Syyn Labs

Not-Pocket Simon

By Eric Gradman

“This story begins at 12:30 pm on Wednesday I’ve just left my friend Bex’s house. She’s has a Milton Bradley Simon Game in her bathroom (and why not… its better than Pictionary). And now I’m driving home from San Francisco to Los Angeles, reflecting on the fact that the eighties are over and I still suck at Simon.

And as I’m contemplating six hour drive ahead, I wonder if I could make a really big version of Simon. That four people could play together. Because then it should be one quarter as hard, right? Also, I’m attending Mindshare the following night, and I hate to come empty handed. Can I do it in 24 hours?”

What I end up building is the following: Four DMX lights are on a light tree in the corner. Each light is programmed to light up in one of four colors (RGBY). Each light is focused on the foot pad of the appropriate color. The lights flash slowly in “waiting” mode until a foot switch is pressed. Then, the machine lights up a single pad (by illuminating it from above.) It also plays the appropriate Simon sound. It then waits for the players to repeat the pattern back. If they’re successful, it repeats from the beginning, increases the number of cues in the pattern each time until someone messes up. When they mess up, I play a horrible noise and use the lights to try to induce an epileptic seizure.

And the highlight of installing this piece at Mindshare was that Nolan Bushnell who invented the damn game (originally called TouchMe at Atari) was in attendence and had nice things to say.”

Read about the The Making Of NotPocketSimon on Eric’s blog…