On the ninth of May of this year, I was sitting on a couch in the 'social room' of my student's association, and looking at 4 of my friends playing a game on the Nintendo 64 that's stationed there.
I realized what they were doing was slightly a-social, and produced very little amusement for the other people present. This started me wondering what could make the console a little more fun to watch for people not actively participating.
Some early experiments with the unexpected removal of the mains connection had indeed produced larger amounts of amusement for those present, but had the drawback of removing most of the fun from those actively playing, so this line of research was discontinued.
I was then hit by an idea so inherently simple, it can only be described as genius (ahum).
What if on certain, later to be defined, intervals, the 4 controllers of the console were randomly shuffled?
This would provide ample amounts of amusement to those watching, as the players suddenly have to figure out what model on the screen they are controlling now, and had the added advantage it would also improve the fun in playing (at least to the open-minded gamer), since, like in the game of sabacc, all the cards are suddenly shuffled, and a player who was at one moment in the lead, can suddenly find himself on the bottom of the pile, and vice versa.
I coined the idea to some of the other 'spectators', and the Ohmega64 project was born:
To create a way to randomize the controllers of a Nintendo 64 Game console, in such a way it provides amusement for both players and spectators.
In the progress section, you can keep track of the current status of the project