Dow Jones & Company   TUESDAY, JANUARY 9. 1996 VOL. CCXXV1I NO. 0 EASTERN EDITION 75CENTS Game at Consumer Electronics Show Turns Basketball Into a Virtual Reality By .Jeffrey A. Trachtenberg; Staff Reporter ofWail. Street Journal LAS VEGAS - Your team is down by a basket, there are five seconds left, and you've got the ball. You tut left and let go with a 10-foot jumper that looks good. But just as the buzzer sounds, an impossibly tall defender leaps and swats aside your shot. Exhausted, you remove your green glove and sit on the sidelines. This is Virtual Hoops, a virtual-reality basketball game that New York-based CCG MetaMedia Inc., expects will become a hit at fledgling entertainment arcades spring­ing up across the country. The $35,000 system, introduced here at the Consumer Electronics Show, consists of a standing rack of computers, a video camera, a large screen television and 3-D animation. An image of the player is transmitted into an artist-rendered court, and the game un­folds. Tim O'Donnell, MetaMedia's chair­man, says he hopes Virtual Hoops is "a way to help us communicate, espe­cially with friends thousands of miles away." Perhaps, but he's already had inquiries about using the system for less friendly purposes - such as for the game Mortal Kombat, Although there was an impressive ar­ray of futuristic technology on hand, the four-day show that closed yesterday drew only 80,000 visitors, far fewer than the 100.000 plus attendees in 1995. The organi­zer says that retail consolidation was re­sponsible for some of the fall-off. Another factor, however, was that many foreign visitors couldn't obtain visas because of the U.S. government shut-down. In addi­tion, the gathering has lost some of its luster as an important previewer of new video games and multimedia titles, as reflected by the decision of Japan's Nin­tendo Co. not to rent floor space this year/ One of the more amusing offerings was the Vistatector. This handheld pen was designed by closely held Vistatech Enter­prises Ltd., based in New York, to detect counterfeit money, including phony bills produced by digital copiers. And a newly redesigned pen used to detect fake trav­eler's checks, a booming market, identifies magnetic particles discretely imbued in the paper. But even the pen can be fooled, says Howard Borman, director of interna­tional marketing, He says he recently saw phony currency that fooled even the Fed­eral Reserve Bank. "Counterfeiters in Co­lombia are printing almost perfect bills," he gripes. As expected, there were dozens of cellu­lar phones on display. But one of the niftiest was a compact phone specifically designed for a woman's hand by Sony Electronics, a unit of Tokyo-based Sony Corp. Weighing only 6.7 ounces and meas­uring less than four inches long, the phone provides 22 hours of standby time and 90 minutes of talk, which means users can leave it on all day for incoming calls. Sony is expected to model the unit as a purse phone with a retail price of $500. The unit requires seven hours to charge. For automotive buffs, there was an array of navigational devices and sophisti­cated alarm systems. But the new Vector MI2 sports car, with a top speed of more than 190 miles per hour, attracted the most attention. Triced at $184,000, the car is rolling off the factory floor in Jacksonville, Fla., at (he rate of three a month. Charlie Zuver, purchasing manager for Vector Aeromotive Corp.. says its car gets nine miles per gallon in the city and 13 miles on the highway. Asked why he was attending a consumer-electronics show, Mr. Zuver shrugged and said, "The people with money will be here."