I bought pallets of these around 2000-2003. They were such a huge failure that there was a warehouse full of them. I would take them apart, and remove the tactile transducer from them, and resell them for home-theater use. Basically, take the transducer (basically, a bass speaker without a cone), and bolt it to the frame of your couch, and you can feel the bass in your home theater as your couch vibrates. It worked amazing in this application. I must of resold 1,000 or so of them. But by 2003, pallets were drying up, and it wasnt worth the effort to buy them in singles.
@@Briaaanz it’s been 20 years, but inside those backpacks almost completely empty except the heavy transducer. Basically, unbolt it from the backpack, and bolt to the frame of your couch. It came with a simple amp/filter, that had a y-cable, so you could split it from your normal audio line, or in my case, I split the subwoofer line. But there is no cutting wires. You are just unbolting and reattaching. I vaguely remember the backpack had weird screw and I usually drilled them out
@@nicholas_scott Gaming chairs with subwoofers do the same thing. Somebody (hint hint to the OP, he seems all arts and crafty) needs to figure out a way to make them vibrate when the joypads do for rumble, instead of just having it happen along with the bass sounds almost by accident. Some way to turn those rumble instructions into discreet sub woofer sound (so the sounds aren't audible to humans, but the vibrations still work), so that they don't have to make a noise outside of the game sounds to vibrate, would be awesome.
@@Briaaanz You can just buy "bass shakers" or "tactile transducers" and mount them under your couch. That's exactly what I did. I bought 4 of them for about $15 each and mounted one under each seat. They really make movie time more immersive.
Everybody who is the right age remembers getting caught up in the cross fiyahh. Especially the high note he hits at the end as he screams CROSS FIYAAAAHHHHH!!!
Nobody young believes me when i bring up the Mall traveling VR games from the 90s. You stood in a ring, held a gun, and put on goggles. Maybe also seen at carnivals. They were terrible. I played a horrible shooter game that at one point i got stuck on because apparently you had to shoot out the next part of the path, but there was absolutely no indication of that in the game.
I remember the shooting one with and without a pterodactyl i think, that would pick you up and you to your doom .That and a robot arena with possible flight.
ikr, perfectly captures the hyperactive style that some 90ies toy/console ads went for, its only missing a few extreme fisheye shots and/or rapid changes in camera zoom when theres supposed to be action.
I was disappointed AF too. I was at Software Etc and seen it for $10 brand new. I remember reading so much about it in the EGM magazines and I was so excited that it was on clearance for $10 that I rode my bike all the way from the store home and begged my mom for the $10 and she made me mow the entire lawn first. I rode my bike all the way back and bought it. Got home and bragged about it to all the neighborhood kids. Hooked it up and was disappointed AF. It was the worst $10 I've ever spent 😂
You should have used it with racing games, it was the only thing that made it worth it. In the racing games you had to have an option to turn off music
@@SkuuchiMane808 I bought it for $5 a few months ago, tonight I ran it through my ID4 audio interface with the audio/signal source being from my PS5 controller & split the signal so I'm wearing the vest & using headphones while playing The Last of Us pt 1 & also Days Gone on my PS5. I'm tellin ya right now It's blowin my mind.... all I did was tweak the levels on the ID4 audio interface & the power level on the interactor hub thing & I swear it feels better than the haptic feedback on my PS5 controller 😮 1st of all the first boss fight against the bloater in TLOU pt 1 is insane and you can literally feel it running at you as if the floor is shaking from each huge step it takes, also when I start up Deacons bike in Days Gone and start riding or even just sit idle you feel the motor running and it vibrates differently depending on the surface you ride on or when you use the nitro boost, also when hordes chase you its intense as hell cos when you shoot and throw napalm molotovs the vest goes crazy.. I can even feel the wind and lightning, I dont know if I stumbled onto something by running it through my ID4 audio interface from my PS5 controller or not but Im tellin you its so immersive, accurate & reactive that I dont think I'll be able to play these games without it again.
I owned that! I liked it. I stepped on the interface unit and the plug from the vest broke off inside of it. Both the vest and control box became useless.
Also being 11 in 1994, I dreamed of getting one of these and pairing it with a Victormaxx Stuntmaster, and an Atari Jaguar with Aliens vs Predator for the ultimate VR experience. I never lived my dream fully but did manage to find a Stuntmaster very cheap in my teens and quickly realized I didn't miss much.
I got one of these after seeing a Nostalgia Nerd video on the cushion version, I pulled the speaker with a huge bolt through it from the backpack and attached it to the bottom of my sim racing seat.
I remember buying 4 of these from Jaycar, and installing the transducers into my front seats of my car, one on the bottom seat pan and one on the back, running them through a modified sub amp, people used to love the idea and still talk about it when mentioning some of the "cool crap" I used to build... Good times 😂
Yo! You got another gig!? man, its about time. . Michael and, whoever everyone at Vsauce just….with respect still, are not cutting it anymore. So, good for you, and i will watch more of this if you’re gonna be on here.
My mom won a Panasonic home stereo system in the early’90’s with huge subwoofers. I figured them to work through our TV/VCR and I got the full sense with my whole back up against it. It was pretty cool.
the other day i read an article about how some seriously hearing impaired folks who actually hear rather nothing at all still like to go clubbing, just to feel the bass and dance. in the ever growing mainstream market of gaming i think this bassbox could make a rather interesting niche product for them, if executed properly.
It's that discreet subwoofer feel, most people without a home cinema audio set up only get it at theatres, it's that 'sound' you can feel in your chest after the audible explosion has stopped. Deaf people 'feel' the music in their chest, I mean the rest of us do too but because we can hear it as well we don't focus on the feeling as much as the music, the same way someone who's blind feels the door handle better than we do when we see it as well.
The algorithm gave me the gift of this series today, and i proceeded to watch all of them. Incredible job. Two observations after spending all morning binging the retro tech videos: 1. Kevin's parents are the unsung heroes of the videos and 2. The comments section are a goldmine.
I had one, I got it as a clearance from Jaycar store back in 1998 for around $50AU and recall using it for a week and never looking at it again. It's now in the garage doing nothing.
I also had In Utero on cassette. As well as the 20th anniversary vinyl, 25th anniversary vinyl and again suckered into the 30th anniversary vinyl. I LOVE this series.
4:23 - That huge box power cord reminds me of how things were when I was a kid. (Born 1982) The name "power brick" was definitely fitting. I had a commodore 64 and I had the biggest version of the box cable. It was like seriously the size of a brick or almost as big as a box of tissues. It was cumbersome, but in the 90s, most power cables had the box on the plug itself, it couldn't fit most places or block anything close to it. Gotta love usb C for sure.
Thank you, thank you, thank you! I thought I was the only one who remembered this thing. I never got one but a local video store we had in my town, had one to rent but I never tried it.
As an Aussie, I remember when Jaycar was selling them cheap, then months later they were selling the bare transducer without the backpack part, but with the control box. I nearly bought one, they got very cheap in the end.
I had one of these in the mid 90s; my dad must've found one super cheap somewhere. I didn't work that well. And you have to remember that the video game accessory market was super saturated at that point. I don't remember seeing any ads for this thing at all and I had multiple magazine subscriptions. It's forgotten because barely anyone knew about it to begin with and it sucked. Saved you 21 minutes
I had a friend that would throw the controller fairly often, that was my Interactor! Thanks Mike you saved me $89 but now I have PTSD around controllers.
Don't feel bad bro I never knew anybody that had one either although the commercials were awesome. I never really thought about the fact that I didn't know anybody that had one until today.
I remember wanting to feel the music coming out of my headphones on my new Walkman cd player so I plugged in my backpack speaker thing and laid back to enjoy. It was never comfortable on my back especially while laying on it with all my weight so I put it between my mattress and box spring, WOW BASS! Suddenly my entire bed was a subwoofer! The low bass notes and vibration that it produced was rad! It worked even better and was even louder when I took the driver (speaker) out of the backpack and put it between my mattress and box spring without the plastic backpack. When I got my first car I put that driver/speaker, basically a speaker magnet with a peace of fiberglass on either side of a voice coil, under the passenger seat. People still talk about how they could feel the bass from my RadioShack subwoofer’s. Not knowing my secret!
I have the cushion version of this, picked it up at a garage sale. Its pretty cool but uncomfortable, then moved onto a ButtKicker which does the same but bolts to any office chair. It essentially gives you the bass feeling of a good surround system without cranking volume,
I remember buying it in 95-96 at McFrugles (BigLots) at a discount. This brought in a lot of memories and yes, it felt like sub in a box on a back, not that interactive.
I got one of these at a thrift shop for like five bucks the year after they came out, all it is is like a subwoofer in a backpack. If I remember correctly, I think it had a sensitivity switch. You could hook it up to almost anything. It was best with racing games because you could feel the vibration of the motor. Fighting games. It was just like somebody punching you in the mid back every time there was a loud sound.
When I saw the title, I thought that the year was too early for VR, having started with Forte VFX1 around 1997, and then I realized that this was something entirely different. I loved the 90's for all the gimmick controllers. I'd always find refurbished boxes at stores from customers returning the items almost immediately. I've sent a few things back to the stores myself and didn't regret paying a penalty, because some things that appeared good on paper, were highly impractical. Turned out, pretty much nothing beats a regular keyboard and a mouse. Even a gaming controller feels like a downgrade. Simple tech works and gives the maximum enjoyment with least effort. There were vibration chars made like this gamepack. Also triggering off sound frequencies. Some utilized force feedback support in games, but at least those didn't call their tech "VR" and were a bit more honest. I remember playing early Need For Speed in 3D glasses with vibration and force feedback. It felt more real back then than reality itself. Good memories.
lol I wanted one of these when I was a kid too. I don't think I ever saw one in person. I do remember seeing Virtual Boys on discount for $20 at Babbages though!
I was born 1990.. (also new to this channel) and somehow was able to figure out the guy was edited in. 😅 Commercials were WILD back then, but this still seemed a little too good to be true.. Dude sweating/ acting like he just smoked a ton of crack.. 😂 basically was every gaming commercial though. So pretty spot on actually. 🙌
I have the feeling that if this thing came out tomorrow, that it would sell super duper well because we are all so much more interested in haptic feedback right now. This may have been a victim of being the first to do something.
Maybe it would sell well among vr users, but they're kind of a niche group atm, which is why we barely ever get any good vr games. A lot of people are waiting for vr tech to get better before they get into it.
funny enough these do exist for VR right now look up the Woojer vest its pretty similar but soft and uses subwoofers. i got to try someone else's out and it was cool but stuffy and strapping it on was like wearing a parachute lots of clamps
This is basically a proto seat shaker. They work a lot better for music and movies than games, although some games work better than others. It's fun at first but basically a gimmick. I removed mine from the living room and stuck it under the driver's seat of my car to enhance the subwoofer. They do a great job at making bass seem louder than it is (since you can both feel and hear it) but that's about it.
If you had access to some sort of audio EQ, you would've been able to run your console through the soundsystem and plug in a pair of Panasonic Shockwave headphones and just dime the sub bass. It's probably the same principle but just on your head.
A friend of mine wrote an app for the computer that made this work with VR. It used web sockets to play certain sounds and tones out of the app for different haptic sensations. It works really well for a cheap haptic solution.
I begged my mom for this when I was 8. We ended up going to Toys R Us 3 times to replace it because it never worked before I smartened up and got something else.
I had a friend a few doors down that had this, and I had forgotten all about it. There is a present-day version of this I saw a few years ago. I'm probably spelling it wrong, but it was something like "Woojer." It might be worth getting one to compare the two and see if the tech has improved at all.
Oh God I remember playing Turok 64 wearing this thing and a Philips Scuba headset. In retrospect it was a really awful experience that I somehow tricked my teenaged mind into enjoying. There were so many cables that I had to sit down and not dare move lest I end up looking like my cousin after one her marathon hours-long sessions talking on the kitchen phone with the 16 feet long stretchy cord ie: wrapped like a weird "cyberspace" mummy.
I had one of these. It was trash. A subwoofer with backpack straps. Wasn't even that loud, or deep. I used it a couple times, and never used it again. My earliest memory of buyers remorse.
I had one of these as a child in the late 90s, I picked it up for almost nothing on clearance after it was discontinued. This sure brought me back. I remember all the pieces, especially the enormous power brick. I think the "meh" reviews pretty much summed it up! Even when it fits you perfectly, it's just not that interesting of a sensation.
I actually picked up a pair of these after watching Nostalgia Nerds channel and personally love these things, I actually plan on combining one of these with my bhaptics x40 and using it in modern VR games and such!! Also slight edit, there was a vest that was similar made for the n64 (nuby reality vest) and I saw it once at a pawn shop about 5? Years ago.... I should have bought it but didn't have funds at the time
Funny cool memory too. I did use the interactor for Eternal Champions. My mother was cool she is actually the one who got us the game. I was 9-10 came home (didn't even know about the game... like I heard it was gory... probably saw a glimpse in electronic gaming monthly... but I was an SF kid. She not only got us the game day one. She tracked down the blood code. She was cool even to let us take off school to grab MK 2... by 3 she wasn't playing video games with us anymore.
I owned one of these! Picked it up at a surplus store for much less than the msrp. Never felt immersed in games while playing it, but the novelty was fun.
It turns out the Interactor was simply ahead of it's time. Not only in its concept of force-feedback in games, but the way to do it. We got force-feedback for the first time with the N64 rumble pak and this ended up becoming a standard feature in consoles moving foward. However, unlike the Interactor, this was done via a motor with an off-balance weight on it. Crude, but it certainly makes the controller vibrate. In the modern age, the PS5 introduced a more detailed and refined force-feedback that allowed you to feel a much wider range of sensations. And how does it do it? Not by using a motor, but by using voice-coil actuators, just like the Interactor did!
The best way to use this device is to play games where the music can be disabled. If the music is left on it's a buzzing vibrating mess. You forgot to mention that the device gets warm on your back over a short period of time. It's quite alarming but it is normal but it still would have been funny to hear. :D The Aura Interactor can also be worn on the front of your body as well according to the instructions. Yeah... I did this once. It was awkward; but at least it felt cool to take a blow from an Imp in Doom and have the damage come to and be felt in the right direction. A cool novelty but not the best thing in the world. Oh, and they expected you to want to use this on your T.V. and VCR too. A sort of universal gadget that would have been terrible for using while watching T.V.. I never tried that setup as I basically knew how that would feel... Punches, uppercuts, explosions, sex, and more!!! XD
I owned one of these in the 90s and used it with my SNES and N64. It was fun, crazy, and scary at times; I thought it was electrocuting me. I believe I played MK on it and was afraid it might transfer the violence into my back. I eventually found the adjustment dials and live to tell the tale.
I remember my neighbor just HAD to have this. He absolutely INSISTED on it. He got it as his Christmas president, called me up to come see it, I show up, he puts it on, starts the game was after about 5 minutes he says, "Well, this thing SUCKS." His dad turned red in the face because he had to spend MONTHS listening to the little shithead preaching the gospel of this thing and shell out a small fortune to get it.
I remember the old Afterburner arcade games having the same things built into the seat with the booth version. But with the Interactor, I had one for a bit and it was interesting, not entirely that good in operation, but okay for what it was. The basic thing seemed like something that might have ended up going somewhere interesting as things continue along since things like the rumble features in games are similar there. I got it when it was on heavy clearance along with the Activator and Menasor. But the Interactor felt like something that was more of an early version of something that would be really cool...and, in a way, it was due to rumble features being relatively standard now
On the topic of shitty VR. I remember it was like my 8th birthday, my mom and dad bought me a VR headset with gloves. It was basically the same quality as those shitty 1000 games in one knock off console you could get for 40 dollars. Obviously it was not real VR. You put on this massive headset and these gloves are wired to the headset. The game was very simple. You had pixel jpegs of ninjas getting closer to you or they would throw a ninja star, and you'd have to punch to kill the ninja or block the ninja star. No sound effects, nothing. Literally a shitty pixel picture of a ninja or.ninja star getting close to you and you punched. Your punches often wouldn't even register. Good times.
A little off topic but. VR enthusiasts have this thing called phantom touch. Which you can practice. If you see something happen to your body, your brain sorta makes you feel it. And. Well it's amazing. I'm not feeling it too strongly but sometimes it. Well. Feels like it almost feels like something? My friend thought she burnt her hand when she dipped it in a boiling pot. She feels things real well with real little suggestion. I'm almost jealous. Still. Waiting for real haptics to come to market. Sound based ones do seem quite promising. Haven't tested any and likely won't until they become mainstream. But it would be cool.
I was a kid in the 90s that owned this. Got it from a discount toy store for $20. Played mortal Kombat 2 on SNES. I thought it was going to be more smart. Even as a kid thought it was gimmicky. Just a speaker in a backpack
Did you ever heard of the Panasonic shockwave cassette and CD player with the VMSS Sound systems? its was basically headphones with actuator that shake following the bass line of the music you're listening.
In the last audio interview of Rapper Eazy-e before his death, he mentions that he was working on a game for the super nintendo that uses a virtual reality vest. A few years ago, I saw in interview with his NWA band mate DJ Yella where he mentions that the last time he saw Eazy-e alive was at the Consumer Electronics Show, that same show has a booth demoing the Interactor.
I'm 55yrs old and I bought two of these in Australia from Jaycar Electronics in the late 90's for around $49 each. They were terrible. It was terribly underpowered, and if you let it rumble for too long at a high level you would see and smell smoke and burn the unit out. If your game had deep bass explosions, you could filter mostly everything else out and just feel the explosions. But 99% of games had explosions, gun shots etc at a similar bass level (frequency) as the music or other sound effects. That meant you felt just about every sound which was useless. You can even hear distorted sound coming from the backpack. (It's loud). It's a Transducer, similar to the Ass Kicker used in Driving Simulator setups and also in Cinemas under your seat. However those are more powerful and as i mentioned before, the Frequency is tuned to only set off the Transducer (Speaker) for the specific sounds required. In music/gaming mode utcwas really really bad and just distorted and vibrated all the time. I had fun holding it up against your head when it vibrated, it would send your vision absolutely nuts.... Things like this need a separate Frequency to be fed to it to trigger ONLY at times it is needed.
Back in the day Bell Labs was on most people's* dream job list. Alexander was even more of a legandary role model back then too. Kids like myself loved that dude. 😅 *You know what I mean.
I got one of these when I was 11 from KB TOYS on clearance for $14.99, my mom bought it for me. As a kid it was very difficult to setup, I only used it a couple times because it didn’t work as advertised. It was just a speaker on your chest!!!
I bought one of these still sealed just a couple years ago for about 30 bucks. Why? BECAUSE YOU CAN USE IT WHILE PLAYING BEAT SABER, AND OTHER GAMES, AND IT IS AWESOME! Plugs into the Quest AUX socket.
![เปิดบ้าน โคตรสวย ป๋องกพล รู้จักตั้งนาน เพิ่งรู้ว่ารวย!!! l [Nickynachat]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/tmgCF_2HfYI/mqdefault.jpg)
As a deaf gamer, I had 3. I think I still have one. I will buy the next iteration of this. They made movies and music enjoyable too.
Have you ever been to a car audio bass competition? If not you should!
there is a few more brands that are making stuff like this today (subpac and woojer)
@@mrquestion11Ya beat me to it. I came to recommend the Woojer.
with a bit of dsp, im sure vocals could be pitched to it to feel speech.
I bought pallets of these around 2000-2003. They were such a huge failure that there was a warehouse full of them. I would take them apart, and remove the tactile transducer from them, and resell them for home-theater use. Basically, take the transducer (basically, a bass speaker without a cone), and bolt it to the frame of your couch, and you can feel the bass in your home theater as your couch vibrates. It worked amazing in this application. I must of resold 1,000 or so of them. But by 2003, pallets were drying up, and it wasnt worth the effort to buy them in singles.
This is seriously incredible -- you made a lot more money off the Interactor than Aura did!
Damn, i want a couch like that. Any chance you'd make an instructable or video on how to do it?
@@Briaaanz it’s been 20 years, but inside those backpacks almost completely empty except the heavy transducer. Basically, unbolt it from the backpack, and bolt to the frame of your couch. It came with a simple amp/filter, that had a y-cable, so you could split it from your normal audio line, or in my case, I split the subwoofer line. But there is no cutting wires. You are just unbolting and reattaching. I vaguely remember the backpack had weird screw and I usually drilled them out
@@nicholas_scott Gaming chairs with subwoofers do the same thing. Somebody (hint hint to the OP, he seems all arts and crafty) needs to figure out a way to make them vibrate when the joypads do for rumble, instead of just having it happen along with the bass sounds almost by accident.
Some way to turn those rumble instructions into discreet sub woofer sound (so the sounds aren't audible to humans, but the vibrations still work), so that they don't have to make a noise outside of the game sounds to vibrate, would be awesome.
@@Briaaanz You can just buy "bass shakers" or "tactile transducers" and mount them under your couch. That's exactly what I did. I bought 4 of them for about $15 each and mounted one under each seat. They really make movie time more immersive.
I did the box art for this when Datel re-released the product in Europe in the early '00s, they wanted to give it an anime look.
🧢
@@frog_king8383they sold these up till the 2000s? Crazy. Kinda interested in this as a collector thing. Seems to have no practical use.
Yo Larry I wasn't aware you worked with datel for box art. That's a story I wanna hear over on your channel!
🧢
Guru Larry? Is that yew?
Kid commercial in the 90s should be their own glorious genre 🔥
My favorite was: CROSSFIRE!!!
YOU’LL GET CAUGHT UP IN THE
CROSSS FYYYYUUUHHH!!!! 😂
Song has been in repeat in my head since the early 90s😅
Everybody who is the right age remembers getting caught up in the cross fiyahh. Especially the high note he hits at the end as he screams CROSS FIYAAAAHHHHH!!!
Nobody young believes me when i bring up the Mall traveling VR games from the 90s. You stood in a ring, held a gun, and put on goggles. Maybe also seen at carnivals. They were terrible. I played a horrible shooter game that at one point i got stuck on because apparently you had to shoot out the next part of the path, but there was absolutely no indication of that in the game.
I’m 45 and I remember those! Time to find a video!
Yes! I remember playing a VR pac-man type game in one of those
They can't comprehend it being around before like 2015.
I remember the shooting one with and without a pterodactyl i think, that would pick you up and you to your doom .That and a robot arena with possible flight.
Just tell me them to watch Disney's The First Kid
I always wished I could try those when @ malls as a kid .
That intro is something else!!!!
Well done Kevin!
i agree. great intro, kevin!
ikr, perfectly captures the hyperactive style that some 90ies toy/console ads went for, its only missing a few extreme fisheye shots and/or rapid changes in camera zoom when theres supposed to be action.
I had one of these. It was total a$$. The gap between what you wanted it to be and what it was crushed you.
I was disappointed AF too. I was at Software Etc and seen it for $10 brand new. I remember reading so much about it in the EGM magazines and I was so excited that it was on clearance for $10 that I rode my bike all the way from the store home and begged my mom for the $10 and she made me mow the entire lawn first. I rode my bike all the way back and bought it. Got home and bragged about it to all the neighborhood kids. Hooked it up and was disappointed AF. It was the worst $10 I've ever spent 😂
@@SkuuchiMane808you're too old to be saying "AF" multiple times in one message.
You should have used it with racing games, it was the only thing that made it worth it. In the racing games you had to have an option to turn off music
@@SkuuchiMane808 I bought it for $5 a few months ago, tonight I ran it through my ID4 audio interface with the audio/signal source being from my PS5 controller & split the signal so I'm wearing the vest & using headphones while playing The Last of Us pt 1 & also Days Gone on my PS5.
I'm tellin ya right now It's blowin my mind.... all I did was tweak the levels on the ID4 audio interface & the power level on the interactor hub thing & I swear it feels better than the haptic feedback on my PS5 controller 😮
1st of all the first boss fight against the bloater in TLOU pt 1 is insane and you can literally feel it running at you as if the floor is shaking from each huge step it takes, also when I start up Deacons bike in Days Gone and start riding or even just sit idle you feel the motor running and it vibrates differently depending on the surface you ride on or when you use the nitro boost, also when hordes chase you its intense as hell cos when you shoot and throw napalm molotovs the vest goes crazy.. I can even feel the wind and lightning, I dont know if I stumbled onto something by running it through my ID4 audio interface from my PS5 controller or not but Im tellin you its so immersive, accurate & reactive that I dont think I'll be able to play these games without it again.
I owned that! I liked it.
I stepped on the interface unit and the plug from the vest broke off inside of it. Both the vest and control box became useless.
ughghhhhhh :/
You can buy new vests that work on a similar method.
Also being 11 in 1994, I dreamed of getting one of these and pairing it with a Victormaxx Stuntmaster, and an Atari Jaguar with Aliens vs Predator for the ultimate VR experience. I never lived my dream fully but did manage to find a Stuntmaster very cheap in my teens and quickly realized I didn't miss much.
I absolutely loved my Interactor lumbar pad. It lasted like 10 years, too.
Did you use it for gaming, or music too?
I got one of these after seeing a Nostalgia Nerd video on the cushion version, I pulled the speaker with a huge bolt through it from the backpack and attached it to the bottom of my sim racing seat.
Oh that's really cool, actually.
They make things just for this purpose. Called buttkickers. For flight sim but I assume race sim works too
I remember buying 4 of these from Jaycar, and installing the transducers into my front seats of my car, one on the bottom seat pan and one on the back, running them through a modified sub amp, people used to love the idea and still talk about it when mentioning some of the "cool crap" I used to build... Good times 😂
Yo! You got another gig!?
man, its about time. . Michael and, whoever everyone at Vsauce just….with respect still, are not cutting it anymore. So, good for you, and i will watch more of this if you’re gonna be on here.
My mom won a Panasonic home stereo system in the early’90’s with huge subwoofers. I figured them to work through our TV/VCR and I got the full sense with my whole back up against it. It was pretty cool.
the other day i read an article about how some seriously hearing impaired folks who actually hear rather nothing at all still like to go clubbing, just to feel the bass and dance. in the ever growing mainstream market of gaming i think this bassbox could make a rather interesting niche product for them, if executed properly.
It's that discreet subwoofer feel, most people without a home cinema audio set up only get it at theatres, it's that 'sound' you can feel in your chest after the audible explosion has stopped.
Deaf people 'feel' the music in their chest, I mean the rest of us do too but because we can hear it as well we don't focus on the feeling as much as the music, the same way someone who's blind feels the door handle better than we do when we see it as well.
Look for woojer it's a wearable speaker just like this I've thought about one for awhile they're pricey
These continue to be some of my favorite videos on TH-cam, Kevin, in no small part to the beautiful endings. As always, thank you for making this.
This technology might have flopped as a backpack in the '90s but found a new popularity with the modern Skullcandy Crusher series of headphones.
I love my Crushers... they pounds hard and sound great.
Yep, same, lol. The crushers are not a joke for the price.
The algorithm gave me the gift of this series today, and i proceeded to watch all of them. Incredible job. Two observations after spending all morning binging the retro tech videos: 1. Kevin's parents are the unsung heroes of the videos and 2. The comments section are a goldmine.
I always wanted one of these as a kid, my dad always shot me down saying it was a silly gimmick... Dad as always knew best.
Thank you for another great video Kevin! And great job on the opening, I absolutely adore it 😁
I had one, I got it as a clearance from Jaycar store back in 1998 for around $50AU and recall using it for a week and never looking at it again. It's now in the garage doing nothing.
I also had In Utero on cassette. As well as the 20th anniversary vinyl, 25th anniversary vinyl and again suckered into the 30th anniversary vinyl. I LOVE this series.
Bro looks like Jesse Pinkman
my thoughts exactly lol
4:23 - That huge box power cord reminds me of how things were when I was a kid. (Born 1982) The name "power brick" was definitely fitting.
I had a commodore 64 and I had the biggest version of the box cable. It was like seriously the size of a brick or almost as big as a box of tissues. It was cumbersome, but in the 90s, most power cables had the box on the plug itself, it couldn't fit most places or block anything close to it. Gotta love usb C for sure.
OMG, that intro. It took me a while to realize that it _wasn't_ actually a real ad for it from back in the day.
I was going to say, not enough people were talking about that intro. It was so good lol.
PS needs to do vids like this for other failed video game products!!!
Crazy how we've come full circle with that Woojer wearable bass thing. They created a full vest for basically this exact same function in gaming.
Thank you, thank you, thank you! I thought I was the only one who remembered this thing. I never got one but a local video store we had in my town, had one to rent but I never tried it.
As an Aussie, I remember when Jaycar was selling them cheap, then months later they were selling the bare transducer without the backpack part, but with the control box. I nearly bought one, they got very cheap in the end.
I had one of these in the mid 90s; my dad must've found one super cheap somewhere. I didn't work that well. And you have to remember that the video game accessory market was super saturated at that point. I don't remember seeing any ads for this thing at all and I had multiple magazine subscriptions. It's forgotten because barely anyone knew about it to begin with and it sucked. Saved you 21 minutes
You featured many games from my childhood. Thank you for your excellent videos!
I had a friend that would throw the controller fairly often, that was my Interactor! Thanks Mike you saved me $89 but now I have PTSD around controllers.
GREAT video, by the way!
Bravo! I laughed out loud multiple times throughout this video.😊
2:38 hold up association for WHAT
A bunch of 40 year old tardy's lol
Hehe
Don't feel bad bro I never knew anybody that had one either although the commercials were awesome. I never really thought about the fact that I didn't know anybody that had one until today.
I had one as a kid. Interesting to say the least.
Man i haven't thought about this thing in decades!
I got one on the cheap after they failed, me and my mates would wear it whilst listening to techno on headphones at house parties. Fun times.
I had one! I've actually been trying to find out what it was called for years. Thanks for posting this!
I have no memory of this and I was super into these kinds of things as a kid.
I remember wanting to feel the music coming out of my headphones on my new Walkman cd player so I plugged in my backpack speaker thing and laid back to enjoy. It was never comfortable on my back especially while laying on it with all my weight so I put it between my mattress and box spring, WOW BASS! Suddenly my entire bed was a subwoofer! The low bass notes and vibration that it produced was rad! It worked even better and was even louder when I took the driver (speaker) out of the backpack and put it between my mattress and box spring without the plastic backpack. When I got my first car I put that driver/speaker, basically a speaker magnet with a peace of fiberglass on either side of a voice coil, under the passenger seat. People still talk about how they could feel the bass from my RadioShack subwoofer’s. Not knowing my secret!
I have the cushion version of this, picked it up at a garage sale. Its pretty cool but uncomfortable, then moved onto a ButtKicker which does the same but bolts to any office chair. It essentially gives you the bass feeling of a good surround system without cranking volume,
what's next your gonna say next video "I Might be related to Jerry Siegel of Superman" lmao great joke there my man XD
I remember seeing the commercial for this ONE time, and never heard or seen anything else about it since, until this video😂🤣😂
I remember buying it in 95-96 at McFrugles (BigLots) at a discount. This brought in a lot of memories and yes, it felt like sub in a box on a back, not that interactive.
I got one of these at a thrift shop for like five bucks the year after they came out, all it is is like a subwoofer in a backpack. If I remember correctly, I think it had a sensitivity switch. You could hook it up to almost anything. It was best with racing games because you could feel the vibration of the motor. Fighting games. It was just like somebody punching you in the mid back every time there was a loud sound.
"Feel the throbbing heat of being in fire"
I don't recall ever seeing ad or anything for this back then. I was 12 in '90 I would think this would've stand out if I saw it
Same, 12 and I never saw it either?! If you were like me, we knew everything. But apparently we didn't. lmao
When I saw the title, I thought that the year was too early for VR, having started with Forte VFX1 around 1997, and then I realized that this was something entirely different. I loved the 90's for all the gimmick controllers. I'd always find refurbished boxes at stores from customers returning the items almost immediately. I've sent a few things back to the stores myself and didn't regret paying a penalty, because some things that appeared good on paper, were highly impractical. Turned out, pretty much nothing beats a regular keyboard and a mouse. Even a gaming controller feels like a downgrade. Simple tech works and gives the maximum enjoyment with least effort. There were vibration chars made like this gamepack. Also triggering off sound frequencies. Some utilized force feedback support in games, but at least those didn't call their tech "VR" and were a bit more honest. I remember playing early Need For Speed in 3D glasses with vibration and force feedback. It felt more real back then than reality itself. Good memories.
Feels like I was a futuristic kid.
Parents are disgusting, vids are art. Zero conversation.
I was a 12-year-old Mortal Kombat freak. Should created it for the chest region not back
I can only imagine how long you were standing in front of your camera slightly shaking just to record that intro bravo my good sir bravo
lol I wanted one of these when I was a kid too. I don't think I ever saw one in person. I do remember seeing Virtual Boys on discount for $20 at Babbages though!
I had this silly thing. Haha. It wasn't great for what it was intended for, but I used it as a subwoofer. Sf II sounded pretty cool with it.
I was born 1990.. (also new to this channel) and somehow was able to figure out the guy was edited in. 😅
Commercials were WILD back then, but this still seemed a little too good to be true..
Dude sweating/ acting like he just smoked a ton of crack.. 😂 basically was every gaming commercial though.
So pretty spot on actually. 🙌
I have the feeling that if this thing came out tomorrow, that it would sell super duper well because we are all so much more interested in haptic feedback right now. This may have been a victim of being the first to do something.
Maybe it would sell well among vr users, but they're kind of a niche group atm, which is why we barely ever get any good vr games. A lot of people are waiting for vr tech to get better before they get into it.
funny enough these do exist for VR right now look up the Woojer vest its pretty similar but soft and uses subwoofers. i got to try someone else's out and it was cool but stuffy and strapping it on was like wearing a parachute lots of clamps
This is basically a proto seat shaker. They work a lot better for music and movies than games, although some games work better than others. It's fun at first but basically a gimmick. I removed mine from the living room and stuck it under the driver's seat of my car to enhance the subwoofer. They do a great job at making bass seem louder than it is (since you can both feel and hear it) but that's about it.
Have one. Still love it. Still use it for listening to music. You can use it for anything the input plugs into. Basically, haptic before haptic.
If you had access to some sort of audio EQ, you would've been able to run your console through the soundsystem and plug in a pair of Panasonic Shockwave headphones and just dime the sub bass.
It's probably the same principle but just on your head.
A friend of mine wrote an app for the computer that made this work with VR. It used web sockets to play certain sounds and tones out of the app for different haptic sensations. It works really well for a cheap haptic solution.
What's the app called?
I begged my mom for this when I was 8. We ended up going to Toys R Us 3 times to replace it because it never worked before I smartened up and got something else.
I had a friend a few doors down that had this, and I had forgotten all about it. There is a present-day version of this I saw a few years ago. I'm probably spelling it wrong, but it was something like "Woojer." It might be worth getting one to compare the two and see if the tech has improved at all.
Oh God I remember playing Turok 64 wearing this thing and a Philips Scuba headset. In retrospect it was a really awful experience that I somehow tricked my teenaged mind into enjoying. There were so many cables that I had to sit down and not dare move lest I end up looking like my cousin after one her marathon hours-long sessions talking on the kitchen phone with the 16 feet long stretchy cord ie: wrapped like a weird "cyberspace" mummy.
I had one of these. It was trash. A subwoofer with backpack straps. Wasn't even that loud, or deep. I used it a couple times, and never used it again. My earliest memory of buyers remorse.
These are pretty advanced for the time
Never saw one in the 90s
I'm a music producer and use a subpac to feel the lower frequencies in music, movies, games and it's pretty much a Interactor in 2024.
I had one of these as a child in the late 90s, I picked it up for almost nothing on clearance after it was discontinued. This sure brought me back. I remember all the pieces, especially the enormous power brick. I think the "meh" reviews pretty much summed it up! Even when it fits you perfectly, it's just not that interesting of a sensation.
Toe Jam and Earl has been my ring tone for over a decade. I love that shit!
I actually picked up a pair of these after watching Nostalgia Nerds channel and personally love these things, I actually plan on combining one of these with my bhaptics x40 and using it in modern VR games and such!!
Also slight edit, there was a vest that was similar made for the n64 (nuby reality vest) and I saw it once at a pawn shop about 5? Years ago.... I should have bought it but didn't have funds at the time
I didn't know anyone that had one, and I never even had someone come into my shop asking about one.
Funny cool memory too. I did use the interactor for Eternal Champions. My mother was cool she is actually the one who got us the game. I was 9-10 came home (didn't even know about the game... like I heard it was gory... probably saw a glimpse in electronic gaming monthly... but I was an SF kid.
She not only got us the game day one. She tracked down the blood code. She was cool even to let us take off school to grab MK 2... by 3 she wasn't playing video games with us anymore.
I owned one of these! Picked it up at a surplus store for much less than the msrp. Never felt immersed in games while playing it, but the novelty was fun.
Glad you got the cymatics working. I was going to say duct tape the thing to a board!
I remember really wanting one of these when I was a Kid back in the 90s
It turns out the Interactor was simply ahead of it's time. Not only in its concept of force-feedback in games, but the way to do it.
We got force-feedback for the first time with the N64 rumble pak and this ended up becoming a standard feature in consoles moving foward. However, unlike the Interactor, this was done via a motor with an off-balance weight on it. Crude, but it certainly makes the controller vibrate.
In the modern age, the PS5 introduced a more detailed and refined force-feedback that allowed you to feel a much wider range of sensations. And how does it do it? Not by using a motor, but by using voice-coil actuators, just like the Interactor did!
The best way to use this device is to play games where the music can be disabled. If the music is left on it's a buzzing vibrating mess. You forgot to mention that the device gets warm on your back over a short period of time. It's quite alarming but it is normal but it still would have been funny to hear. :D
The Aura Interactor can also be worn on the front of your body as well according to the instructions. Yeah... I did this once. It was awkward; but at least it felt cool to take a blow from an Imp in Doom and have the damage come to and be felt in the right direction.
A cool novelty but not the best thing in the world.
Oh, and they expected you to want to use this on your T.V. and VCR too. A sort of universal gadget that would have been terrible for using while watching T.V.. I never tried that setup as I basically knew how that would feel... Punches, uppercuts, explosions, sex, and more!!! XD
I owned one of these in the 90s and used it with my SNES and N64. It was fun, crazy, and scary at times; I thought it was electrocuting me. I believe I played MK on it and was afraid it might transfer the violence into my back. I eventually found the adjustment dials and live to tell the tale.
Ever thought of joining that group it briefly shows in the newspaper headlines?
@@franzpattison I never heard anything about it.
I remember my neighbor just HAD to have this. He absolutely INSISTED on it.
He got it as his Christmas president, called me up to come see it, I show up, he puts it on, starts the game was after about 5 minutes he says, "Well, this thing SUCKS."
His dad turned red in the face because he had to spend MONTHS listening to the little shithead preaching the gospel of this thing and shell out a small fortune to get it.
I remember the old Afterburner arcade games having the same things built into the seat with the booth version.
But with the Interactor, I had one for a bit and it was interesting, not entirely that good in operation, but okay for what it was. The basic thing seemed like something that might have ended up going somewhere interesting as things continue along since things like the rumble features in games are similar there. I got it when it was on heavy clearance along with the Activator and Menasor.
But the Interactor felt like something that was more of an early version of something that would be really cool...and, in a way, it was due to rumble features being relatively standard now
They didn't play hip-hop in stores in the 90s. Def not in KB toys.
On the topic of shitty VR. I remember it was like my 8th birthday, my mom and dad bought me a VR headset with gloves.
It was basically the same quality as those shitty 1000 games in one knock off console you could get for 40 dollars.
Obviously it was not real VR. You put on this massive headset and these gloves are wired to the headset. The game was very simple. You had pixel jpegs of ninjas getting closer to you or they would throw a ninja star, and you'd have to punch to kill the ninja or block the ninja star. No sound effects, nothing. Literally a shitty pixel picture of a ninja or.ninja star getting close to you and you punched. Your punches often wouldn't even register.
Good times.
A little off topic but. VR enthusiasts have this thing called phantom touch. Which you can practice. If you see something happen to your body, your brain sorta makes you feel it. And. Well it's amazing. I'm not feeling it too strongly but sometimes it. Well. Feels like it almost feels like something?
My friend thought she burnt her hand when she dipped it in a boiling pot. She feels things real well with real little suggestion. I'm almost jealous.
Still. Waiting for real haptics to come to market. Sound based ones do seem quite promising. Haven't tested any and likely won't until they become mainstream. But it would be cool.
I had a handful of these, and enjoyed playing Quake and other things at the time with them. I thought it made deathmatch and CTF more intense.
I was a kid in the 90s that owned this. Got it from a discount toy store for $20. Played mortal Kombat 2 on SNES. I thought it was going to be more smart. Even as a kid thought it was gimmicky. Just a speaker in a backpack
Did you ever heard of the Panasonic shockwave cassette and CD player with the VMSS Sound systems? its was basically headphones with actuator that shake following the bass line of the music you're listening.
In the last audio interview of Rapper Eazy-e before his death, he mentions that he was working on a game for the super nintendo that uses a virtual reality vest. A few years ago, I saw in interview with his NWA band mate DJ Yella where he mentions that the last time he saw Eazy-e alive was at the Consumer Electronics Show, that same show has a booth demoing the Interactor.
Once used, Never Forgotten. Kept it to one day make it actually better.
I had high hopes that the Korex vest would bring haptic vests mainstream but sadly Covid made sure that this company would never open their doors:(
I'm 55yrs old and I bought two of these in Australia from Jaycar Electronics in the late 90's for around $49 each.
They were terrible.
It was terribly underpowered, and if you let it rumble for too long at a high level you would see and smell smoke and burn the unit out.
If your game had deep bass explosions, you could filter mostly everything else out and just feel the explosions.
But 99% of games had explosions, gun shots etc at a similar bass level (frequency) as the music or other sound effects.
That meant you felt just about every sound which was useless.
You can even hear distorted sound coming from the backpack. (It's loud).
It's a Transducer, similar to the Ass Kicker used in Driving Simulator setups and also in Cinemas under your seat.
However those are more powerful and as i mentioned before, the Frequency is tuned to only set off the Transducer (Speaker) for the specific sounds required.
In music/gaming mode utcwas really really bad and just distorted and vibrated all the time.
I had fun holding it up against your head when it vibrated, it would send your vision absolutely nuts....
Things like this need a separate Frequency to be fed to it to trigger ONLY at times it is needed.
I bought a Woojer a few years ago that's kind of a modern equivalent.
7:16 why the hell does the boomshakalaka sound like the Max Headroom tv high jacker?
Back in the day Bell Labs was on most people's* dream job list. Alexander was even more of a legandary role model back then too. Kids like myself loved that dude. 😅
*You know what I mean.
I got one of these when I was 11 from KB TOYS on clearance for $14.99, my mom bought it for me. As a kid it was very difficult to setup, I only used it a couple times because it didn’t work as advertised. It was just a speaker on your chest!!!
I didn't know Vsauce2 had another channel.
Jordans furniture Imax features subwoofers in the seat of every chair they call butt kickers. Seems like the same tech just in a movie theater
@@Phoenix42.0 is that the one on Rt 9?
@@popularscience Yep yep!
My parents were soo COOL they got us one on release. Unfortunately it was too loud to use practically!
I bought one of these still sealed just a couple years ago for about 30 bucks. Why? BECAUSE YOU CAN USE IT WHILE PLAYING BEAT SABER, AND OTHER GAMES, AND IT IS AWESOME! Plugs into the Quest AUX socket.
I think Toejam and Earl would be awesome to play with this.