Super Mario Brothers controlled with eyes

Waterloo Labs, a collective of insane National Instruments employees, developed an electrode system to measure eye movement, and then used that as a control method for Super Mario Bros. The result of Waterloo’s project is the ability to move Mario just by moving your eyes in the direction you want him to go. It’s less “a practical experiment” than it is “fodder for an awesome video” — although it’s not hard to imagine technology like this being useful to players with limited mobility; or as an extra layer of augmented-reality control. And, if nothing else, it’s just something cool to do with all those electrodes you might have lying around.

This is clearly a fun project, but there’s much more serious potential for it when you begin to think about disabled gamers, and how the concept could be adapted for them. Also, wouldn’t moving your eyes take away your sight of the screen? In other words, if Mario has to make a jump to avoid a bad guy, could shifting your eyes upward cause you to lose sight of the enemy that you’re trying to avoid?