A handheld game device includes a processing element that executes a game application, such as for example a car-racing application or other interactive game which is viewed on a screen display provided in the game device. The game device also contains a camera, preferably taking the form of an electronic video camera, capturing image frames at a suitable frame rate, such as 10 or 20 frames per second or more. The game device uses movement information obtained from a sequence of images obtained from the camera as a basis to navigate the user through a game that the user is playing on the device. For example, if the user tilts the device to the left, the tilting action results in image movement. The image movement is interpreted as user input of movement commands for the video game application, just as joystick movement is interpreted as movement commands for the video game application.