Patent ID: 8262476

Claim:
A game apparatus which displays, on a display, a game screen obtained by perspectively transforming, onto a virtual screen, a virtual three-dimensional space, in which a character acts in accordance with an instruction from a player, from a viewpoint of a virtual camera, the apparatus comprising: a card disposition system that disposes a card on a plane corresponding to a virtual two-dimensional plane perpendicular to a height direction of the virtual three-dimensional space, a position and a rotary direction of the card being changeable by the player; a card detector that detects the position of the card and the rotary direction of the card disposed on the card disposition system; a character controller that controls a position and a rotary direction of the character in accordance with the position of the card and the rotary direction of the card detected by the card detector, the rotary direction of the character indicating a direction in which the character faces; a virtual camera controller that controls a position of a visual point and a direction of a visual axis of the virtual camera with the position of the character as a reference point, in accordance with the position of the card and the rotary direction of the card detected by the card detector, the direction of the visual axis being defined as a direction from the position of the visual point towards the position of the character; a perspective transformer that perspectively transforms onto the virtual screen the virtual three-dimensional space from the viewpoint of the virtual camera, in which the position of the visual point and the direction of the visual axis are fixed by the virtual camera controller, and generates a two-dimensional image to be displayed on the display; and a display controller that display the two-dimensional image generated by the perspective transformer on the display, wherein the character controller does not change the rotary direction of the character when the rotary direction of the card detected by the card detector is changed by rotation of the card and the position of the card detected by the card detector is not substantially changed, and wherein when the rotary direction of the card detected by the card detector is changed by rotation of the card and the position of the card detected by the card detector is not substantially changed, the virtual camera controller circularly moves the position of the visual point around the character in order to change the direction of the visual axis in accordance with the change in the rotary direction of the card.