When I was a kid I played a lot of different trading card games, from Pokémon to Magic: The Gathering, and loved them but there was always one thing that was missing, one thing that I wished for and imagined – I wanted the cards to come to life. Well thanks to VR, as well as a couple crafty hackers in Boston, that dream is closer to reality.
Developed at BostonHacks, a Boston University sponsored hackathon, by Olaolu Emmanuel and Shahan Akhter “ShadowRealmVR” lets you bring the monsters on Yu-Gi-Oh! to life in VR. The system works by placing a card down on the duel disk, just like in the show. When you do the NFC reader the team built into the duel disk will read the chip they team embedded in the back of the card, translating that model into the virtual playing field. It is unclear from the video whether there is much more functionality beyond that, but one of the creators can be heard saying it “doesn’t attack,” which makes sense given this was put together in 24 hours for a hackathon.
For those of you who missed the Yu-Gi-Oh train, in the show the duel disks project a holographic playing field that allows the card battles to come alive anywhere in the real world, not just attached to a computer. We aren’t far from a future where we are able to take the necessary Magic Leaps forward to make that into a true reality. Imagine putting on a pair of glasses and being able to have true monster battles in your own backyard? E-sports would take on a whole new life.
For now, we are happy checking out projects like these because they take us one step closer to realizing our childhood dreams.
