GAME BORDER

MULTI-CONSOLE GAME, 2011

JUN FUJIKI [JP]

Nintendo launched the Game & Watch in 1980. Featuring a single handheld game to be played on an LCD screen [in addition to a clock and an alarm], 43.4 million copies of the 59 games were sold worldwide between 1980 and 1991. It’s fitting therefore that Game & Watch forms the departure point for players of Game Border, a trip through the 30-year journey of console gaming from a novelty to a social phenomenon. Consisting of several TV monitors and game controllers arranged sequentially, the player guides the Game Border character seamlessly from one screen to the next. The player’s goal is not to successively reach higher and higher levels, but to skip through the “borders” between each of the worlds composed of the point where each successive monitor lines up to each other. It imparts the feeling of jumping from one game device to another and thus overcoming the boundaries of both hardware and perception. Game Border was most recently exhibited by Fujiki at the Ars Electronica Festival 2012, where it received an honorary mention in the Hybrid Art category.

""Game Border is an attempt to seamlessly connect the borders of different games, inspiring people to cross not only physical and social borders, but also borders of perception.”"

—jun fujiki [jp]