Mind games: Harnessing the power of your thoughts
The year is 1983 and, in a Tokyo suburb, man (well, one man) is evolving a new use for his opposable thumbs. His tool: a strange lump of plastic attached, via cables and a bigger lump of plastic, to his television. Twenty-five years later, the ungainly set-up, known as the Nintendo Entertainment System, is a relic collecting dust in the gaming graveyard alongside the wood-panelled Atari 2600. But its legacy lives on.
Today's consoles use remotes that have barely changed in principle since Nintendo launched its landmark "D-pad" controller. But change is afoot which is liberating our weary thumbs; within the past two years, we have learnt to wave our hands, dance and poke at screens and, soon, we will need only one muscle to control the action – the brain.
Last week, Satoru Iwata, the president and chief executive of Nintendo, added weight to the chatter sweeping technology conventions and gaming forums – the new frontier in computer control is in the mind. "As soon as we think something in our brain, it will appear within a video game," he told reporters at the games industry's annual E3 conference in Los Angeles.
