Museums of Failure (I): Sifteo, “resurrecting a legend”

This was a weird machine.

Inspired by “tactile play” toys such as Lego, the Sifteo was a collection of “motion-aware” cubes that connected to each other and put a strong emphasis on movement and physicality. It was created by two MIT students, David Merrill and Jeevan Kalanithi, and launched on 2012, to be discontinued a couple of years later.

Watching the video, it’s clear there was, and still is, nothing like it:

As an object, it’s a perfect candidate for a Museum of Failure — and there is indeed one, created by Mike Reddy, a scholar from the University of Wales. Under the title “Sifteo — Resurrecting a Legend”, Reddy has worked on emulators and ROMS of the original games (with the help of “David and Eric at Sifteo” and Daniel Owsiański), as well as SDKs and documentation to create homebrew games for the system.

So far, Reddy has worked on a game called Trump Wave for the Global Game Jam 2017, though it’s not clear if he finished it.

I haven’t tried any of these yet, but colour me intrigued. I think Reddy has done a lovely job preserving this rarity and would love to see the community expanded. As of now, it’s barely started, as Reddy himself explains:

I’ve had one or two PayPal Donations — one for $40! — which is really nice, from people who bought Sifteos (often second hand) only to discover that the web site NEEDED to activate the software is long gone. This site is for them, and now for you!