Today’s gaming news-of-the-weird comes to you courtesy of HP, yes that HP, the old Mr. Hewlett and Mr. Packard brainchild. Apparently inspired by Nintendo’s recent non-traditional approach to gaming, HP’s device - currently dubbed the MScape, would react to visual and spatial clues in the gamer’s environment thanks to built in accelerometers and GPS sensors. We’re guessing it’ll be a cartridge based system. (GET IT??!?) Describes the article over at GameSpot.com:

The early concept involves a handheld and a series of small sensors that a game organizer could lay out around a city or park. Those sensors would trigger certain events in the game, like a bonus level or an attack by the bad guys, based on a small demonstration of the concept here.

Um, wow… is it just me, or does this have “amazingly bad idea” written all over it. We’ve all heard about the horror stories of people so wrapped up in their DSes and iPods that they don’t notice important details like oncoming traffic. Litigation’s going to get REALLY interesting when people start jumping in the middle of the streets to pick up power-ups.