I’ve had some experience with augmented reality from the 3DS. I see another student has discussed the AR cards that come with the system, so instead I’ll talk about Face Raiders.

Face Raiders is a game that comes pre-installed on the 3DS. This game uses the camera to use as the background for the game and imposes floating enemies into your surroundings. While playing this game I find myself moving around trying to shoot enemies scattered around the room and to avoid getting hit. Playing this game makes the player look pretty silly as onlookers don’t see what they see as they spastically move their console around as a part of gameplay. There is a similar game called the Dream Radar. This game has the player searching their surroundings to find Pokemon hiding around them so that they can catch them and send them to their Pokemon games. This game plays like Face Raiders.

These game reveal a potential danger of augmented reality. The augmentation to reality can distract us from actual reality. Images being placed in our line of site inevitably block out something that was actually in front of us. Both of these games are meant to be played while sitting down and they provide several warnings to the use not to stand up while playing the game so that Nintendo doesn’t get sued when little Timmy falls down the stairs trying to catch a Thundurus roaming the clouds.