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Dimension-Bending Games Stretch Fabric of Space and Time

wired.com — In the famous Victorian satire Flatland, a two-dimensional square is suddenly plucked out of his flat world and lifted into the third dimension. It is a spiritually mind-blowing experience -- by looking down on his flat house, the square is suddenly able to see the insides of objects that, when he was 2-D, appeared solid.

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  • leontes, on 10/11/2007, -16/+14D boxing! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/4D_Sports_Boxing
    • zulfy26, on 10/11/2007, -1/+25Spoiler: this is about Super Paper Mario
    • macaddct1984, on 10/11/2007, -0/+5If you like math or discussions of alternate dimensions [who doesn't?], Flatland (Abbott, 1884) and the more modern Flatterland (Stewart, 2001) are fantastic books and definitely worth reading.
    • Iriel, on 10/11/2007, -0/+2@zulfy26:

      Even worse spoiler: It's by Wired. pass.
  • Rikushix, on 10/11/2007, -6/+2Trippy.
  • strossos, on 10/11/2007, -5/+28Now you're thinking with portals!™
    • troglodytejb, on 10/11/2007, -9/+2The paranoia he describes in Super Paper Mario is totally true... My friends, who hadn't played, couldn't stand to watch me play as I compulsively flipped perspective, looking for secrets or a way to advance. It's totally confusing and made one of them nauseous. Great game!
  • mroffroad, on 10/11/2007, -4/+2i need pictures
  • josegutz, on 10/11/2007, -2/+1Very Gustav Klimt ~ Hmmmmmm
  • doublefelix, on 10/11/2007, -2/+2Just thinking about the concept of slipping between dimensions has fried my tiny mind
    • expertninja, on 10/11/2007, -3/+22http://www.tenthdimension.com/flash2.php

      How's that for explaining it?
    • Adoozie, on 10/11/2007, -3/+9I wish people would stop linking to that horrible site. Nothing there is actually backed up by physics. The extra dimensions required to make certain parts of string theory work are extra SPATIAL dimensions. There's nothing magical about them, like that site seems to imply.
    • allenthar, on 10/11/2007, -1/+4@expertninja

      Just great...I think my brain is melting now.
    • LatvianHedgehog, on 10/11/2007, -1/+3Horrible indeed. It doesn't even work.
    • rootofunity, on 10/11/2007, -0/+7@adoozie

      You must really have no clue what you are talking about. This has everything to do with physics and your right it has very little to do with string theory but Flatlands/Super Paper mario is supposed to be an allegory for what transversing through a four dimensional universe could be like. We can never know what it is actually like since we are three dimensional beings in a four dimensional world and if you dont believe that then your saying General Relativity Theory, Quantum Field Theory and even String Theory are founded upon false assumptions (which would be contradiciting your own statement). So anyway this example is supposed to help us visualize reality through a dimensionally reduced example. (ie seeing what its like for a 2d being living in a 3d world, traversing through the 3rd dimension.

      Lastly, Relativity theory is experimentally verifiable and String Theory has yet to be experimentally verifiable and is not a proper physical theory. Regardless most versions of String Theory holds for the 4 dimensions that relativity defines plus 2-7 smaller compact dimensions that as you claim are nothing special.
  • Grivako, on 10/11/2007, -3/+1I love a game that forces me to rethink what perspective is, what a game can be and what my limits are and may not be :) Now if only this can be stepped up to other genres, I think we will all be happy
  • chaesar, on 10/11/2007, -1/+7I don't get it, Super Paper Mario came out months ago, has it taken this long for someone to blog about it?

    This is an awesome game though, totally sucked me in for hours the first time I played. Makes me wish I could slip into 4D and move through time.
    • DarkXanthos, on 10/11/2007, -8/+5I hope you forgot to put a /sarcasm tag there... or you're about to get a very welcome surprise!
    • DarkXanthos, on 10/11/2007, -1/+4I'm getting dugg down... but we already DO move through the 4th dimension. Just only forward...
  • Ub3rg33k, on 10/11/2007, -5/+4If this is an article about Super Paper Mario, could the submitter not be bothered to stated that in the title or summary?
  • Requi3m10, on 10/11/2007, -3/+2I'll go buy a wii
  • rayt5, on 10/11/2007, -1/+7A game that treated time as just another dimension, and allowed you to have control over it, would be awesome. Imagine a free-form moving game, like Mario 64 or Oblivion, but then you can flip into 4D, just like you can flip into 3D with Paper Mario. It could somehow visualize the beginning and end of all events currently shown on the screen, with you being able to move to a specific point in time, perhaps to change the events. Or, imagine a game that simply has time as another axis. An X axis, Y axis, Z axis, and Time axis, that lets you move as quickly or as slowly as you would like in either direction of time.
    • acetv, on 10/11/2007, -1/+2Ever heard of TimeShift?

      http://pc.ign.com/objects/723/723559.html
    • MrSketch, on 10/11/2007, -0/+6@rayt5: "Imagine a free-form moving game ... but then you can flip into 4D"

      You mean something like Prince of Persia: Sands of Time?
    • geoffpado, on 10/11/2007, -0/+3We've seen similar effects before (see the N64 Zelda games and GCN Prince of Persia), but to be able to move through full timelines in-game would be awesome.
    • ijacker, on 10/11/2007, -0/+1"All of which led me to wonder: Why haven't many other games explored this territory before?"

      remember "Einhander"?

      also, wasnt there an R-type that was much similar?

      @strossos:

      Portal looked suh-weet! i hope it gets developed into a (full) game
    • Hypersapien, on 10/11/2007, -0/+1@MrSketch

      In PoP:SoT you don't "flip into 4d". You simply move through time in the opposite direction. It's not the same thing.
  • Kypt, on 10/11/2007, -1/+2I currently got Crush for my PSP and it's simply an amazing puzzle game. The big issue w/ it is that after I'm done playing it really messes with your real-life depth perception. Stuff no longer seems to be too far away and you keep stepping hard on the floor whenever you're about to travel long distances :/
  • Wytefang, on 10/11/2007, -0/+5"Flatland" by Edwin Abbot was a great book but occasionally mind-bending to grasp in places. I feel like I understood it in its entirety but wow, challenging and interesting book to read.

    • tech42er, on 10/11/2007, -0/+2It's a great book, both for the geometric/mathematical aspects and the Victorian social aspects.
  • Cyber_Akuma, on 10/11/2007, -0/+1This article made me want to go and read the book Flatland now, but there are a dozen versions, no idea which book to get, or movie.
    • echonull, on 10/11/2007, -0/+2How about the one on Project Guttenberg:
      http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/201
      The second instance of the string "Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions" marks the start of the book itself and the end of the PG disclaimers.

      The plaintext version has ascii art to approximate the illustrations; go to your friendly neighborhood bookseller for a real copy.
  • Hypersapien, on 10/11/2007, -0/+1Also a good book is 'The Planeiverse" ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Planiverse ) which actually delves into the subject of 2-dimensional biology and proves that it is actually possible for a flatlander to have a digestive system.
  • slapthemonkey, on 10/11/2007, -0/+1Simply great!
  • MarkOfTheDead, on 10/11/2007, -0/+0haha prior to RTFA, i was thinking, "damn, nintendo's lawyers are gunna be PISSED"
  • supermanred, on 10/11/2007, -0/+1Dude, you trip me out man.
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