Virtual reality has long been a gimmick, a seemingly unattainable technology that dorks have been toying with since the seventies. Finally it looks like they've cracked it with the Oculus Rift, which looks bananas and that looks like it actually works. A similar arc was followed by the motion controller, which people have been trying to figure out for nearly as long, and failed just as universally with until very recently, with the Wii and everything. Before it got perfected with the nun chuks, however, some enterprising companies tried to make them work with consoles that with slightly less computational power. Like, say, the Sega Megadrive. You know all those games on the Megadrive that would work perfectly with motion controls? Sonic? Alex Kidd? Ranger X? Apparently the makers of The Activator never considered that. There was a lot of things they didn't consider. Like whether there technology would work, or be worth buying, or would make people look preposterous if they tried to use it. It took the form of an octagon-shaped ring that you placed on the floor and sort of danced in. Movements over each section would break invisible laser beams and trigger some form of in-game action, with high feet and low hand movement producing sixteen distinct inputs. Or they were supposed to, anyway. In actuality, it didn't do anything. At all. And it cost a lot of money. So basically you were paying for the privilege of dancing in a plastic circle whilst Sonic tapped his foot and looked more indignant than usual somehow.
Tom Baker is the Comics Editor at WhatCulture! He's heard all the Doctor Who jokes, but not many about Randall and Hopkirk. He also blogs at http://communibearsilostate.wordpress.com/
