TGS 2002: Hands-onEnergy Airforce

Taito is showing a completed version of Energy Airforce for the PlayStation 2 here at the Tokyo Game Show. The game is, in many ways, your basic modern-day military jet combat game, but thatnks to its support of a unique peripheral, it manages to go the extra mile.

Energy Airforce supports a PS2 peripheral released by Sony called the PUD-J5A. This device is a head-mounted motion tracker with built-in screens and headphones. In short, it allows you to play the game from a truly first-person perspective, donning the VR unit and looking around the cockpit at will. Looking straight ahead gives you a view out of the front of the plane, while looking down a bit lets you get a look at the instruments. You can also look up, around, and behind your cockpit position with the unit. In total, there are approximately 15 full screens that you can move around in at will. We tested out the head-tracking unit and found it to work reasonably well. It keeps up with fast head movement pretty nicely. The display, however, is slightly blurred due to the relatively low resolution of the unit's dual screens. Regardless, it's still a really neat addition to the flight combat genre, and it'll be interesting to see if more developers include support for the device.

Energy Airforce will be available in Japan on September 26. The PS2-compatible head-motion tracker is currently available on Sony's Japanese Web site at a price of 59,800 yen, or approximately $495.03.