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Tag: kung fu

  • Kung Fu Superstar, an Xbox Kinect Fighting Game, Announced

    Finally, a game for what Microsoft’s Kinect peripheral was really intended: learning kung fu. Kinesthetic Games today announced it is developing an action game for Xbox 360 that will use the Kinect to teach players to fight using kung fu techniques. Players will take on the role of Danny Cheng, a young martial artist who’s ambition is to become a martial arts movie star.

    Though Kinesthetic Games is looking at making the game for different platforms and playable using classic controllers, it is clear that Kung Fu Superstar has been designed with the Kinect in mind. The game studio has released an announcement trailer, seen below, which demonstrates the concept. From the video’s description:

    In a ground-breaking rethink of fighting games, players will use their full body and/or a controller to learn authentic martial arts techniques and level up Danny’s fighting abilities, as they improve their own knowledge of Kung Fu. Players then put their skills to the test on the movie set, where Danny takes part in dramatic fight choreographies and performs in explosive action sequences. With multiple movie sets and plots to explore, colourful characters to be met along the way, Danny’s own overarching storyline, as well as a platform for learning real martial arts in a fun and engaging way, Kung Fu Superstar will open up a world of possibilities to players of every background.

    According to a EuroGamer interview, Kinesthetic Games was founded one year ago by Kostas Zarifis. Zarifis previously worked at Lionhead studios and was part of development on Fable 2, Fable 3, and Fable: The Journey. Kung Fu Superstar is currently in early development, and Kinesthetic is looking for a publisher for the title.

    Though this game is still a long way off, it’s clear that the idea behind the game came from a true fan of kung fu cinema. Hopefully the game will start the player off in low-budget movie projects with horrible dialogue, and by the end of the game have them in blockbuster sci-fi/kung fu crossover movies. Using the Kinect for magic or martial arts seems to be common sense. The only worry is that the developers stray too far from their original idea and end up with an over-broad disaster such as Star Wars Kinect.

  • Learning The Piano or Kung-Fu, Without Knowing How To Do Either

    It’s finally here, science and technology used in both The Matrix and Total Recall is near reality. Say hello to Decoded Neurofeedback (DecNef), a study conducted by Boston University and ATR Computational Neuroscience Laboratories in Kyoto, Japan. What they’ve done is begun preliminary work towards allowing people to learn through visual stimulation, even when a task is unknown to a person before hand.

    If you’d rather not read through the scientific jargon, you can watch this video (closed caption is recommended):

    According to the study, the way we perceive what we see is gradually built up in our mind. When we look at a table, first we see nothing but lines, shapes, and motion, but as more advanced visual areas come into play we begin to see the table. In the early visual areas, researchers were trying to find out if learning and performance could be improved. According to their findings, it can.

    BU neuroscientist Takeo Watanabe, said this of the research, “Some previous research confirmed a correlation between improving visual performance and changes in early visual areas, while other researchers found correlations in higher visual and decision areas“, continuing, “However, none of these studies directly addressed the question of whether early visual areas are sufficiently plastic to cause visual perceptual learning.”

    To test their theory, they used “decoded fMRI neurofeedback”, which induces a specific visual pattern in the subject. They used repetition of the pattern to see if performance could be enhanced for that specific visual feature. They discovered that it could improve tasks which require visual stimulation. They also discovered their method worked when the subject wasn’t even aware of what they were learning. This is when it gets interesting.

    “The most surprising thing in this study is that mere inductions of neural activation patterns corresponding to a specific visual feature led to visual performance improvement on the visual feature, without presenting the feature or subjects’ awareness of what was to be learned“, Watanabe explains.

    “We found that subjects were not aware of what was to be learned while behavioral data obtained before and after the neurofeedback training showed that subjects’ visual performance improved specifically for the target orientation, which was used in the neurofeedback training”

    What this means in layman’s terms, is this scene from the Matrix is becoming close to reality.

    Mitsuo Kawato, director of ATR lab, added a key insight, “In theory, hypnosis or a type of automated learning is a potential outcome. However, in this study we confirmed the validity of our method only in visual perceptual learning. So we have to test if the method works in other types of learning in the future. At the same time, we have to be careful so that this method is not used in an unethical way.”

    Yeah, no kidding. Potential subjects could end up like this.