it out quickly because it uses heat to print instead of ink or toner. A roll of printer paper only costs about 89 cents. But you still have to kill tree in order to play a game.
“50 meters is the maximum distance you are theoretically able to race in one run, before running out of paper,” the undef page on Receipt Racer says. “So ecologically it’s pretty much a disaster, just like any real car.”
The car is projected down onto the track being generated by the printer, and it’s controlled with an ordinary PS3 controller. “There is no game without an input device. So we were lucky each of us always carries a gamepad around,” undef said. “We use them a lot because they’re physical and you can control something without have to look at it.”
The game was created as part of a workshop called “Let’s Feed The Future,” organized by creativeapplications.net and held in Barcelona, Spain on June 8. This is a really clever design that this team built using materials at hand. You can play the game on undef’s Web site, minus the printer, of course. If you happen to have a thermal printer, a projector, and a game controller lying around, you can download the game to build it yourself.
For another project that uses a thermal printer, check out the Facebook status box. You’ll also like our post on a Game Boy printer that also uses video game technology to print.
