[typing] [dance beat]
Greetings and welcome to LGR Oddware
where we're taking a look at hardware and software
that is odd, forgotten and obsolete.
I've got a question for you. Have you ever looked through your DOS games and just thought,
"Man, I really hate the keyboard and mouse, or even a controller!"
You know what? Screw that!
I wanna play my DOS games...
with my MIND!
(EERIE STING)
Well, you can do that.
Thanks to the magic...
and technology of the MindDrive,
the first computer product operated by human thought.
Yes, this is real, and apparently it's fun for the whole family,
so let's hope it's fun for the entire YouTube audience as well.
Ah, yes. Squigglies in your brain...
equals squigglies on your computer...
via your finger.
This is indeed the MindDrive,
brought to you by a company calling themselves...
It's always a good sign when something that is supposedly based on science...
uses a well-known scientific fallacy.
An urban myth...
misattributed to Albert Einstein and bunch of other people.
"Use only your thoughts to move images."
"Run computer programs and even play video games."
"Astonishingly simple."
So frickin' simple that it probably doesn't work.
(LAUGHS) So this thing was released in 1997...
well, maybe late 1996, but definitely by '97...
and cost $149 in the U.S.
And you could actually get all of these extra pieces of software to play with it.
This will not just play with anything.
You do need other software that's made specifically by The Other 90% or...
whoever else...
that is compatible with this, and...
these things cost $25 or $40 each.
Now, supposedly the whole idea behind this...
is that the little sensor for the finger...
measures galvanic skin responses, or GSR.
This is like temperature and heart rate and electrical impulses...
and it's supposedly similar to programs developed by the Pentagon and NASA...
for doing things like training pilots,
as well as other brain-computer interfaces for controlling things like prosthetics...
and wheelchairs and other stuff like that...
for people that are disabled in one way or another.
Now, whether or not this actually holds true to any of that GSR reading...
(LAUGHS)
Yeah, I don't even know. We're just gonna have to see once we try it out.
Now this thing was released with some restrictions.
They were actually trying to get this thing to...
read very specific thoughts.
Well, not really read, but detect specific thoughts, like...
they were having some sort of thing where you could think a word and...
it would have a vocabulary that it knew, and you would also be able to...
write using thing, but that never happened.
This thing can only detect direction...
and intensity of a direction.
You'll see what I mean once we actually try this thing out.
And according to some of the contemporary articles that I was reading...
and other hoopla with the press,
there was a lot of people just like kind of blown away...
and skeptical, obviously, as I was...
that this thing would actually become something cool, but...
apparently Disney was on board, because their Miramax studio...
actually planned to make mind-controlled movies with this.
So you would go to a movie and you would wear...
one of these MindDrives...
and everybody in the theater would be thinking "Left!" or "Right!"
Like, if a character in a horror movie or something would want to go left or right,
and it would change the outcome of the movie.
Yeah, that never happened, either, but...
you'll note that lofty promises as opposed to actual results...
that's a recurring theme with this thing.
So inside the box, you get everything just sort of packaged into this neat little cardboard...
packaging.
That's appropriate, I suppose.
But let's just take a look at each of these things and see what $150 got you back in 1997.
First up, we get the software that it comes with,
which is quite handy because otherwise this thing is completely worthless.
It comes with the tutorial software, as well as some testing stuff on here, called "ThoughtWaves."
"MindDoodle," which is actually a few different things.
"MindSkier" is a skiing game...
controlled by thought.
As well as "Mind Bowling." There's a lot of "Mind" things.
I guess they didn't mind.
You also get some registration stuff, as well as ads...
for more of their products that you could buy from them.
Just in case you were so impressed with this thing that you wanted so much more.
And this thing does actually hook up through the serial port.
So if you have like RS-232, or whatever else,
this is an adapter for the couple different kinds of serial that were common at the time.
Plugs straight in to one of the COM ports there.
And then it also comes with this. This is the MindDrive Microconsole, as they call it.
So you have the power source, it actually plugs into the wall.
There's an RJ-11, like, phone line type of thing here.
And the manual actually says, "Don't plug your phone into this!"
But, yeah, this plugs into one of the devices.
And a power button and some other things over here which you use to plug in...
all of this! (LAUGHS)
It's not the most elegant solution in the world, but it works.
It's science! Who cares?!
Yeah, so we just plug that in right there...
RJ-11 right there...
AC adapter here, so basically this plugs into the wall, of course...
this'll plug into the serial port on your computer...
and this slips onto one of your fingers.
Also got the "User's Manual" which is pretty informative and...
actually pretty entertaining.
Ron Gordon, the president of Other 90% Technologies...
really had some high, lofty ambitions. (LAUGHS)
"Our history as human beings on the planet has been a history...
of continually using and developing our minds to...
enhance our civilizations, science and cultures."
But, yeah, he just goes on about, "Aw, man,
we've been limited by our arms and legs and words and...
now we're only limited by our mind!
It's a continuing journey and the most exciting thing of the advancement of the human mind."
Blah, blah, blah.
It's basically just telling you how to set this thing up.
As well as some tips for adjusting...
the thing... (LAUGHS) ...if it doesn't work.
I love this, too:
Like, "why is the performance varying?
The reason is simple: YOU!"
It's your fault.
Not the product.
And so lastly, the finger sensor is where most of the action happens.
Really, really simple, you just stick a finger that fits into there...
and it starts detecting that whole GSR thing, or at least...
that is the idea.
No, that's not gunshot residue, but...
maybe it can detect that, too. This things is pretty much magic.
But, yeah, it's actually really cheap. Comes apart super easily.
And underneath, you have all of this wonderful...
little bits of integrated circuitry and whatnot.
Uh... yeah...
It's just this little gold sensor that when you...
touch these two contacts...
it detects that there's something there...
and then tries to read your signals.
And, in turn, your mind.
(LAUGHS) At least...
that is the idea.
Whether or not this is actually successful in doing that, well...
Let's just go ahead and give it a look.
You know, hooking myself up to all this equipment makes me feel like some sort of...
messed up science experiment.
(LAUGHS) That kind of makes sense...
considering that Ron Gordon, the...
ex-president of Atari from the '70s and the founder of this company...
said the technology for the MindDrive was originally developed during the Cold War...
by former U.S. government scientists working on secret mind-control projects...
in Syberia.
Which is pretty outrageous.
But then again, it's also well-known that everyone at Atari in the mid-'70s were on a crapload of drugs.
Alright, so once the thing is installed, the MindDrive adjusts to your brainwaves.
Once it has done this, you can use this ThoughtWaves program...
to sort of get used to the whole idea of controlling things with your mind.
There's this little worm and you try to feed it...
through these openings in these gates.
But honestly, I find it very difficult...
to determine if I'm actually making a difference...
or if the wormy thing just does wormy things on its own...
and sort of makes me FEEL like I'm actually controlling it with my mind.
In fact, turning around and not looking at the screen at all...
not thinking about left or right thoughts or whatever it wants me to do...
(chuckles) and it still plays...
just about as well as I was doing when I was "trying," quote-unquote.
And, yeah, that's what you do. It tells you to think with your left and right brain, so it's like...
Think left, think right, think up, think down, or...
whichever, it's only binary. It can only do two at a time.
So there's a mode for left and right...
and there's a mode for up and down.
You can adjust the "ThoughtWave sensitivity" in the options.
But putting it near the bottom just gets no results whatsoever...
and then putting it near the middle or anywhere beyond...
makes it just go all over the place, even when I'm not trying anything.
I thought maybe another finger would help.
I was doing it on my index finger on my left hand.
The manual says to try another hand with the middle fingers.
I figured, why not the MOST middle of middle fingers:
and, well, what do you know?
I... once again cannot tell the difference...
and it's just kind of doing whatever it wants to.
I thought, "Hey, why restrict myself to fingers?
I got other phalanges and whatnot."
So I stuck it on my toe and...
yeah, it's pretty much the same result.
Just made it harder to stand up, and I felt like a flamingo, but whatever.
Maybe a little extra capacitance will help.
So, I tried it with my tongue...
after cleaning it, of course, since my toe was just in there.
And this actually seemed to work a tiny little bit.
I felt like I was more or less controlling it sometimes.
It was just... gross.
It just didn't taste very good whatsoever.
And why stop there?
Why should humans have all the fun?
So I got this cherry tomato straight out of the refrigerator...
and stuck it in there and...
(chuckling) well, what do you know?
Once it adjusted to it...
uh, it did just fine.
In fact, it did maybe even better than I was doing with my fingers.
So, you know, I don't know what the MindDrive is detecting...
but it sure as heck ain't brainwaves.
Unless I've got a very evolved tomato.
In that case, I should probably call National Geographic.
Since that one's so spectacularly average...
I figured I should try some of the other games, like MindBowling.
It's a bowling game... that you play with your mind.
Super simple. All you control here is the ball going left and right...
and you press spacebar to actually bowl the ball.
Once again, it takes some adjustment, but actually...
this had me feeling like I WAS controlling the bowling ball with my mind!
Seriously, I would think "left, left, left,"
and the ball would start to curve left down the lane...
or very much right down the lane, if I was thinking "right."
And if I just sort of thought neutrally,
it would stay in the middle. I'm not making it up.
It actually sorta started to work.
A little bit.
But then the other 75% of the time, it was just all over the place...
and I had no idea what was even going on.
Because, again, I would look away or something...
and it just felt like the ball would go towards the direction that I would LIKE it to go...
in order to get a better shot.
It really does feel like these games are just pandering to you.
Like it's just being, "Eh, okay. You know you want it to go that way,
so I'm gonna make it go that way."
Because, after all, if a tomato can play this,
what the frick does that say about me?
Next up is "MindSkier."
And there are way too many race events than necessary in this game, but whatever.
I just played the slalom because "lala-lalom" is a good word.
Once again, you press spacebar to begin...
and you can press the up and down arrows to adjust your speed.
Otherwise, it's the same binary movement: left... and right.
And... aw, man...
this made Winter Race 3D seem like a masterpiece.
Seriously, it was all over the place.
I adjusted the sensitivity, it really didn't matter.
This is a complete friggin' waste of time and just a mess.
Maybe my brain was getting fried after a while.
In fact, the manual said something about that, too.
But then again, according to the manual,
you can just exist wrong...
and it will cause a fault with the device...
and somehow that's YOU being the problem.
And can you imagine...
if something like this actually HAD caught on, though?
There'd be people sitting around playing games like this.
I'm pretty sure I've witnessed some kind of similar scene...
in a dystopian fiction of some kind.
People just sitting around motionless, playing things with their mind...
and be slightly appeased.
This is a sad, sad thing. I'm glad this was not the future.
And last up is "MindDoodle."
You got "MindSketch," "MindPatterns," "MindCritters,"
"MindTravel The World," and "MindTravel USA"...
and "MindKampf"– haha, no you don't, but...
anyway, these are all little mini-games that aren't really games at all.
The first three are all the same.
Basically, it's just like Kid Pix or Paint...
or something, but you do it with your mind, sort of.
Again, because it only does left or right, or up and down,
you actually have to choose with the mouse...
what you wanna do.
So, it kind of negates the majority of the entire point of this device...
since you don't control it with your mind but the mouse.
You choose your color and brush and then point at the direction...
that you want the cursor to move...
with these little arrows at the bottom.
Then you click and move the rest of the cursor...
either left or right or up and down...
and hope that it does something.
And of course it never did.
Not with MindSketch, MindPatterns, MindCritters.
They're all the same frickin' thing!
Just one is with drawings, one is with patterns...
one is with animal patterns.
The fact that you have multiple controls to work out...
one of which is your friggin' brain just not working because this thing sucks...
yeah, that makes this REAL intuitive.
And then there's the MindTravel the World and the USA.
In these, it gives you several locations...
and you have to do the exact same thing with the drawing...
except that you're moving around some sort of vehicle...
trying to collect all of these locations.
So, it is video gaming's most awkward and clunky...
messed-up quiz show that you've ever seen.
And that's it!
There were a bunch of other programs but...
I cannot IMAGINE paying the $25-40, or whatever it was.
Yeah, that's it for the MindDrive for now. Ugh...
Man, what a disappointment.
I was really hoping to play at least one game...
with my mind halfway competently, but...
(LAUGHS) I guess that's what I get for believing in magic.
Oh, man, whatever. I guess the inner 10-year-old...
that just wants these kinds of things to exist...
is still there, and I can't help it. But whatever.
I appreciate you sticking around for my look into yet more Oddware.
And if you would like to see even more Oddware episodes,
I have done quite a few of them.
One of them is showing right here, as well as one of my reviews.
I do videos like this every single week,
often times more than one a week.
So subscribing would be beneficial to you if you enjoyed anything you saw here.
Lots more is coming.
And you can always interact a little bit more with me...
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as well as get some perks, like being able to view episodes earlier than anywhere else.
And as always, you are controlling my mind...
to tell you thank you for watching.