Taito introduces Surface-like arcade game

Well, it didn't take long for Microsoft's Surface to trickle down into the fast-paced world of card gaming (ala Magic). Feast your eyes on the next device your children will be shoveling money into like it's going out of style, a new Square Enix (makers of Final Fantasy) and Taito collaboration called The Wheel of Eternity. The card-based RPG appears to function much in the same way that Bill Gates described Surface's object recognition properties as working, "sensing" cards which are placed on the game area, and reacting to their status, movement and arrangement. There's no word on when or if this game is coming to the states, but with kids' unnatural obsession with card games (particularly those of a Japanese ilk), it seems likely this will be popping up on these shores before long.

[jwrose @ Sep 17th 2007 11:19AM]

Unless I'm mistaken, this is based on the same technology that at least a dozen Japanese arcade games have been around for several years already. They have card based "sensing" games for soccer games, RPG games, and historical battle games. This is pretty old news.

[Zach @ Sep 17th 2007 11:20AM]

Once multitouch encroaches into desktop computing, the world will be a better place. Until then, it will take the place of shameless video games.

[WY @ Sep 17th 2007 11:21AM]

jwrose is right, this is not new at all. Aquarian Age
Alternative is a good example, one can find videos of
it on YouTube to see how it works.

[wargarurumon @ Sep 17th 2007 11:44AM]

yeah, my yugi-oh dream comes to life

i summon the winged dragon of ra
and place this card up-side down

[Abir @ Sep 17th 2007 12:08PM]

jwrose is correct, I saw this a few years ago when I went to Japan. Its quite popular.

[Julio @ Sep 17th 2007 11:55AM]

yeah this is pretty old technology...

[ihave1 @ Sep 17th 2007 11:57AM]

this game will be available for playstation3 too. they use eyetoy to detect cards.

[Daniel Hull @ Sep 17th 2007 11:58AM]

I fire Magic Missl ... STOP: 0x1000008E PERFORMING CORE MEMORY DUMP ... sonofvabitch!!!!

[John Cavanagh @ Sep 17th 2007 12:05PM]

As others have already pointed out, this is truely old news. You sadden me Engadget...what is this...1up.com gamers one stop shop for all news several months old.

[dj-kenpo @ Sep 17th 2007 12:17PM]

so you have to buy the cards, and pay for the machine time.

genius! probably costs 20k+ but it also probably pays for itself in no time at all.. in japan anyways.

[John Cavanagh @ Sep 17th 2007 12:23PM]

Actually, you can play the game with just the cards themselves. The arcade machine (and upcoming PS3 addition) simply add a more visual element to the game. Actually, it may add more than just visuals but not having played it myself I can't say for certain what else it may offer.

[ramond @ Sep 17th 2007 12:21PM]

Yeh I saw these machines in Tokyo arcades 3 years ago. Japan is years ahead of anything in US or Europe.

[Dafzuka @ Sep 17th 2007 12:22PM]

The PS3 game isn't the same as this. It's called the Eye of Judgment.

[jwrose @ Sep 17th 2007 12:27PM]

Yeah, you buy the cards (usually packs are available from a machine a few feet away) and then put more money in the machine to play. I doubt I see this ever coming to the US simply because of the size of the machines. The fun of it is to play against other people- and a unit for one person takes up lot of space. With arcade space almost nonexistent in the US, I seriously doubt these will be brought over. In Japan, they benefit from being able to put them in heavily trafficked arcades because the sheer number of people in urban areas who are on foot and willing to enter an arcade. In the US.. it won't work. Someone else mentioned the PS3 & eyetoy- which is a possibility as they've shown off a similar game before using that setup.. I'm not holding my breath for a PS3 port- but you never know.

[wrabbit @ Sep 17th 2007 12:39PM]

Stop saying that every multi-touch screen on a table is either MS surface or some derivation of it. MS wasn't the first to come up with the idea or to build one, they were just the only ones that had enough marketing budget to actually make a big enough noise about it so that people notice.

[Douglas @ Sep 17th 2007 9:02PM]

It's like how they say that every touchscreen phone is an iPhone-clone...

[derrickflc @ Sep 17th 2007 12:55PM]

yup this thing's pretty much everywhere in Asia. we have it in arcades in Malaysia and Singapore for quite some time already too, though the bottom panel is not a screen itself, but a surface where you place these presumably RFID-embedded cards in various positions which will be reflected on the screen. quite amazing when I first saw it years ago, but as with all new things, that slowly died. :P

[John M @ Sep 17th 2007 1:01PM]

Imagine a touch screen keyboard!!! No to mention it could double as a tablet ... but, my IQ770 already does that

[bigglare @ Sep 17th 2007 5:31PM]

Sabacc anyone? I got a YT 1300 that I can put up.

[Captain Obvious @ Sep 17th 2007 1:07PM]

I'm sure your government has nothing better to do than track where you're going. You must be very important.

[Blog Jones @ Sep 17th 2007 1:17PM]

This may be old news in Japan, but we poor backwards yokels in the United States think it's really, really cool.

I can't wait for Surface computing to become cheap and common enough that board games can be played on it with cool special effects.

It could even be used to help the game: I enjoyed playing the board game Battletech, but there were a lot of details that were a pain to keep up with. You'd have to calculate a to-hit modifier based on how fast you and your target were moving, the terrain between you, and lots of other factors, then roll some dice and find out whether or not you had hit the target. Then, if you had, you'd get to figure out which part of the target was hit, and so on and so forth.

But if you had a table computer that was aware of what was going on in the game, you could have it not only draw a cool laser effect from your hex to the target hex, but also do all the calculations for you, saving time and making the game more fun.

[TazgodX @ Sep 17th 2007 1:54PM]

kind of old news, like everyone else said they have been out in japan for a while, and in a few places in the US. but i believe it was only in 2 places throughout the US. one was the schaumburg GameWorks. right outside of chicago.

they are pretty cool though, you pay for an initial deck and then for every game you play they give you another card. and that is the only way to get cards, is to play.

i use to make the trip to Schaumburg GameWorks 3 times a week just to play that all night. its quite addicting.

[Matthew Hilario @ Sep 17th 2007 4:17PM]

god damn all these new games have these cards! derby owners club, initial D, tekken 5 my wallet is already full!

[sajonfalcon @ Sep 17th 2007 4:56PM]

Looks like George Lucas was more of a visionary than I thought when he created Sabacc. It's on it's way to becoming a reality.

[MAIcrosoft @ Sep 18th 2007 3:39AM]

wtf "introduces"... japan is already full of these for years lol.

[Daufufa @ Sep 18th 2007 7:06PM]

Old news is good! ^0^
This kind of technology is old, actually, what they use is just a camera to trace the cards from the bottom of the table.