Remember the days of the Playstation 2 ... The console was not known for its superior power or better online support. No, the main advantage of the second Playstation was that everyone you knew had one, everyone. The benefit of a console owned by half the world is that there were many, many games made for the platform, and this meant that there were loads of games and accessories flooding the market and every now and then you got something interesting. The EyeToy was a device that was adorable, in the way we look at floppy disks and laugh at how stupid people from the old days could find a use for them compared to the far superior 1 TB solid state devices of today. In the same way, the Eyetoy was a childish predecessor our modern day motion interaction technology such as the Wii, Playstation Move and most similar the Xbox Kinect. But it was great and I found that my introduction to non-controller gaming was loads of fun and had a lasting effect, although now the EyeToy appears to have been forgotten by the keepers of gaming history. Released in that fateful year of 2003, when the U.S invaded Iraq, the EyeToy came to the ever-popular Playstation 2 a new camera peripheral that allowed gamers to play games in new ways. It was essentially a webcam that could sense the players movement, usually while they viewed themselves on the TV screen in front of them. The actual technology behind the camera was pretty limited, with a low resolution and non of the depth perception of Xbox Kinect, but this did not harm the fun that could be had in these early days of motion gaming. As we all know by now, a peripheral is only as good as the games that can be played with it, and the EyeToy had some great little titles to call its own. The most popular (mainly because it came packaged with the EyeToy its self, it's hard not to be popular this way) was EyeToy: Play -- a collection of, Wii Sports style mini-games that shoed-off the benefits of the camera. Play consisted of various titles that were completely unrelated other than their graphical style, including such classics as UFO Juggler, Rocket Rumble and Keep Ups, each involving their fair share of physical exertion to get to the highest of scores. One of these games, Mirror Time, stands out as it was so easy to cheat (but my morals aren't that strong), was a simple game in which the player must clean the mirror in the quickest time possible by waving their arms around, or (if you are me) by getting really close to the screen and moving slightly, resulting in an instant win. Anyway, there were loads of other EyeToy Games, usually starting with the word EyeToy, including such classics as EyeToy: Groove, EyeToy: Monkey Mania and who could forget EyeToy: Play 3? Our friendly USB camera also had compatibility with many other games, some featuring EyeToy exclusive mini-games such as Jackie Chan Adventures, Dance Dance Revolution and Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. Others had the ability to photograph the player and impose them onto an in-game character such as LMA Manager, The Urbz: Sims In The City and DT Racer. So perhaps not the most memorable of title lists, but those who did invest their money in the EyeToy got their share of fun, in much the same way that the Wii sold millions based on the "I played it once at a friends house and it was really cool", principle EyeToy sold loads but had little lasting appeal past the first month of ownership.
