POSTED BY

Brandon Boyer

AT 1:03 PM
Friday May 15, 2009

iPhone

iOm: Ian Bogost's Guru Meditation comes to iPhone

gurumeditation.gifIn what he describes as the first ever simultaneous game release on both the Atari 2600 and iPhone, developer, author and researcher Ian Bogost (the producer behind the previously mentioned airport security game Jetset) has released Guru Meditation to the App Store, a portable version of his "zen meditation game."

The background: the game was originally developed for an obscure 'Joyboard' peripheral for the Atari 2600 -- the retro-tech equivalent of the Wii's Balance Board -- which, instead of using the controller for an action game, required the player to sit as still as possible on the board. Remain motionless and your guru score rises, move a muscle and you crash back to the ground and start again.

The iPhone version of the game does precisely the same, only requires the player to hold the device in both hands, and uses the mic as well: in this version, you have to remain silent as well as motionless.

It's a cute and clever idea for sure, but it is curiously effective to concentrate as hard as you can to remain still, and, Bogost notes, takes the one device that excels at distraction -- with email, texts, twitter, and calls -- and turns it into the precise opposite.

Learn more about the idea behind the game -- and its limited edition Atari 2600 equivalent, and find the game on the App Store here.

Guru Meditation -- a medititation game for Atari VCS and iPhone [Ian Bogost, iTunes link]

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3 Comments

spiregrain

#1 – 11:20 AM May 16, 2009

Here, I thought this was an Amiga thing? That the original Amiga designers had a surfboard/joystick mashup that they balanced on to child out during debugging? And that that was the original of the "Guru Meditation" prefix on Amiga kernel panic mesasges.

Anonymous Anonymous

#2 – 6:05 PM May 17, 2009

Spiregrain is correct, and all the details about that are in a webpage by Bogost, helpfully linked by Brandon above - twice - as the source for this post and as "the idea behind the game".


Here, let me copy and paste that for you. Ladies and gentlemen, Ian Bogost, in his own words:


The Amiga computer system was a popular personal computer of the 1980s, originally intended as a videogame machine but later reconceived as a general purpose computer. The development of the Amiga took considerable time, and in the interim the Amiga corporation released a number of joysticks and other peripheral devices for use on common videogame systems, including the Atari VCS (2600).


One of these peripherals was the Joyboard, a joystick for the feet. The player would stand on the joyboard and rock side to side or front to back to play a game. The device shipped in 1982 bundled with a skiing game, Mogul Maniac, for the Atari VCS.


In the early days of the development of the Amiga computer operating system, the company's developers are rumored to have become so frustrated with frequent system crashes that they developed a relaxation technique: sitting perfectly still on a joyboard. According to Amiga lore, this is where the Guru Meditation fatal error messages on the Amiga arose.


I have been fascinated by this idea, and more generally with the often forgotten connections between Silicon Valley and hippie counter-culture. Few remember even Steve Jobs's 1974 trip to India (just before he returned to California to work at Atari as it happens), just one example of the longtime connection between the valley and spiritualism, as well as the incongruence of new age liberalism and high-tech libertarianism in the valley.

Anonymous Anonymous

#3 – 10:25 AM May 18, 2009

want for samsung omnia (VZW). want NOW.

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