We’re very excited to announce the release of PulzAR today, available on PSN for $1.99. In case you’ve missed our past PulzAR blog posts, here’s a word from the game’s lead designer to usher in today’s release:
I’m Neall Jones, Lead Designer for the next great addition to the PS Vita AR games, PulzAR.
So, what’s PulzAR all about then? Well the Earth is in grave danger, somewhere just beyond our planet’s outer atmosphere five giant asteroids are heading on a deadly collision course with the planet. It’s up to you, the player, to command a network of laser powered rockets to try and blast the asteroids into a harmless meteor shower before they hit the Earth.
We are excited to announce a captivating new addition to the Augmented Reality (AR) Play line-up next month with the release of PulzAR. PulzAR is a mind boggling, potentially Earth-shattering puzzle game that turns nearly any flat surface into an epic battle against time and a looming celestial event with the use of your AR Play cards.
You see, in PulzAR, the Earth is in grave danger. Somewhere just beyond our planet’s outer atmosphere, a series of colossal asteroids are spinning ever closer on a deadly collision course to wipe out humankind. So far, all attempts to divert their trajectory have failed. Now, in mankind’s desperate last stand against certain catastrophe, it’s up to you to command a network of explosive rockets and try to blast the asteroids into a harmless meteor shower before they reach Earth.
At CES, we scored a backstage demo of Table Soccer, one of three augmented reality games that show off PS Vita’s Wide Area Augmented Reality capability.
Today, Sony Santa Monica Sr. Manager Dave Thach returns with two new augmented reality games, Fireworks and Cliff Diving. Both are part of the Augmented Reality Suite coming exclusively to PS Vita on Feb 22nd on PSN for free. Also, packaged with your PS Vita will be six AR cards which will also work with Reality Fighters, and other great AR experiences.
Fireworks transforms the world around you into a firework display where you’ll literally touch the apex of the firework for multipliers, combos and points. Cliff Diving introduces you to diver Dave, where you’ll have him diving off your coffee table into a virtual body of water.
A couple of months ago, a video surfaced that showed off some cool-looking augmented reality apps running on PS Vita. Since then, it’s been confirmed that Vita will come with six AR Play Cards and a voucher to download a handful of free augmented reality mini games via the PSN. Today at CES, we were able to see one of these games in action: Table Football (it will be called Table Soccer in the US, because we already have football).
Backstage, Sony Santa Monica Sr. Manager Dave Thach dealt the AR Play Cards on a table, and a soccer pitch sprung to life through the window of the PS Vita’s luscious OLED display. The actual game is kind of like a turn-based soccer match – it reminded me of a 2012 version of paper football. But enough talk, let’s see it in action:
Augmented reality is a concept that’s starting to get a lot of buzz so we wanted to take a minute to break down our history with the technology and provide a sneak peak at what could be next. There’s a popular misconception that augmented reality is just “kid’s stuff,” but with more than eight years of experience under our belt, we’ve found there’s a wide variety of compelling and cool AR experiences that everyone can enjoy. We spoke to some of our resident experts from Sony Computer Entertainment R&D and Product Development to get their take on augmented reality through our platforms.
