Jeff Highsmith, who works for REI, built this wonderful servomechanical arcade game (called Peak 97) as part of “a series of automatons and robotic effigies of my coworkers.”

A small humanoid climber (based on the classic bi-core walker BEAM ‘bot) is hung on each of two steeply sloped, carpeted inclines. A two-knob controller on each face is used to actuate arm- and leg-servos to twist the figure’s body back and forth, making it climb. The game ends when one of the two climbers makes electrical contact with the aluminum “snowcap” at the top of the slope. LCD readouts count down the starting bell and report the winners name and time. And the jaunty 8-bit era gametune played during the race is spot-on.

Jeff has published a build guide to Make: Projects, and some additional pics are available in his Flickr set. [Thanks, Jeff!]