Out of iSight
By Brad Cook
 Think of all the calories burned over the years if you’d been the one doing all that running, jumping and attacking while playing your favorite Mac games. Maybe it’s time for a real workout: You need Freeverse’s ToySight collection.

iSightToySight uses an iSight, or other video camera, to put you in the middle of the action. Stand in front of the camera, choose one of the nine games included in this package, and prepare to get busy. Reach out and slap a button. Wave your arms up and down to activate sliders. Move your hands to aim your weapon, whether it’s a missile or a custard pie. Flap your arms and soar through the sky.

A Variety of Genres
The games featured in ToySight run the gamut from Sky Diver, in which you freefall through the air and try to land as close to a target as possible, to PieSight, where the challenge lies in splatting monkeys with custard pies before they can throw bananas at you. You can even grab objects off your desk — Freeverse recommends using real toys — for Toy War, in which ToySight creates a digital replica of what it sees in the camera and places it in an arena, where it battles another toy supplied by a friend.

When your epic toy battle ends, keep your friend around for two more multi-player games, Submarines and Tennis Xtreme. In the former, two subs move back and forth on either side of an island, automatically firing missiles every five seconds. You move a slider to change the missile’s angle and try to hit your opponent. First one to reach five strikes wins.

Tennis Xtreme offers a variant of Pong in which both players move tanks up and down and bounce a ticking grenade between them. Miss the grenade and your opponent gets a point. Have the grenade explode on your side of the court and your opponent also snares a score.

If you pull off the high score in any game, stick your face in the center of the screen afterward and slap the buttons that snap your picture. Your image will appear next to your tally on the high score board for that game.

Bonus Fun
Freeverse is known for including fun goodies with their games (Jared, Butcher of Song, anyone?), and ToySight doesn’t disappoint in that department. Select the Toy Box and apply a variety of filters to the video, such as a ghost mode that gives you a spooky appearance, glow effects that make your hands shimmer and give off stars as they move, and a wormhole that creates distortion.

When everyone’s arms get tired, have the Party option display the filters randomly while playing the dance music that accompanies the games. Or if you and your pals would rather make your own music, select the Laser Harp and touch the beams to play a series of ethereal notes. Reach high to make them louder. Turn it into a game to see who can play the best concerto.

If you decide to play alone, don’t be surprised if you get some funny looks when someone happens to enter the room. Here’s your chance, though, to prove that videogames really can get you in better shape.

If you liked these games, check out:
 Marble Blast
 Pocket Tanks
 Worms Blast
   marbles
Marble Factory. Get your hands in the air if you want to zap those aliens.

skydiving
Skydiver. Freefall through the clouds and hook up with other skydivers along the way.
ToySight Media

View QuickTime trailer
Download ToySight Gold demo

System Requirements:
(Subject to change by publisher before shipping.)
Video camera (iSight recommended)
Mac OS X version 10.1.5 (10.2 or higher recommended)
600MHz PowerPC G3 processor or 400MHz G4 (800MHz G4 or higher recommended)
256MB of RAM or higher
200MB of hard disk space
32MB 3D graphics card (NVIDIA GeForce 2MX or better)

Insight Into the Games of ToySight

Marble Factory
You’re in charge of a marble factory under attack by aliens that drop down in a variety of colors. Slap the right button to change the factory’s laser into the same color as the aliens and vaporize them. Clear all the aliens to advance to the next level. As the game gets progressively difficult, the number of possible alien colors increases, forcing you to combine laser colors to get the correct ones.

  Owl and Kitten The Owl and the Pussycat

plank The Plank

missles Submariness

tanks Tennis Xtreme
The Owl and the Pussycat
Flap your arms to direct the owl as it tries to escape from the castle with the pussycat in its claws. Collect gold coins along the way and drop the pussycat to activate buttons that help you get away.

PieSight
You can’t have a Freeverse game without monkeys, whether they’re burning or not. Head deep into the chimps’ jungle home and throw custard pies at them before they can hit you with their bananas. (According to Freeverse, the monkeys are allergic to the pies. Who knew?) If you’re too slow with your pie-throwing trigger, slap the “Duck” button to get out of the way. Don’t rely on that tactic too often, though: you can only duck a few times before you get goosed.

The Plank
You probably never expected a Tetris variant to tire you out. Use your hands to move the sliders, tilting the plank from side to side and raising it up and down as the marbles drop from the sky. Line up rows of three or more of the same colors and they’ll disappear. Watch for the bonus marbles, including one that pauses the action so you can rest for a few seconds. Clear enough rows and you move on to the next, more difficult level.

Skydiver
Drop toward the target on the ground, grabbing bonus items along the way as you maneuver your skydiver with your arms. Score extra points if you can hook up with a skydiver circle before your chute opens. The closer you land to the target, the higher your final score.

Submarines
Two subs, on opposite sides of an island, automatically fire missiles at each other every five seconds. You control the firing angle of one sub’s missiles while a friend controls the other. Slap the “Reverse” button to get out of the way of an incoming shot. First player to hit the other one five times wins.

Tennis Xtreme
Freeverse describes this game as “tactical Pong.” Each player controls a tank, instead of a paddle, and bounces a ticking grenade (instead of a ball) back and forth. The grenade’s timer starts at a number between 8 and 15; each time it hits a tank or the edge of the playing field, it counts down by one. When it explodes, the player whose side it isn’t on scores a point. Each player can also score a point if the grenade bounces past the other one.

Toys War
Grab two objects — preferably toys, but anything you have lying around will do — and place them, one at a time, in front of the onscreen crosshairs to be photographed and placed inside Duel Balls. Next, send the Duel Balls into a digital version of rock, paper, scissors in which you select fire, water or earth. Depending on what your opponent chooses, you will have no effect on him, she will damage you, or you will damage her. Each hit reduces the player’s life bar; the loser is the one whose life bar depletes first.

Volcano God
Look over a tropical island for a year while a fellow deity is on vacation. Summon your godly powers to bring rain that nourishes the islanders’ crops, cause the ground to rumble so that they give you tributes, and throw fireballs at pirates who want to kidnap the people and make them work in T-shirt factories. Keep the islanders happy and more of them will arrive to build up their town. Do a poor job and they’ll run away and your powers will diminish, ending the game.