A colleague of mine, Alan Majer, first introduced me to augmented reality and indeed, he was the first to blog about an augmented reality game here on Wikinomics. Last year, he wrote about his adventure of taking apart the Tuttuki bako, a Japanese toy that allows users to insert their finger into the box and then play games with virtual characters on the screen. The display is very low tech, reminding me of the very graphics used in the original Snake game that came standard with Nokia phones in 1998, but the idea was interesting.

This year, at E3 2009, Sony gave a preview of their new PSP game Invizimals, which is to be released in the UK this fall. The game uses augmented reality to capture children’s imaginations and enhance the gaming experience. According to the introductory video in the game, a Japanese scientist created a camera that is more sensitive than the human eye and can ‘see’ invizimals that humans cannot. The game tasks you to find the invizimals using the PSP camera (the screen begins to pulse when the camera detects an invizimal) and to trap them by placing a star shaped card in the vicinity of the invizimal. If done correctly, the Invizimal, a little, wild, computer-generated animal, will appear on the PSP screen on top of the real star-shaped card, as shown in this YouTube video. Once captured, the Invizimals can be battled against each other, and during the battle, players can blow on the screen to create a windstorm or cast a shadow over the screen to create a lighting strike. Continue…