Natal uses "you" as an input device.

You’ve probably heard about Project Natal by now. It’s Microsoft’s “secret” project that lets you use your body as the input device for the Xbox Live. No controllers, no wires, no headgear or gloves. If you liked using Nintendo Wii’s controller to play games you’ll love the freedom and increased capability of using your body.

I recently got to experience Project Natal first hand. Timely because today sources report that we’ll find out all at the E3 Conference this June. A few observations:

First: This IS going to be a really cool step forward in gaming/entertainment and the future of humans as input devices.

Second: Don’t even think about using your tennis lessons. On a cold New York evening a few weeks ago, my colleagues were invited by Microsoft to come over to a nearby loft and play a game called Ricochet. It’s sort of a cross between table tennis and soccer. As balls are heaved at you on the screen (often multiple balls at once) you could swat, kick, or head butt them back at the screen. Natal–which was an add-on peripheral to an Xbox when we saw it demo’ed–tracks your movements and the balls respond to your thwacks. Ricochet showed my body as a shadow silhouetted on the screen (thankfully not true to real body proportions–everyone looks identical). It turns out that Natal was much better at responding when I faced the screen and moved my arms and legs to the side.

While it appears to know about backhands and tennis’ side stance, playing it sideways is not likely to win you as many points. Another game speculated for release includes an interactive story about a boy, Milo, and his camera.

Third: Clear the Area

Reyne Rice, a toy trends expert, got more points than me during our demo session (she faced forward) but she had other, arguably more serious, problems. Rice’s shoe (no laces) flew off her foot in a serious kick and came inches from smashing the screen. While Natal is said to be less dangerous than Wii, which suffers from occasional flying controllers (even with a wristband), it’s best to dress appropriately. No flying clothing.

Fourth: Beyond Blue Screen

Those who’ve followed gaming, animation, and filmmaking know about bluescreen technology where background images are projected onto a blue screen and the actor or weatherman interacts with the graphic. There were many early attempts to use bluescreen technology involving a player interacting with a game image on the computer screen. Natal is much more nuanced, recognizing all sorts of gestures, and reportedly it will recognize voice inputs as well.

Observation Five What the Tech!

As any good geek would, I asked the Microsoft PR folks a few tech questions and got very little in the way of satisfying answers. The Natal unit is currently shown as an add-on peripheral. It’s a horizontal box smaller than a DVD player. Clearly, the box holds a combination of digital camera and motion sensors. As best I could tell, there was a green camera light and a red one in the unit, which suggests two cameras that do some sort of 3D magic. Intrigued, I discovered that the cameras probably work together, one to capture the image and the second to give it depth.

Once a 3D picture is compiled, software magic takes over. Basically, Natal knows about various skeletal systems (height and body type) and knows about the kind of movements its games cause people to make. At PixelSumo, geeks can get a more in-depth explanation. And, at PopSci, you’ll get a good sense of the amount of processing power it takes for you to thwack a ball with your head. Staggering.

She’s Computer Engineer Barbie and she sprang to life via the popular vote of consumers all over the world. They voted on what Barbie’s next career should be for the “I Can” Barbie Series.

Never mind that’s career  #125 on the Barbie chart.  But, to add to Barbie’s cred, Mattel worked with the Society of Woman Engineers and the National Academy of Engineers to make sure their creation was emblematic. (Easy to imagine a bunch of female engineers dressing up Barbie isn’t it?)

I’ve never been much of a Barbie lover–even as a kid I was more into decapitation and mutilation than dressing up my Barbies.  And I could make a ton of jokes about Binary Barbie the engineer.

But I won’t. Because if Computer Engineer Barbie could convince one young girl that it’s cool, OK, and even great, then Barbie earned her keep.  Mattel is providing girls with a code to get onto the Barbie website for online game content.  Hopefully, Barbie will be doing more than picking out the office furniture.

By the way, the next runner up? The #126 Barbie is a news anchor.  Both are being unveiled at this week’s Toy Fair in New York City and will be available this winter.

Barbie, all you’re missing is a pocket protector, a cup of Java, and some really unhealthy snacks.

You go girl!

Goo is back, reincarnated as an iPhone/iTouch app called Making Faces. It’s a hoot. Load in any image and, using your fingers, you can pinch, bulge, spike, twirl, wave, ripple, nudge, smear, and otherwise whack-out your images. Then turn them into a time-lapse movie. The true power of this $2.99 app won’t be fully realized until you can email your creation to friends, but in the meantime you can definitely have a load of fun making faces.

A Publishing System for Young Kids: Tikatok

The cofounder of this site was sitting in a bookstore with her kids when she realized that every book on the shelves was written by an adult. The epiphany? Create a site where kids can publish. Tikatok brings out the storyteller in every kid, allowing them to see the fruits of their labor shared with others on the web. Posting a story is free. Creating a book and selling it has varying costs depending on the size of the book. Story Sparks, an idea generator, helps those with writer’s block and it’s relatively easy to add artwork, too. (Average price for printed copies is around $20.)

A Stay-cationer’s Dream: Wii Sports Resort

Players participate in a virtual vacation on an island with 12 different activities. Basketball, table tennis, canoeing, archery—the games are eclectic and tons of family fun. Sports Resort is one of the first Wii games to use Motion Plus—Nintendo’s new accessory. It allows the game to track the motion of your forearm and wrist which makes table tennis and archery more realistic. But the new accessory adds to the price and doesn’t add anything new to older Wii games. ($49.99)

Summer of Apollo:

This one won’t cost you a dime. The moonwalk (no, not the Michael Jackson kind) has captured and re-captured the imagination of kids and adults everywhere. Earth.google.com/moon is a joint project of NASA and Google. You can zoom in and actually see the 1969 footprints from the first spacewalk and take an guided tour narrated by Apollo astronauts.

A Quirky Game for Teens: Little King’s Story

For the teens in the house, this quirky masterpiece mixes adventure, strategy, and a heavy dose of whimsy. The plot begins with a young king that inherits a mess of a kingdom. Done in something similar but not as irritating as anime style graphics, the game includes cultural references and clever innuendo as the king (you) assembles his motley crew of subjects. Be warned: there are scenes with drunken and crude behavior. Normally I’m no fan of the anime style nor lengthy multicharacter games, but this one seems to be the pacesetter. And if you don’t believe me, see what the gamers have to say. ($49.99)

And what should you be avoiding this summer?

Even with the substitutions, it’s undeniably a traditional shoot ‘em up game. You can play a death match where it’s kill or be killed, you can chat about killing each other while you shoot (see screenshot). Water gun or not, it looks a bit creepy to have the barrel of a gun pointed at a gathering on the beach, especially if they represent the other members of your family. And in this game, you can die from getting too wet.

For a video of the game visit YouTube.

THQ  Drawn to Life: The Next Chapter:

Just introduced on the Wii, this game combines kids creativity and game playing.  Using a set of familiar looking paint tools kids design their own characters to star in video games.  The characters can even articulate their limbs, giving them lifelike moves.  Once the character is completed you can  place it  in a simple game, drawing in your own obstacles as you go. You can even draw a bridge to get you across a river with a special action ink, or a draw a ball that bounces.  The game you play is the one you’ve created. That’s both inspired and loads of fun.
Leapfrog  Zippity 

Zippity looks like a cross between a pogo stick and a Dance Dance Revolution mat. It’s played on the Wii. Young kids will stand on the  mat,  with their stick held firmly in their hands . On a TV screen they’re be watching their favorite Disney characters and using the stick they’re interacting as they watch  Using Playhouse Disney characters like Winnie the Pooh and Mickey, Zippity presents  kids with dances to do, jumping and movement, and learning fun.  Priced at $79 it’s a mini-Wii game for the mini-est users.

NetPal 

A netbook of their own.  Disney and ASUS teamed up to create a $350 netbook designed for kids. That means safe browsing, parental controls with plenty of room for parents to adjust, customizable screensavers with themes from Disney’s Cars, WALL-E and others.

An ASUS netbook under its skin, the Netpal has an interface that’s all Disney. The keyboard is spillproof and a Shock shield protects the netpal  from damage due to  accidental drops.  Naturally it’s available in Princess Pink and Magic Blue.

Leapfrog Tag Reader Jr:

 Leapfrog’s Tag Reading System used a special magic digital pen to read aloud to young readers.  Now the youngest pre-readers get a Tag of their own, called Tag Jr.  Instead of a pen, the handheld device is shaped more like a big rubber stamp.  The child presses the tag reader junior to the book page and all sorts of things begin to happen.  Stories get read, songs are sung, shapes and colors called out.  The books are made of really durable heavy cardboard so the system is dribble and drool proof.

Imagine Series: For girls who dream about what they want to be when they grow up Ubisoft created a series of  unique videogame introductions to the working world. Last year the big hits were Imagine Doctor, Movie Star and Babysitter. .This year they’re adding artist, boutique owner, detective, fashion designers, salon stylist, zookeeper and a few others to the lineup.  The games have become quite successful. Each gives you a taste of a career with simple games from picking patterns for fashions to putting together clues to solve a mystery. For girls ages 6-14 available on Nintendo DS.

First Up: Nintendo Wii

Species: Gamer Familia—Wii has the widest appeal to families, but hardcore gamers turn their noses skyward.

Characteristics: If President Obama was reincarnated as a game machine he’d be a Nintendo Wii. The Wii message is all about inclusivity. The company’s mission is to get everybody playing a game and everybody moving their bodies while they play. The success of the Wii and the Wii Fit are right on target with the mission. They have a diverse offering of software from a variety of publishers.

2009 Maturation: New hardware announcements at E3 included the Wii MotionPlus.

Slip your Wii Remote into this special jacket and you'll get increased precision allowing you to play new games.

By adding a sensitive gyroscope to the Wii Remote the company adds a more precise feel to the games. An archery game, for example, is sensitive to the tension of the bow, a ping-pong match really lets you control your force, spin, and speed. The Wii Fit, the balance board that brought women into the fold by appealing to gaming as a weight loss activity, also got some spruce up. Wii Fit Plus offers more exercise (think about directional hip shifting and more personalized fitness routines with more feedback).

More personalization for your special workout.

Super Mario was superstar. The red-shirted plumber is now featured in a multiplayer game, a new Olympic game. Also previewed was the Wii Vitality Sensor, a finger clip that measures pulse and galvanic skin response. No games were demoed for the vitality sensor, but you can just imagine Nintendo doing some cool things with biofeedback, relaxation, and meditation, can’t you?

Adding a new dimension to game play this peripheral will monitor pulse and other body functions.

Genus: Gamers in the audience were noticeably unmoved by the Wii’s E3 announcements. The appeal of the Wii is in its simplicity. (I’ve yet to see a game that wasn’t pretty intuitive.) And its diversity. From cooking up a virtual dish, playing in a virtual playground, getting a yoga workout, or solving a mystery, there are a more titles for the Wii than any other gaming system. And the offerings are equally divided for kids of all ages.

Next Up: SONY PlayStation 3 and PlayStation To Go

Bet Mom can't peddle and learn at the same time.

LeapFrog takes this to the max with its Text & Learn—a child-sized PDA (which, incidentally, is significantly larger than the adult version). Great for chubby fingers of all ages, it combines reading readiness, computer skills, and some music, texting, and calendaring activities, too.

Press any letter on the keyboard and you’ll be rewarded with its sound as well as an animated “O is for octopus,” for example. There are six learning activity games that stress following directions. My favorite is the special area for PDA-like activities. In the calendar application you learn the days of the week. A music player plays tunes while Scout, the PDA’s mascot, dances along. You even get incoming messages (from Scout only) and can send a message as well. Think Speak & Spell in a PDA format and you’re on the right track. Good news…it costs $21.99 and probably isn’t quite as addictive as your own Crackberry.

VTech’s lineup includes a sort of mini-gym where each piece of gym equipment has a learning and a physical activity. The series is called the VTech Jungle Gym. Kids can pedal the Ride and Learn Giraffe ($50) or do a little stair climbing on the Step and Count Kangaroo ($50). A Bouncing Turtle ($15) that teaches colors as you bounce rounds out the collection. As they’re getting fit they learn letters, numbers, object identification, and more via the equipment’s built-in LCD screens.

It’s not a Wii, but it’s cheaper than Gymboree. The animals’ colors are a bit garish and the activities are simple drill-type activities, but it beats having a kid couch potato. Kids as young as 18 months can hop on and enjoy.

Don’t spend your $6.99 on the download just yet, though. Hidden Park is park-specific. It’s now available in 10 parks around the world, including Central Park for New Yorkers like me.

The game begins with a video call from a troll who just happens to be the head of the Magical Wildlife Protection Association. The troll instructs the kids to save their park from nasty land developers. To do so, they’ll need to collect evidence of magical animals in the park.

Each park has certain designated landmarks that you navigate to using the iPhone’s built-in GPS. Because the iPhone knows your coordinates, it can trigger certain clues and puzzles at various waypoints. But the real “wow” comes when your young explorers photograph the landmarks. After taking a photo, give the iPhone a few shakes and hidden magical animals appear in the photo. Photos get stored in the iPhone as a picture memory of the day. An online community invites kids to share their adventures and photos.

Games like this one will proliferate as more and more hardware devices are location-aware. Of course, there’s bound to be a dark side of location-aware devices, too, but for the moment let’s give three cheers to The Hidden Park.

And special thanks to Hal Halprin for sending it my way.

This notion of favorite play patterns wasn’t lost on Ted Barnett, the CEO, co-founder, and dad behind the new virtual world, SuperSecret. Despite the name, there are few secrets embedded in the game. The secret is how Barnett deftly created an electronic crockpot of everything that kids who are too old for the Club Penguin scene, but too young for Facebook, like to do.

The meat in the stew is a bunch of relatively mindless but fun games—not unlike the games you find on AddictingGames.com or Miniclip.com, two of the most widely trafficked websites for tweens. But unlike those sites, where you feel like you’ve entered a morass of disparate games, SuperSecret plunks these diversions (40 flash games) into a context.

The secret sauce is the virtual world that surrounds the game play. First, there’s you! Your task in this virtual world is to grow up. You begin as a lowly 10-year-old by choosing one of 20 different characters. As you play more, you actually age, and with age comes increased privileges that you’ve earned. Anyone can play for free, but once you’ve aged past 12 you’ll need to subscribe to the service. Each age brings a new set of friends, challenges, games, pets, and surprises. Brilliant. What kid doesn’t want to grow up (virtually or for real)?

And the world itself is a nice mix of not too cutesy cartoony, but still clearly a child’s world of exploration. The locations are fun places like the Quad and Midway. Like Club Penguin, there’s chat of various kinds. In the stuff tweens love category, players can see where their friends are in the virtual world and a cellphone pop-up lets them stay in touch while playing.

In the crowded world of virtual worlds, it’s tough to predict what kids will love and what will leave them cold, but SuperSecret certainly has all of the right stuff to make it a really strong contender.\r\n\r\nSee what USA Today has to say.