What’s a curved screen good for? Making this amazing new Star Wars game

Electronics manufacturers are all trying to sell you on curved screens. Well, if they come with this new Star Wars game, count me in.

Star Wars: Battle Pod is a new 1,200 pound arcade game from publisher Bandai Namco, which you can read all about right here. It’s marquee feature is a gigantic dome screen the wraps around your field of view. This puts you right in the starfighter, speeder-bike-riding action. It’s in select arcades now, which means you can try it out for yourself if you can find it.

Here’s a look at the arcade cabinet — although “cabinet” definitely doesn’t feel like a strong enough word to describe this behemoth:

This is probably the best use of a curved screen we’ve seen yet. Most TV sets that feature a curve are supposed to sit in your living room and serve multiple people, so they only have a light curve that may or may not benefit someone sitting in a hypothetical “sweet spot.” The idea is that your eyes are an equal distance from every part of the screen if you sit the right distance away and directly in the center of the display. That’s not practical for a home TV.

But a curved display makes a lot of sense for a one-player arcade experience where you can completely wrap a screen into a hemisphere around a gamers head. Now, when you look off to the right, you really are looking out the starboard window of your X-wing.

So start scouring your local arcades and movie theaters for one of these bad boys, and let us know if you find one. I’m willing to travel to try it out.