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How the Nintendo Amusement Park Works
Tito! S. writes "HowStuffWorks has up an article describing how the Nintendo Amusement Park works. This is the New York city area theme park in the making with a physically augmented ride themed around Super Mario Bros. They plan to make the side-scrolling course 100 meters long with a safe and fully interactive course with foam crash padding platforms powered by hydraulic actuators." From the article: "It's really a single 'ride' — a real-life interactive adventure that allows players to dress up as Mario or Luigi, enter the Mushroom Kingdom and perform the actions that the heroes perform in the video game. Players can jump over obstacles, land on and ride moving platforms, and smash enemies. They can even collect gold coins and punch power-up boxes."
See? Wii graphics will be just fine. If that wasn't the most realisticly rendered white sheet hanging in the background, I don't know what is.
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What sound do people on rollercoasters make? Hint: it's not Xbox 360.
While useful in the game, I'd avoid eating the mushrooms at this theme park.
nintendo has nothing to do with this. http://nintendoamusementpark.com/
To give you an idea of how much action fits in 100 meters, read this: A lot of NES games are drawn in the same scale as Super Mario Bros. 2 with 16 pixels = one meter, assuming Luigi is 2 meters tall and Mario a bit shorter than that. The NES screen is 256 pixels wide, and the first level of the original Super Mario Bros. is about 10 screens long, or a bit longer than this 6.25-screen course.
Another nit: The white glove in the picture in the article is inaccurate, as the Mario Bros. and most other Japanese animated characters have five digits on each hand, not four like Mickey Mouse.
. . . bake a cake for me if I succesfully finish the course?
When you leave the park, do you get a white bouncy star... to remind you to get a life?
"Twice half-assed makes an ass whole." --Solomon K. Chang
If this had come out 14 years ago, it would have been a sure-fire hit, but now I am not so sure. It seems that VR stuff is nowhere near as popular as it used to be. Also, I think that theme parks may have seen a decline in recent years with the rise of online amusements (I heard that Yellowstone National Park has seen a decline in tourists because people are content to look at photos of all the wildlife on Yellowstone's web site). Also, amusement parks generally appeal to young children, and Mario might not be as popular with kids today as he was when I was young (14 years ago).
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Does the "We love your characters! It's an homage!" line usually work on legal departments of large companies? My bet is no.
They're developing a project with intentions of taking it commercial all the while using the Nintendo logo and name. I'm not fan of Intellectual Property. I think the concept stinks. I'm not faulting them for using Nintendo characters. But using the name and logo to me implies some affiliation which this page specifically says there isn't any. That's pretty flagrant.
I just wasted your mod points! HA!
Active winch support systems have been used for movie stunts for a few years now. For a good overview of how this works, rent "Underworld: Evolution" and watch the special features. It's really funny. First the stunt guys practice the stunt on a big padded mockup of the set until they get it right. The movements are recorded. Then, on the actual set, the actors are pulled through the same motions by servo-controlled winches. In post-production, the wires are removed from the images.
Yes, that's how Kate Beckinsale does all those high jumps and landings.
This guy does it much better:
http://www.albinoblacksheep.com/video/mariolive