The Incredible Machine
Do you remember “The Incredible Machine”, or TIM for short? This morning a colleague reminded me of the hours I used to spend creating the perfect machine.
The premise for the game is simple. You are presented with a puzzle that you have to solve using the items that are given to you. There is some flexibility in the solution but generally there is one way in which the puzzle can be solved.
For example: Make the basket ball go through the hoop.
In this puzzle (with gravity and air pressure acting as we would expect it) bowling balls behave like bowling balls will. If the machine is started like this the ball on the left would fall off the screen, puzzle unsolved.
However if you use the mice and connect the mouse wheels up to the conveyor belts you can start a chain reaction that eventual will throw the basket ball through the hoop. (Hint: the mice start running if you knock the cage)
Sounds simple right? But the game can be incredibly frustrating.
Consider the image below where the task is to fire all three guns . In the diagram below the second gun won’t fire despite the bucket hitting the sea-saw from above because the trigger of the gun will be pulled the wrong way.
To make this machine work you would have to:
- Connect the string that is currently connected to the second gun to the third gun.
- Put the additional bucket in midair somewhere near the pully on the left of the screen
- Connect this bucket with the piece of string via the pully to the trigger of the second gun.
- The free bucket and the bowling ball start moving.
- The free bucket pulls on the string which
- is connected to the second guns trigger via the pully.
- **Second Gun Fires**
- Meanwhile the bowling ball rolls down the slope
- into the spring-loaded boxing glove which
- punches the bucket which
- falls which
- pulls on the string
- **Second Gun Fires**
- (popping the balloon which is just a red herring in this case)
- The bucket continues to fall which ultimately lands on the sea-saw which
- tips over and
- pulls on the string
- **Third Gun Fires**
On a side note I wonder if schools would be allowed to make this game available to their kids because of the guns and the cruelty to mice, despite the obvious benefit to the child’s problem solving skills.
Did you spend any time working in TIM? Build any of these machines in real life?
[All pictures 'stolen' from here.
Download the game 'here'.]
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