Game Boy's New Sun Screen

By Anita Hamilton

Here's a clever solution for parents who wish their video-game-addicted kids would play outside more often. Konami's Boktai: The Sun Is in Your Hand ($35) is the first video game to require outdoor sunlight. Designed for the Game Boy Advance and due out Sept. 16, the Boktai cartridge has an embedded sensor that detects how much sunlight is present. Then it uses that light to charge up the virtual solar guns that kids fire at vampires and ghouls in the game. Of course, vampires tend to hang out in dungeons, so the ones in Boktai are conveniently equipped with skylights for that extra jolt when a player's in a tight spot. (The brighter it is in the real world, the more virtual light streams through the skylights.) One drawback: the Game Boy screen gets washed out in direct sunlight, but angling the unit prevents that problem.

--A.H.