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By Andrew Liszewski

Mattel brought a decent collection of high-tech games and toys to CES this year, but it was their Mindflex that seemed to be drawing the biggest crowds. It’s another “mind-control” game where your thoughts are used to move a ball through an obstacle course, or at least that’s how it’s made to appear. Obviously we haven’t quite mastered the subtleties of mind-control just yet, so the Mindflex uses a headset with a couple of earlobe clips to measure the theta-wave activity in your brain, which is related to your level of concentration.

The ball appears to levitate thanks to the clever use of a fan, but the speed of the fan is directly controlled by your brain activity as measured by the aforementioned headgear. Given it was my fifth or sixth day in Vegas, I opted not to try the game since I was already brain dead, but those who did give it a whirl were prompted to concentrate on anything they could think of in order to get the ball to float higher. However, your thoughts only control the vertical movement of the ball, and in order to get it around the obstacle course you also had to use a large dial to adjust the position of the fan.

Overall I’d have to say the game came across as an expensive $80 novelty more than anything, but you’re welcome to try it for yourself and come to your own conclusions when it goes on sale sometime in the Fall of this year.

[ Mindflex ]

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Flipping on a light switch usually doesn’t require much in the way of cranial fortitude, but mount three or four of the things in a row and it’s Concentration time whenever you try to flick the right one. Japanese graphic designer Mac Funamizu feels your shame, imagining a conceptual wall-mounted touchpad to end the confusion and inadvertent light shows. With his invention you’d simply drag your finger toward the light you want to turn on, do it again to turn it off, or make a circular sweep to illuminate the whole room. It certainly seems a bit more useful than other switches we’ve covered in the past, but until we see a version that will register our gestures from the couch we’ll stick with our Clappers, thank you very much.

Update: Taku commented to point out a strangely similar though seemingly completely unrelated prototype from London-based designer Edward Horsford. It offers the same functionality plus adds ridges.

[Via Engadget German]
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Grab your Light Swords, it’s time to kill some Jedi to save the Empire from the Ewok menace! We know you already own seven Wiis, each one espousing a different sort of childhood memorabilia or cute-overload, but can’t you use the force to make room in your heart for one more? This Star Wars-themed Wii just hit the eBays, with a $500 starting price that includes the work of art you see before you, a red LED Wiimote and nunchuck, and a copy of Star Wars: The Force Unleashed. You can’t usually put a pricetag on this sort of midi-chlorian concentration.
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