Imagine, if you will, a universe in which you'd not have to leave the warm confines of your house and slip on moist shoes in order to partake of the multifaceted wonders of bowling. Imagine also a world in which you could play tennis without a ball and swing your racquet amid the books and adorable Hummel figurines in your study to nearly the same effect. Imagine, finally, a small room which simulates an entire baseball stadium, IN OUTER SPACE. All of this, my virtual e-cyberfriends, with nothing but a TV and your trusty Xavix gaming system.

Well, kinda something similar to being like it. 

Xavix, if this is news to you, is a relatively new gaming system which will allow you, with the aid of infrared technology and pseudo-equipment, to play these sports games in any room in your house with a TV and enough floor space. It's so new, in fact, that these three games are the only things that plug into it as of this writing. Let me tell you something, my fellow feebs. Sports CAN be fun, when they don't involve being paraded around a room of semi-naked gentlemen who break into your gym locker, 3 times, to steal your gym clothes. Or throw gum into your long, girlish hair. Or involve you hiding behind the telephone pole at the baseball field to avoid at-bats. Yes, sports in your living room can successfully smooth over these deep emotional scars and enable you to regain some modicum of healthy physical activity without collapsing into tears. And if the flashbacks become too strong, your 6" Coronation Arwen won't tell anyone.

I was interested in this system for two reasons. For one, I played Donkey Konga at Toys R Us, and would return to play it until some kid busted the bongo controllers. In this, I found the joy of motion that one doesn't usually experience with data entry and painting. I craved motion. For two, I'm not getting any younger. In fact, and this may come to some surprise, I'm getting progressively older, and probably at twice the rate of a typical human. College was not kind to me, and despite my nervous terror of leaving the room and facing the judgmental stares of my peers, those fearful twitches weren't enough to keep me in shape. I'm no longer the slender, mysterious figure I once was. I've gone form Garindan to Malikili in 5 years, and I need to fix that. And if you know what I'm talking about, come one over and we'll party like the forest moon of Endor after the defeat of the Empire.

Xavix is a sleek little silver box, like any other gaming system, with a wireless port on the front. This port is used to communicate with the various bits of equipment which are required for the games, all of which will be discussed. Some need batteries, some do not. Sometimes, you need to put the system on the floor to keep the equipment within sensor range. Other times, you need to place it atop the TV. Sometimes, just sometimes, you need to strap it on as a codpiece, but only when using the bagpipe controllers for the Virtual Scotsman game. All of the games have internal processors and allow for a great deal of peripheral options - even, presumably, wired peripherals which could adjoin to the cart instead of the system. All involve options that alter your game play, and while most of these options can be selected remotely, the game system also has a series of selection buttons on its front for additional control.

The Xavix system retails for about 70 bucks, and each of the three games discussed here retail for around 50 bucks.

Bowling! Bowling is certainly the most fun and exciting of the three games. It's more complex, better engineered and has smoother play control than the others. Of course, bowling is a simpler game in the non-virtual world, making the translation a bit more realistic. It was the first one I plugged into the system, and that's probably a good thing. Had I started with Tennis or Baseball, I'd have been nonplussed. Minused, even. Or maybe a division sign.

See, bowling is a game based on two dimensions, primarily. Horizontal and forward motion are key, while height doesn't really come into play that deeply. Because you're operating on a single plane, and not free space, these coordinates are easily translated into the game. When it comes to something that involves all three dimensions instead of two, Xavix kinda throws them all out and relies upon the fourth - time. This will be evident in the other two games.

With the Xavix Bowling set, you get a bowling ball (in neon green, which is my favorite color for wacky peripherals), and a game cart. This is the only game cart of the three that actually has a sensor built into it, as a panel projecting out of the top of the cart. This adds a great deal of sensitivity to the entire game, and I suspect that it works in conjunction with the game's built-in sensors, giving it a kind of triangulation to work with. The ball itself seems to be of regulation size, but is incredibly light, so real life physics and game physics are immediately offset, but not hard to adjust to. It comes with a wrist strap, to prevent unwanted tossings and subsequent crackings and sub-subsequent spankings. Instead of flying off through your TV screen, it'll just whip back around and crack your wrist sumpin' fierce should you erroneously let go. Wrists heal, while the cold, suckleable teat of TV does not.

After you get over the sensation of bowling without releasing the ball, which is something akin to chewing a delicious hamburger that you're not allowed to swallow, the game takes over and the reflective surfaces of the ball do all of the work, completely without batteries. With the system on the floor in front of the TV, aligned to be perfectly perpendicular to you (which takes some adjusting), the game and its many varieties rocks out.

There's normal bowling, in which you can compete against the computer or up to three live opponents who pass off the ball between themselves. For these games, and all bowling games, you get to choose your preferred bowler from a lineup of typical bowlers. The Asian girl, the white guy, the nerd, the old lady who spent a rough life on the lanes, the black guy with the gangsta name, the less-black black guy, the kid, and all the rest. Each bowler has a certain degree of spin on the ball, a certain colored ball, and one even has lane bumpers turned on. Any of these attributes can be adjusted with a few clicks of the on-system buttons, which is the only way to make selections in the bowling game - crouching down to the system and clicking around. Ball curve can even be adjusted in-game, as well as pre-game, with a few clicks, in order to get those tricky shots. To those of you who abhor the inevitable crouch, it IS possible to use your toes to change game options. Mine are especially limber, and when I'm not using them to scale trees for coconuts or rescuing kitties, I'm using them to adjust the color of my ball. I make it blue.

It scores, sounds, bowls and tastes like bowling. Once your swing slightly forward of its nadir, when done at a significant speed, the ball releases and rolls down the alley. You can't just slowly lob the ball around. The game can sense your speed and will not release the ball if you're lazy. There are no shortcuts, unless you go mighty close to the sensor, and then it's impossible to control the angle. No slight arm jerks will get you through this. YOU MUST BOWL. The ball rolls off at an appropriate angle and will, hopefully, strike the pins. The pin physics are nice, but when you see the exact same pin animation more than a few times, one becomes suspicious. Realistically, the pins should never fall the same way twice, much like a pool break rarely sprays the pool balls in an entirely predictable fashion. Nor should the animation be symmetrical on both sides. It appears more animated and predetermined than calculated. Are these real physics being played out, or are they animations cued to play when the pins are hit at a certain place or speed?

None of this is apparent with a few games, but after many, you have to wonder if you're really doing anything or just prompting predestined movements. It doesn't reduce the fun that much, but it could be more realistic. As far as visual quality goes, I'm tempted to think of Out Of This World. Pixellated, but incredibly smooth and realistic. Of course, games have come a long way since then, and it's no longer an issue of having one or the other, but we seem to opt for motion here. Backgrounds and sprites are finely done in detail, but otherwise, it's blockville.

It may sound like I'm speaking down Xavix Bowling, but I like bowling. Last time I went bowling, I hopped down three stairs, landed crooked on my ankle, heard it pop three times and ended up limping around for a week. BUT I BOWLED ANYHOW! Because bowling is that cool. Xavix Bowling has three challenge modes which take bowling to a whole new world, which I fully endorse. These are things that they should institute in real bowling alleys.

The first of these modes involves knocking down certain arrangements of pins within a time limit. Simple enough. The second mode is something of a puzzle game. Pink and blue squares fall from the ceiling in three columns, and the object of the game is to bowl through three similarly colored squares in a row, making chains. It's Tetris without the 'tetr'. It just IS. It's speed bowling, and a puzzle game, and it'll get your heart rate going something wacky, and this isn't even the most challenging game.

The third challenge mode involves bowling down pins which slowly move in two directions across a wide, wide lane. It's here where the breadth of the angular physics come into play, as you try to knock over multiple rows of pins at a range of about 50 degrees, both close up and very far away, all over the screen. Add the difficulty of accursed poison, Republican, evil black pins to the array, all of which will set you back, and the game picks up another level of challenge. It's more than enough reason to return to the game again and again.

I do believe that this reveals the potential of the Xavix system, even if it goes unrealized in the other two games. I've enjoyed returning to the bowling many a time, but the other games have barely touched the system beyond trial purposes. It's undoubtedly worth the fifty dollars, considering the entire package.

I put together a small Xavix Party a few weekends back, in order to gather a consensus of opinion on the system. If you'd like to throw your own Xavix party, please view my instructional video so that you get it right. It's a fine art, and I've provided ACTION SAMPLES for your enjoyment. If you throw an unsuccessful Xavix party, one in which you or one of your compatriots loses an eye, do not blame me.

VIEW IT HERE, while awaiting part two of the Xavix article, which I forsee as scathing. We all know I'm at my best when I'm surly.

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