Compiled by Janet Hamilton
From the OrigamiUSA Newsletter Issue 66, Winter 1999
And the debate continues – is origami an art, a craft, or… a game? Playful members of the origami-l email list recorded origami sightings in the following games:
In a game called "GURPS" (Generic Universal Role Playing System, like Dungeons and Dragons), one skill your fictional character can learn is Origami. It even has a picture of a crane.
The April '97 issue of Games magazine had a “Hidden Contest” that spelled out the message: HIDDEN CONTEST SEND US ORIGAMI.
The TV quiz show “Jeopardy!” on 8/27/97 noted that word "diploma" is Greek for folded paper.
On “Jeopardy!” March 26, 1998 there was a whole category devoted to origami. The $500 answer was the Star of David. The Chinese Zodiac was mentioned and a question was asked about which culture or people were associated with origami. This category was not picked until all other questions on the board were picked.
A text adventure called "Trinity" by Infocom has a puzzle that involves a paper crane. The game packaging includes instructions for folding the crane.
There was an article called "An Origami Playing Simulator in the Virtual Space" by Miyazaki et al, from The Journal Of Visualization And Computer Animation, vol. 7 (1996) , p. 25-41.
An educational computer game called “JumpStart First Grade” from Knowledge Adventures has a cartoon classroom to explore. A book on the shelf contained stories from various countries. The Japanese one centers around Origami and a Sumo.
Also from Knowledge Adventure, “JumpStart Third Grade” had one mission in which you go back in time to retrieve a robot named Noshi Origami, which was sent back to China in A.D. 105 to alter the history of the discovery of paper. According to this program, paper was originally invented not for writing (or paper airplanes), but to produce clothing.
In the Playstation game “Final Fantasy VII”, one of the characters is a young lady Ninja called Yuffie whose preferred weapons are listed as Knife, Boomerang, and Origami. Early in the game her weapons were shuriken and throwing stars. However, a later weapon is the 'The Orikata', a rather fat crane model that does a lot of damage when thrown.
The “I Spy” computer game by Scholastic is based on the popular series of picture puzzle books. One of the puzzle areas shows the step folds to making a paper hat.
“Triogami” is a trademark of Karl's Industrial Design (KID) Inc. Peekskill, NY 10566. It's a mat of right isosceles triangles that are attached to each other so that you can fold along the joint. They are attached so that 8 triangles around a point have joints that correspond to the creases of a preliminary base (both diagonals and both book folds). Opened out, it's a ring of 16 right triangles, oriented so that alternate triangles have their largest side (opposite the right triangle) on opposite edges of the ring (thus making the band a uniform width). It's set up such that one can make a mountain fold (and only a mountain fold) along the junction between any two adjacent triangles. By careful folding, many different shapes can be evoked.
The same thing is patented as “Geoloop” and can be found in a catalog sponsored by Binary Arts. (Binary Arts Corporation 1321 Cameron Street Alexandria, Virginia 22314-3449 http://www.webgames.com/).
There was also a predecessor to Triogami/Geoloop known as “Geomorph 12”. It is a series of twelve tetrahedra that are linked together in a ring and can be shaped into various 3-dimensional shapes. The difference is that each individual unit is a three-dimensional shape and all of these units together will form a giant pyramid.
Origami is beginning to take over the New York Times. The word origami was an answer in the 5/31/99 “New York Times Crossword Puzzle”. 44 down asks, "It might be gotten from a folder." ORIGAMI is the answer.
On the TV game show “The Price is Right”, the final contestants were bidding on their "grand prize package", and one of the contestants was going for a big trip to Japan. Part of the package included a bunch of origami books and paper, as a way to "prepare" for the trip to Japan. A camera shot showed thtat one of the books was “Origami, Plain and Simple”, by Tom Hull and Robert Neale.
Martin Wall and Pete Ford appeared on the popular BBC TV game show “Jim Davidson's Generation Game” on November 7, 1998. They were shown folding a large size origami boat, a variation of the traditional Sampan, from a 3m square.