X, A, Up, Left = Nice Flick

My alter ego actually lives in the academic field of computer engineering. I chose this path mainly because I liked making video games late in highschool. Now that I'm finishing, I still like making video games, and that brings us to my topic for the day - the Ultimate Video Game. Can it be done? Will it be fun? How should we do it?

Let's look at existing attempts and related games.

1. Layout Ultimate 2006 - a 3D, 2 on 2 ultimate game (7on7 for the downloaded version) that I've played for a few minutes. It's a great effort.
2. In California Games, there used to be a section where you would huck a disc to a dog.
3. Frisbee Golf - A game I've read reviews for, but never had a chance to play.
4. A great game called Wind Jammers for Neo Geo. This is a one on one game where you try to throw the disc by your opponent who can layout. This game had curving throws and pop passes. It's a little bit like double disc court.
5. Disc Golf'03 - This is a flash based game that we played. There's a trick to driving the disc so that you could get hole in ones.
6. Another Disc Golf flash based game.

Pictured Above: A few of us competing in a non-ultimate Video game after practice. Notice orange wins again.

I'm sure I'm missing a few, but that gives us a reasonable review of what is currently available. So obviously, an Ultimate or Disc like Video Game can be done. Now, I have to ask will the next generation game be fun, could it be like modern sports games, and how can we do it?

I guess our frames of reference will be football and soccer video games. I think the football quarterback view is the preferred camera angle for the game. Next, I guess we as the players could either be cutters, defenders, or the thrower. In all cases, I think the challenge has to be catching and throwing (layouts, hand/footblocks). This is where I think modern day consoles with their analog joysticks could be quite useful in adding skill to achieving throws and catches. Imagine one stick for your body position and one for your angle and strength of throw.

After throwing out some of these ideas, I think the game would be interesting. Making a game fun is extremely challenging, but I'll speculate it's possible. Think how cool would it would be to replay the Worlds in a Video game format, or UPA sectionals, regionals, and finals? Reliving the college scene! Imagine you could even play ultimate with me!!!

PJ