World’s Smallest Video Game Unveiled by Japanese Scientists

World’s Smallest Video Game

Merging Virtual Gaming with Real Life.

Researchers at Nagoya University are on the verge of linking nanotechnology with gaming to create the world’s smallest gaming device. AR, augmented reality, basically adds virtual elements on top of the real world, and this microscopic game is different because you can move microscopic objects in real time with real virtual elements that are sometimes impossible.

In this cool technology, players control a tiny digital spaceship with a regular game controller, where they steer through microscopic space while firing nanoscale ‘bullets,’ which are basically a polystyrene ball a few microns wide. It’s not going to replace traditional gaming by any means, but the application and implications of this technology go beyond entertainment.

Nanoscale Game Basics.

The reason for this gaming breakthrough is an electron beam on a silicon-nitrogen substrate. The player is modeled into a triangular spaceship like an asteroid where the electron beam will change some properties of the virtual ship according to how the player moves the controller.

There are also virtual bullets in the form of nano-sized dot patterns that appear when a player presses a button. But these nano-objects are not just pixels on a screen, when the electron beam is turned on, it creates an electric field variation that will move a polystyrene ball.

 Basically, what this means is that in-game actions of the ship will have a direct impact on real-world microscopic objects: it’s a whole different story when the game takes it to the next level of bridging the digital to the physical.

Other Expansions and Innovations in Science and Technology

At this scale, this free game has made huge strides in software and opens up a whole lot of other possibilities beyond gaming. Scientists say so far the game only shows suggestions of what’s possible in other areas:

• Biomolecular manipulation: Future biomed researchers will have total control over biomolecules at the molecular level.

• Nanomachines: This level of control at the nanometer level will transform the field of nanobiology.

• Targeted drug delivery: This tech will make targeted drug delivery to specific parts of the body possible for efficient drug transport.

• Environmental monitoring: The new nanoscale systems can help develop environmental sensors to detect contaminants down to the microscopic level.

A new dawn for the gaming industry

The recent history of the industry has been full of technical experiments—Nintendo’s handheld Game & Watch series and, more recently, the launch of the Nintendo Switch. It seems that in this version, the little guys have finally made some progress in miniaturization, looking towards the day not too far away when gaming will interact with real-world physics and sciences like never before.

The nanoscale perspective is still a ways off in the mainstream gaming view but could be the start of a whole new genre of interactivity. Nano educational tools, microscopic-level simulations, and a whole hybridization of gaming with scientific advancements look like plain sailing on the horizon.

What Lies Ahead?

This nanoscale approach to gaming is the intersection of gaming and all of nanotechnology and physics. Their universal meaning may even give a sobering lesson from just the proof of concept from which applications in factory, scientific, and medical settings will take off.

Artificial intelligence and machine learning can be added, and the game is just getting started because that interplay between these digital and physical realms can be rewritten again at a microscopic scale.