This week, I spent much time exploring the north shore of Oahu. Although away from playing games, I kept thinking about what part in real life would make a creditable videogame. This is something I’m with which I’m plagued: I walk around and wonder, “Could this be a game? Could that be a game?”

Hence, river boarding at Waimea Bay. This small river with HUGE waves is created when the tidal-obsessed ocean sucks out the water from a kind of lagoon. In February, this compelling event occurs at midday. It’s completely dangerous; three injuries happened in the 10 minutes I watched. One hipster surfer was hurt so badly that an ambulance came for him.

Loopy from the injury, he kept asking his friend, “No one saw my bare ass, did they?”

And his friend kept saying, “No, dude. I had you covered.”

Note that even standing on the sidelines is dangerous: a kind of sand-a-lanche occurs, which almost sucked me down into the water.

Wouldn’t this make a fine Kinect game? Not a family, cutesy one, but something where more is at stake: your very life.

-Harold Goldberg