Developers think about other possible classic reinventions

Apr 24, 2012 23:01 GMT  ·  By

In a rare example of gaming, influenced by a television series rather than by a movie, a team of artists has created a version of the classic Frogger video game that uses real-world traffic data from 5th Avenue in order to re-create a classic Seinfeld situation.

Inspired by an episode where George Constanza was trying to keep his Frogger high score by moving a cabinet through an actual street to a free outlet, the team used their neighborhood as inspiration to create a more real game experience without getting into actual danger.

Tyler DeAngelo, who is the artist behind the vision for 5th Ave Frogger, told Gamasutra that, “I really wanted to keep as much of the original machine intact as possible which made things much harder than it would have been to just install a new screen and computer.”

He added, “The concept is pretty simple: My office overlooks 5th Ave, so I installed a web cam that sends a live video feed to a processor that we installed in the arcade machine.

“My friend Ranjit wrote the real-time motion tracking software that translates the positions of the cars from the video feed into data that we apply to old school-looking graphics.”

DeAngelo and his team kept the game experience simple and as close as possible to the classic gameplay of Frogger while also giving it a modern twist by using a complex algorithm to track and re-create real-world situations.

The developer is interested in getting his version of Frogger into the Smithsonian American Art Museum's Art of the Video Game exhibit.

He is also thinking about other ways to take classic video games and create modern versions using physics and other real-world information.

A version of Leisure Suit Larry tracking his own actions was an early idea, but it has been apparently put on hold for the time being.