Reach Robotics, the augmented reality gaming company developing the ‘future of gaming,’ today announced that its flagship product, MekaMon, the world’s first real-life gaming robot, is now available on Apple.com and MekaMon.com for $299.95, as well as in Apple stores throughout the US and UK at stores’ opening tomorrow, November 16th. By incorporating augmented reality into a robot, Reach Robotics has created a new branch of gaming – one that totally immerses the player by putting their four-legged robots into battle in both the physical and virtual worlds with both iOS and Android compatibility.
“We’ve created an entirely new video gaming platform,” said Silas Adekunle, CEO of Reach Robotics. “MekaMon straddles both the real and virtual worlds while taking the gaming experience beyond a player’s screen and turning their sitting room into a limitless robotic battle zone. MekaMon represents a quantum leap forward in the leveraging of augmented reality. Players can whip out their smartphone to battle their multi-functional, connected battlebots in the physical and virtual worlds at the same time.”
Beyond creating an entirely new category of entertainment, gamers also get to benefit from the MekaMon robot’s unprecedented and sophisticated degree of movement.
MekaMon Specs and Features:
- Smartphone Compatibility: MekaMon can be enjoyed on updated iOS and Android devices and uses the phone’s camera and infrared sensors for precision game-play.
- Portability: Each robot weighs approximately 2.2lb, is 11.8in x 11.8in x 5.9in in dimension and has a removable, rechargeable battery for at least one hour of non-stop play-time.
- Bluetooth and Infrared Battlezones: Powered by the smartphone app, MekaMon robots connect to each other via infrared signals and players’ phones connect to each other over Bluetooth, allowing friends to battle against each other as well as offering arcade-style and co-operative game-play.
- Choose your World: Gamers choose whether to play in the real world or augmented reality – once battles starts, the robot is free to move and use any object in the room (e.g. tables, chairs, other toys, etc.) to block and/or hide from attackers!
- Customizability: A MekaMon robot can be customized to suit a user’s individual playing style, adding weapons or shields to create more aggressive, defensive and technical capabilities.
Additionally, MekaMon will feature full compatibility with Apple’s Swift Playgrounds coding app, allowing users to control their robot with real Swift code. With Swift Playgrounds, users can learn and implement fundamental coding concepts to control Mekamon’s startup, shutdown and movement capabilities, custom reactionary animations and more. This not only gives users the chance to learn how to put together more complex coding commands but allows each person to define completely unique behaviors in their MekaMon.
“As the world’s first premium gaming robot, MekaMon fits neatly into the emerging category of smartphone-enabled, augmented reality products,” added Adekunle. “By fusing robotics, reality-bending technology and competitive play, we’re offering players a new twist on hardware and video games – a premium robotics product that’s easy to play but very difficult to master.”