Audio Ping Pong lets your ears, noggin do all the work

Just when you think Pong can't be played any other way, yet another creative soul emerges to prove the notion wrong. Mike McCracken has managed to remove all visual aspects of the game yet still maintain the core goal by enabling one's head to make the motions typically assigned to the hands. Essentially, a sound is emitted from the headphones on one side or the other, and the gamer has to tilt his / her head just so until the noise is centered. This back-and-forth sequence speeds up to intensify the challenge, and if you can't manage to keep the ringing front and center, an unpalatable buzzer sounds and a light turns on to alert you of your defeat. Really, it's way more clear how all this works in the video below, so have at it.

[Via MAKE]

Audio Ping Pong from loneconspirator on Vimeo.

[[e-mail] @ Apr 25th 2008 11:16AM]

Guaranteed to make you look like the Butabi brothers from A Night at the Roxbury.

[rektide @ Apr 25th 2008 11:21AM]

Sounds like an EMDR treatment. EMDR focuses on training your brain for pattern matching across the corpus callosum, between the two hemispheres of the brain.

[Johnny @ Apr 25th 2008 11:24AM]

Too bad I can never play this being deaf in one ear.

[Eric @ Apr 25th 2008 12:49PM]

Actually, if they're using broadband noise and have modeled the sound motion properly (using both time delay and sound level changes), you might be able to play. When the ball was to the deaf side of your head, you could take advantage of decreased energy in the high frequencies on the hearing side of your head to tell that the sound was off to the deaf side. Noise motion to the hearing side would be more difficult---you'd have to keep your head tilted just at the threshold of the sound being quieter. It would be more of a constant-loudness game instead of a constant-location game for you, and it would be much harder.

[teststrips @ Apr 25th 2008 11:39AM]

My Dad used to tell a story about going to a recording studio in his youth. Ray Charles (the blind musician) was sitting in a lobby playing PONG. Aparently his hearing was so well tuned that he could hear the changes in pitch of the TV and actually play (and win) the game.

[Dan Bugglin @ Apr 25th 2008 3:42PM]

I was gonna say this sounds like the first video game accessible to the blind. Apparently not!

[rob @ Apr 25th 2008 11:41AM]

Wait...So how do we know he didn't just attach some wires and a circuit board to an old pair of headphones then make a video of him head banging?

[Will @ Apr 26th 2008 5:57PM]

If he were making something up, I'm sure it would be much more exciting.

[Dan Davis @ Apr 25th 2008 11:44AM]

His brother Phil must be proud.

[crho85 @ Apr 25th 2008 12:40PM]

Nice!

[yuppicide @ Apr 25th 2008 11:59AM]

So, basically you look like Stevie Wonder while playing pong?

[Ian @ Apr 25th 2008 6:24PM]

except no kool sunglasses

[Josh @ Apr 25th 2008 12:16PM]

Sounds like the GBA game Bit Generations:Soundvoyager :)

[looseinthedeuce @ Apr 25th 2008 12:21PM]

I know Pong. Pong was a friend of mine. And you, sir, are no Pong.

This is the reason "audio games" didn't pick up like video games did.

[couchpundit @ Apr 25th 2008 12:29PM]

It kind of reminds me of the "time machine" purchased by Uncle Rico...

Marketing slogan:
"Don't just look like a dork--BE a dork!"

[L.Rawlins @ Apr 25th 2008 2:13PM]

'Ping Bong'

[Josh F @ Apr 25th 2008 2:13PM]

I thought for sure he was about to sync the audio he heard with the video we saw while he was playing the game.

Why talk about a sound game w/o letting the audience hear the sound?

I call f00.bar

Still, if it works as described, it's pretty cool.

[l3j @ Apr 25th 2008 2:32PM]

If he had synced the audio he supposedly heard, how would you know it actually came from the game and wasn't just created and pasted over for the video?

Anyway, I've played it. It works as described.

[Onetruebill @ Apr 25th 2008 2:41PM]

I am adding this to my list of things more fun to listen to than AMERICAN IDOL

[Ian @ Apr 25th 2008 6:26PM]

so how long is that list? mine has to be at lest a mile long

[Brian @ Apr 25th 2008 3:53PM]

I would last about 3.657 seconds with that thing....ugh.

[ploni @ Apr 28th 2008 12:49AM]

Can you imagine the Chinese playing their version of this?

They'd end up in the hospital with permanent damage to the cerebral vortex and dislocation of their vertebrae.