Thu, 2 Aug 2001

A must-have gift for video-game fanatics this holiday season could well be a gadget that momentarily immobilizes your hands when your character takes a hit.

Mad Catz Inc., the company devising Bioforce, thinks it has a winner, and some people who have tried it think it's great. But other game enthusiasts are not so sure that people will pay for a gizmo that helps virtual opponents pound them into cyberpaste.

"Force feedback" joysticks and gamepads have been around for years. They deliver vibrations, similar to the buzzing of a pager on silent mode, for car racing, flight simulators, and other video games.

Bioforce goes beyond that by producing a mildly shocking sensation.

Still being refined and tested, Bioforce could end up as a complete controller or simply an add-on to existing devices. In its current version, small wired pads attached to forearms transmit a mild electrical current, causing muscles to spasm when your game character is hit.

"The first time you feel it, you look down to figure out what's going on," said Matt Bennion, Mad Catz's business development manager. "Your muscles tense up and you can't defend yourself. You feel it as kind of a shock, but what you're really feeling is your muscles tightening up."

An Australian inventor brought the idea last year to Mad Catz, a Santee, Calif., company that sells peripheral equipment for video games. Mad Catz developed a working prototype and took it to E3, the annual video-game extravaganza held in Los Angeles in the spring.

"It caught a lot of people's imaginations," said Mad Catz's president, Darren Richardson.

Richardson compared Bioforce to the electronic gizmos - advertised on late-night TV - promising Schwarzenegger-like muscles simply by hooking yourself to the machine.

"The biostimulation of muscles has been around for years," Richardson said. "It causes the muscles to contract and gives you a sensation that makes it difficult to move your hand. It really works well with fighting games."

Some intense gamers are not enthusiastic about the idea.

"I don't want to be giving myself electric shock treatments," said John Ripley, 34, as he waited in line at a Sony outlet in San Francisco for a copy of Gran Turismo 3, the new driving simulator for the PlayStation 2. "It sounds stupid."

But Jon McCarron, a Tucows.com software reviewer who tried out Bioforce at E3, said he was excited about the product.

"I think it's the beginning of very cool technology that will bring video games into the tangible realm," McCarron said. "You won't be just guiding a disconnected body on the screen. It delivers an electric current. When you are damaged in the game, it shocks you."

"The feedback is adjustable, from very mild to something that feels like a throbbing or vibration in your arm," McCarron said. "It's not painful. At the highest setting it's a little uncomfortable."

Richardson said Mad Catz planned to study its medical effect before Bioforce reached store shelves, but he stressed that the technology was not new. He said customers faced little risk of being barbecued.

Yet some video-game players may care more about their characters' health than their own.

"Gamers are such a competitive breed," said Dan Amrich, senior editor at San Francisco-based GamePro magazine, which covers the industry. "Will they be willing to buy a peripheral that will put them at a disadvantage? Maybe you can only appreciate it by doing it, but it sounds like a tough sell at best."

Richardson acknowledged that the product "seemed like an odd idea to us, too."

Still, peripheral companies such as Mad Catz are familiar with niche marketing. They sell replacement controllers with features not found in
factory controllers, as well as steering wheels for racing games, lights, battery packs, and rechargeable batteries for handheld machines.

Mad Catz hopes that Bioforce will be ready for sale by November. It will sell for $20 to $30.

"When it was first pitched to us, we said, 'Sure, right,' " Bennion recalled. "Then, when we saw it, we were laughing. But when we hooked it up and people started playing it, we couldn't get them off."