Japanese boffins invent the ‘world’s smallest shooting game’ by using an electron beam to blast particles one billionth of a metre in size

Modern PC gaming is an endless war against drive space, with every new blockbuster gobbling up more gigabytes than the last one. At my current rate of C drive consumption, by the end of the year the only game I’ll be able to fit on there would be some sort of microscopic shoot ’em up cooked up in a Japanese lab.

What fortuitous timing, then, that such a game was just invented. A research team from the School of Engineering at Japan’s Nagoya University created the “world’s smallest shooting game” by manipulating nanoparticles roughly 1 billionth of a meter in size in real time.

Reported phys.org, the game, which seemingly is yet to be given a name (though my pick would be Subspace Invaders) is a mixed reality affair where a digital controller is used to manipulate real-world objects. In this case, the physical objects are nanoscale polystyrene balls, while the digital tech is an electron beam, which generates electric fields and optical images onto a display. The balls represent enemies, while the beam represents the player, resembling a triangular spaceship on the screen through which the nanoparticles are displayed. The game itself is very simple, with the player manipulating the beam to shoot the polystyrene balls.

“The system projects the game ship onto real nanophysical space as an optical image and force field, creating an MR where nanoparticles and digital elements interact,” explained Professor Takayuki Hoshino, who led the research team. “The game is a shooting game in which the player manipulates a ship and shoots bullets at real nanoparticles to repel them. Through this, we successfully demonstrated real-time interaction between digital data and physical nano-objects.”

As for the reason behind the game’s creation, it’s designed to demonstrate the team’s technology for manipulating objects at the nanoscale level, which has numerous real world applications. ” We could 3D print the created objects in real time, potentially revolutionizing the world of 3D printing,” Hoshino cites as an example. “Or use the same guidance technique to guide toxic agents to virus cells in living organisms and kill them.” Now I’ve just imagined a sci-fi story where a pro gamer gets recruited to blast the bugs out of a billionaire’s body, although depending on how realistic Hoshino’s suggestions are, it may not be science fiction for long.

There’s a video of the tech in action that you can watch above. The footage is grainy and the framerate frankly unacceptable, but if you look closely you can see the beam being directed toward the nanoparticles, pushing them apart ever so slightly. As a game, it probably needs some work before being submitted for this year’s Game Awards, but as a demonstration of nanotechnology, it’s pretty darned astonishing.