<a href="https://www.niklasroy.com/project/31/pongmechanik" rel="nofollow">https://www.niklasroy.com/project/31/pongmechanik</a> (2004)<p>> Pongmechanik is an electromechanical version of the early digital tennis game Pong. It uses computer technology of the 1940's to implement a computer application of the 1970's. The control logic of the game is entirely built out of telephone relays, the same parts that the first digital computers used, which were built by pioneers like Konrad Zuse.
Fun.
In the 70s/80s a company called “tomy” made some mechanical “video” games. We had a couple and they were oddly fun. They had wind up (what we had. and more sophisticated battery operated ones too.). What they could do with overlays, gears and buttons was amazing.<p>The simpilist one wind up space invaders: (3 minute video)
<a href="https://youtu.be/xF50xGHeiM8" rel="nofollow">https://youtu.be/xF50xGHeiM8</a><p>They show up on refurb YouTube and you can set the guts. It’s amazing what they could do mechanically.<p>I really like this one where you jump a motorcycle over things. Gameplay at end: (20 minutes)<p><a href="https://youtu.be/32R3MHKJuQY" rel="nofollow">https://youtu.be/32R3MHKJuQY</a>
I'm surprised no one's built a mechanical version of flappy bird using a differential analyzer[0]. With two disk integrators and some differentials it's possible to integrate the equation of motion for the vertical direction, because forward motion is constant this is all the 'computing' we need to do. We can sense hits to pipes using physical pipes and a feeler on a spring.<p>We could use a looping set of pipes, but it should also be possible to do randomization too. A simple way to do this is to have a four sided rectangular block with different pipe configurations on each side. As it is looped around, it gets spun randomizing the orientation like a slot machine, and then we lock the orientation to one of the four.<p>It might be difficult to carry out the integration fast enough. Although it would be funny if we ran it off a scooter engine to integrate at high speeds.<p>[0]<a href="https://twobithistory.org/2020/04/06/differential-analyzer.html" rel="nofollow">https://twobithistory.org/2020/04/06/differential-analyzer.h...</a>
The ideas behind this project are similar to the goals of BlockStudio [0], a project of mine.<p>The core idea is to build computational logic by choreographing movements of blocks/images on a digital canvas.<p>[0] <a href="https://www.blockstud.io" rel="nofollow">https://www.blockstud.io</a>
Video (in German): <a href="https://archive.org/details/NiklasRoyPongmechanik" rel="nofollow">https://archive.org/details/NiklasRoyPongmechanik</a>