I don’t come across people who seem to have any nostalgia for this game, though I remember playing it with several of my friends as a kid. Jak and Dexter, Ratchet and Clank, Crash Bandicoot, etc get people reminiscing about their PS2 consoles, but EyeToy was such a unique early 2000s AR experience.
EyeToy: Play is a video game for the PlayStation 2, released July 4th, 2003. It was the first game to make use of the PlayStation 2’s video camera accessory, EyeToy. It was an early motion capture video game.
The EyeToy camera projected the player on to the television screen, and the game software recognized movement from the players which allowed them to interact with onscreen objects.
When people picture the history of kinetic video games, many consider Wii the 1st, despite its release date of 2006, about three years after the first EyeToy game.
Later, EyeToy: Play 2 and EyeToy: Play 3 were released. One game in the series that really stuck out was EyeToy: Antigrav, a hoverboard game released in November, 2004. Unlike the other EyeToy games, it doesn’t project you on screen. Instead, the game appears like any other PS2 game but your body controls the character on screen (no other controller needed).
I impressed several of my friends when I was 11 years old by not telling them what EyeToy: Antigrav was exactly. I’d simply start doing my surfing motions and the character on the hoverboard mimicked them.
As I listen to XR podcasts, watch XR YouTube channels, and read XR forums, I’m surprised by the lack of any mention of EyeToy. If I didn’t still have the PS2 discs and couldn’t find the pictures of the game online, it would almost feel like I simply dreamed up the game.