Okay, here's one for Aleks. THQ Wireless has developed a new Tamagotchi-style Hello Kitty game for mobile phones. In Hello Kitty My Best Friends, your role is to look after the loveable kitten or her sister Mimmy as they go about their cute little lives. If they look unhappy, you use a gloved hand cursor to point out fun stuff for them to do. And you can play along too thanks to a series of unlockable mini-games, including table tennis, disco dancing, baking and gardening, which all seem to have been modelled along the lines of Wario Ware Inc.
I wouldn't usually bother with this sort of thing, but for one crucial factor...
...it turns out that Hello Kitty My Best Friends is compatible with the Siemens CX70 EMOTY handset. This offbeat little phone comes with a special cover that features shake, stroke and squeeze sensors, allowing users to interact with applications through touch and movement rather than merely stabbing at the buttons. According to Siemens, the concept behind the EMOTY interface is to aid and encourage emotional communication and interaction – and what better way to illustrate this than through the digital novocaine of a Hello Kitty game…
Here, the motion sensors have specific functions depending on what Kitty is up to. Shaking the phone could just be a means of canceling an action, but in one mini-game it controls Kitty while she shakes a tree so that birds fly out. All very simple, of course, but this rudimentary haptic interface could have interesting ramifications for other game genres.
In fact, this isn't the only THQ Wireless title set to support Siemens' technology. The publisher is working on a special version of Sphinx And The Cursed Mummy for the handset. While playing as the Sphinx character, you can squeeze the handset to fire a dart, or shake it to stun enemies in the vicinity. As mummy, stroking the screen refills his electricity and fire bars.
This is a great way of addressing the unsuitability of most mobile phone keypads for gaming. Tiny buttons placed extremely close together may compliment the aesthetics of modern handset design and are fine for dialling numbers, but as the role of the mobile phone expands into entertainment and business functionality, we need a more user-friendly input system. Haptics may be the way ahead.
Siemens certainly isn't the only manufacturer to think so. Last month in Korea, Samsung revealed a new handset with more advanced haptic capabilities, allowing users to enter new numbers by simply wafting the phone around in the vague shape of the required digits. And in Japan yesterday, Vodafone revealed the Toshiba V603SH handset, which has a motion sensor that lets you navigate the options menu by moving the phone around. It also has a built-in TV tuner. And wait for it, it's gold!
You see, that's why Japan leads the world in consumer electronics.
