Wednesday, July 16, 2008

Luminodot

An old school game reinvented :D

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luminodot_01_s

Luminodot is a new product from Bandai, nothing to do with Gunpla, plamo, action figure, or the regular products from the company as reported on my blog. A set of Luminodot include a board, and many multicolored thumbtack-like pieces, which you attach onto the board to form patterns and pictures. Ever played with such thing before?

Back in my old days, I loved using graph papers to come up with 'unintentional' patterns. 'Unintentional' means I never thought about the pattern beforehand, but instead, by using the number of cells as measurement to repeat certain dots in different directions, a pattern is formed on the graph paper. Because it was 'unintentional', I could only see what was coming up after the several rounds of repetition.

It's like cutting out snow flakes from folded paper - you don't know what's coming out just by looking at one slice of it ^^

So, instead of a toy, you can even call Luminodot as an art. ^^ Also, since the picture you completed using Luminodot are made up of pins, they would look like the screen of some old Gameboy console. Very vintage and nostalgic~ ^^

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Components of Luminodot: (bottom up)the main board, mesh panel, a pattern template, another mesh panel, and a frame to hold all the components.

However, a feature which makes Luminodot stands out to be 'of this era' XD is its light-up function. After one finishes a Luminodot masterpiece, light can be turned on for the board, and the LED system will light up in three different speeds. Very cool as a picture display.

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How to play with Luminodot. You can have a clearer picture about how it works from the video clip on its offical site.

There are 12 colors and around 1,600 pins included in each set - quite a lot actually. ^^ Eight templates are also included in the basic set for you to play around, but of course, once you get the hang of it, you can start producing your own patterns. The price is not being listed on the official site, but found another site currently accepting pre-order for Luminodot - 12,399 Yen per set from Joshin O_O

The release date is 30th July.

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The content of a basic set.

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Optional templates are planned - 3,800 Yen for a set of six different patterns ^^;

While the product brings back plenty of childhood memories, the price totally knocks me out of my sweet dreams, straight back into my current life -_-|||

Well, I still got my graph papers to scribble. Shine them under a table lamp and they would look as if they can light up as well ^^; *cough* self-consolation *cough*

All images and more information on Luminodot's official site.