Short version: I got to spend an hour playing an unreleased game for the Nintendo Wii developed by a small startup studio in Austin, for the purpose of late-stage fine-tuning. And anyone in the Austin area with an interest and ability to not be a total jerk can, too. Read on for more.

The shop is Ghostfire Games, and their game is called “Helix,” meant for release via download on the Wii’s WiiWare system. Other than the fact that I got to play it for an hour, you can read that much on Ghostfire’s Web site. I didn’t ask whether they wanted me to say anything more about it than that, and they didn’t make me sign any legal forms to participate, but I’ll leave off saying much about the gameplay.

Though I’m not currently taking any classes in game development at ACC, anyone who used to be can be on a mailing list the program coordinator keeps for current and past students. Ed Roman, Ghostfire’s CEO, asked for people to come in “for about an hour” to their suite in a little ground-level office park in the Jollyville area of North Austin.

I was skeptical, but then, I’m often skeptical about a lot of things. How much game testing could be done in just an hour, I wondered, from anyone coming in off the street? And just how organized could it be? As it was, I was planning to go in to Austin to see Iron Man anyway (yes, I’ll drive an hour to watch movies at the Alamo Drafthouse, even if it’s something I can see pretty much anywhere) so I mailed Ed and said I’d be stopping by.

Ed turned out to be a very nice guy and very purposeful about what he wanted. He actually ran my test in his own office, which he shared with his little pet dog that he kept penned up. It was quiet while he handed me two Wiimote controllers, one for each hand, and explained the game to me and had me practice a few rounds in front of a screen hooked up to a Wii devkit. Not much button pressing, just waving the controllers around.

Once I was familiar with the game, he tested me on particular maneuver, watching what I did and whether the game thought I was doing the maneuvers properly. If I was, but the game didn’t give me what he thought was proper credit, he would make the devkit “learn” my particular movements and/or tweak how the game differentiated between moves it thought I might be making and the ones I actually was making.

Anyone who’s seen a Wii commercial ought to know what I’m talking about: the Wiimote has a motion sensor, and most of the games unique to the system involve waving the little white stick-things in front of the screen in particular ways. Without talking too much about Helix itself, Ed explained that every person is going to move differently with a Wiimote in hand, and Wii games therefore need to be somewhat forgiving, otherwise bad things happen. Apparently I was the tallest one they’d had test the game in a while, and probably had close to the longest wingspan.

So anyway, if anyone wants to come by the office to try out a Wii game in the Austin area, contact Ed. He promised me some kind of thank-you credit for the game, and the hour went by quick and easy.

Also, Iron Man is very good. It was a good day.