Super Mario Bros. Recreated For HoloLens AR Lets Gamer Geek Stomp Goombas In The Real World
A HoloLens developer by the name of Abhishek Singh took his love of the game to the extreme by painstakingly recreating the objects, surrounding environment, enemies and power-ups from the game. To demonstrate his creation for an audience, Singh donned a Mario-style outfit (because, why not) and his HoloLens headset. He then trekked through New York’s Central Park to stomp on goombas, jump to punch bricks and leap over obstacles. Singh even managed to grab the flower power-up and mow down a few goombas with fireballs.
“I also had to model all the assets and elements of the game and at times rethink the experience and gameplay to work in a real-world 3D setting. The most time was probably spent on tweaking the game to work in a large outdoor environment,” explained Singh in an email to UploadVR. “It still has a few quirks but is definitely playable. The final level was more than 110m long!”
Thankfully, we get the direct feed from Singh’s HoloLens camera so that we can “see” what he sees as he traverses through the level, and we also get a real-life profile shot as we see him walk down a Central Park pathway. It’s this second view that allows us to see Singh’s movements as he completes the level and how ridiculous people often look to passersby as they interact with AR environments.
Given the limitations of AR tech (and physics), Singh obviously can’t ascend virtual stairways or descend down green pipes. Instead, he merely walks around these obstacles. But it’s still an impressive tech demo and one that leverages one of the most popular games in console history.
What game should Singh recreate next? We’ll throw our two cents in and suggest something relatively simplistic like Wolfenstein 3D or perhaps some alien bashing in Duke Nukem 3D. “Shake it baby!”
