Lenovo’s Mirage AR headset allows you to take lightsaber in hand and fight off Darth Vader and more with the Star Wars: Jedi Challenges app. If you don’t own the $199 headset, though, you can now access one of the app’s games without it.
Holochess, one of the most enduring Easter Eggs of A New Hope, can now be played on your iPhone thanks for support for Apple’s ARKit on iOS. It’s the same game that headset owners have been playing since last year, though there are reports that it hasn’t been fully optimized, with text appearing to be tiny on the phone’s screen.
Still, it’s pretty amazing to be able to play some form of Holochess (better known as Dejarik to hardcore fans) over 40 years on from when we first saw it. Though we couldn’t tell you the rules (other than to let the Wookie win), the game consists of tiny AR monsters beating each other up on a board. One day we’ll hopefully get the full table experience, but now for now this is good enough.
The Jedi Challenges app itself is free to download. Oddly, though, this support hasn’t yet arrived on the Android version of the app, despite that getting an update just a days ago too. Hopefully ARCore support isn’t too far out, then.
