Handheld location based games are provided in which a user's physical location correlates to the virtual location of a virtual character on a virtual playfield. Augmented Reality (AR) systems are provided in which video game indicia are overlaid onto a user's physical environment. A landscape detector is provided that may obtain information about a user's landscape, in addition to the user's location, in order to provide overlaying information to an AR head-mounted display and control information to non-user controlled video game characters.