Rubik's 360, a Next-Gen Handheld Mind-Bender

24.02.2009
It's a brain teaser, requires precision dexterity, has better 3D visuals than , and here's the kicker -- it's not a video game.

But it is a game, or at least the sort of diversion you'd call a "puzzler." You know, the kind of brain teaser you fiddle with your digits, i.e. fingers. Batteries not required, like in the old days, before rumbling gamepads.

Remember the ? Gyrating three-by-three six-color hexahedron?

Sure you do. I grew up with it back in the 1980s, and chances are you did too, given that it's sold over 350 million worldwide since it debuted 35 years ago. Make that 15 million last year alone, up 3 million over 2007's sales .

So much for the demise of interactive entertainment "unplugged."

Now its inventor, Erno Rubik, is back with the official sequel -- the Rubik's 360. (No relation to Microsoft.)