For immediate release

February 20, 2002

The first third party game for your Aibo ERS-210!

What is Tic T'Aibo?

The Tic-T'Aibo game allows your Aibo(tm) ERS-210 to play Tic-Tac-Toe against a human opponent (or a second Aibo) on a 1 foot square board. To play your moves, place Aibo's pink ball on the board game at the position you wish to play, and watch Aibo's ear movements to know in which square Aibo's move will be.

Aibo will use his image recognition to locate the ball on the board, see on which square you played, then make his move by signalling with his ears to tell you where that move will be. The game continues until one of the players wins or there is a draw.

As you play, place X's and O's on the game board so *you* remember where the pieces are... Aibo will remember by himself!

Apart from the japanese-only "Aibo Cards", this is the first Aibo game available on the market!

Can I see more?

To demonstrate the gameplay, we filmed a couple games while we were playing with Apple, our Aibo ERS-210. Click on the images below to download or play the associated movie.

Movie 1: Aibo wins a game Movie taken offline for a short while - please be patient

This is a sample game where Apple wins a game against his opponent.

Movie 2: Draw Movie taken offline for a short while - please be patient

This is a sample game where Apple draws a game... The action is fierce!

Movie 3: Of course, the occasional blooper occurred while we were filming! Movie taken offline for a short while - please be patient

Our hands were starting to get red from lying down playing with the Aibo... at the same time he was trying to find his ball and we were trying to press his jaw sensor. Of course, Apple noticed right away and was pretty distracted by the red shape approaching him!

How to obtain...

Download it: The software is available for a free trial period. You'll have a bit of a hard time building your own game board (our development version used two A4 white piece of papers on which the Aibo lay while playing), so there is an alternative...

Buy it: We sell a game board made expressly for your ERS-210 Aibo, printed on a professional-looking game board and which folds nicely in 3 segments for easy storage. The board comes with playing pieces (X's and O's), instructions, and memory stick containing the game software. As easy as it gets!

What is the Tic-Tac-Toe game?

Tic-Tac-Toe (also known as nought and crosses) is a game played mostly by american children in schools. It is similar to Gomoku. Tic-Tac-Toe is played on a 3x3 board, and players put X's and O's in the squares alternatively until they have 3 X's or 3 O's in line. There can be 3 outcome for a game: X wins, O wins, or the game is a draw if the board is filled.

There are many Java version of the Tic-Tac-Toe game on the Internet; for example see http://kayleigh.tierranet.com/java/tictactoe.htm . There is also a fun Gomoku Java applet at http://www.pce.net/merlin/peter/gomoku.html .

"AIBO", AIBO Logo, "OPEN-R", and OPEN-R Logo are registered trademarks of Sony Corporation. "AIBO Master Studio", "R-CODE", "Memory Stick", and Memory Stick Logo are trademarks of Sony Corporation.

Tic-T'Aibo and related contents is copyrighted (c) 2002-2005, Christian Meunier, meunierc@tictaibo.com Web page created February 18th, 2002; updated February 20th, 2002; editorial changes February 25th, 2005.