Prior to arriving at PlayStation Experience this past weekend, I had no idea that within a few minutes of the Sony fan expo opening I'd be being strapped into a full-body suit that would thump along to the music of one of my favorite games, which I'd be playing in VR.

And yet, there we were: In a back room on the edge of the PlayStation Experience show floor in San Francisco's Moscone Center waited genius game designer Tetsuya Mizuguchi, whose crew wasted no time shoving me into the "synesthesia suit," filled with force-feedback units that would truly make me feel the music of Rez, Mizuguchi's musical-shooter masterpiece, now being enhanced for PlayStation VR.

Rez, originally released in 2001 on Dreamcast and PlayStation 2, is a brilliant combination of shooter gameplay, music, and light, sort of like turning Space Invaders into a rave where everybody is on just enough drugs that they're pretty sure they can smell the music. It's had a significant cult following since then, with an HD version on the Xbox 360. Rez Infinite will bring the game to PlayStation 4, with an optional VR mode, in 2016.

"Originally, when I made Rez 15 years ago, I imagined it in VR," Mizuguchi says. Even Rez HD didn't fully satisfy him, he says, because it was 720p: "It was HD, but not true HD." The opportunity to up-res the graphics again and put it into virtual reality proved irresistible: "This is what brought me back to games," he says.

Enhance Games

You'll be able to play Rez Infinite on your TV via PlayStation 4 if you want, but Rez in VR will truly be a killer app for the game's fans.

Vanilla Rez is one of those games that's so intense that you feel like you've been transported into its vector-lined, Tron-esque virtual world. Now imagine if you were truly enveloped in Rez, and everywhere you turned your head, nothing surrounded you but more Rez. Since all you're doing is aiming and shooting while the game zips along at its own pace, it works perfectly for VR with few alterations.

And that's without the suit.

Synesthesia, Squared

From the beginning, Mizuguchi wanted players to feel the music of Rez, not just hear it. Like you were at a concert, feeling the vibrations off the giant speakers. He accomplished this with the Trance Vibrator accessory for PlayStation 2—one of which was sitting in the room with us, as a reminder of the roots of the suit—which was just a giant force feedback unit, meant to be placed anywhere on your body that you felt like. (No judgments.)

The suit, which Mizuguchi developed as part of his academic research—he's now a professor at Keio University working on teaching the next generation about "transmedia" projects—is, like Rez in VR, a full realization of an idea Mizuguchi's been kicking around for 15 years. "Having the synesthesia suit come to life is something I've always wanted to be able to do," he says.

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As Mizuguchi's squad zips the suit up around me, I am thankful for the fact that even though it was developed by Japanese university students, it is sized for middle-aged American journalist bodies. This suit, I am constantly reminded, is not going to be a consumer product; it would be far too expensive. There will likely be some kind of consumer-focused vibration solution for Rez Infinite, but what form that will take has not been decided.

I am the very first person, they tell me, outside the people who made this game, to wear the suit. This is pure happenstance, but feels like a good (or bad) omen.

Rez boots up. It's the "running man" boss fight from Area 4 of the original game, one of its most impressive and memorable moments. Things start off subtle at first, but soon, the many, many actuators and rumblers on the suit are hitting me on my chest, arms, and legs with each beat of the music. It's remarkably synchronized. Every Rez player knows that little pattern of quick beats that you hear when you fire all of your rhythmic shots at a single object. Now I feel each individual one of those rapid-fire beats, bapbapbapbapbap on my body.

It really is the Trance Vibrator's ultimate evolution, but Mizuguchi doesn't want to stop here.

Remaking Rez

Tetsuya Mizuguchi has made many fondly-remembered, innovative games, Space Channel 5 and Lumines among them. But it's Rez he keeps returning to, each time bringing it closer to his ideal, each time not truly attaining the perfect Rez in his head.

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"I have many reasons to enhance Rez," he says when I ask if PlayStation VR was the impetus for this latest revival. He takes a step back to explain the very origins of the game. The game's familiar visual signature is no coincidence, he says: "I got the inspiration from the movie Tron."

In the film, he says, when a character dies, they're said to be "de-rezzed." If "de-rezzed" means death, he thought, then "Rez" means "life."

As you begin playing Rez, there's no music, little light, no vibration. But as you excel at playing it, the music swells, the visuals pump out more and more movement and brightness, your body thumps along. All your senses are perceiving the stimuli in harmony, and, if the magic takes hold, you feel something greater than the sum of all its parts. Rez isn't merely Mizuguchi's life's work, it's his attempt to create life where there were just ones and zeroes before.

"This time, the driving technology is obviously VR," Mizuguchi says. "But there will be another cycle that will hopefully take its shape into another enhanced Rez experience."

"Whenever I have the feeling that technological advancements are going to allow me to enhance the previous Rez experience," he says, "I can't help but do it."