Videogame Workout

Rock Band: Learn To Drum!

2008-05-04T17:50:00.000-07:00

Rock Band is a game for XBox, PS3, and PS2. It's a follow-on to Guitar Hero; all the songs have parts for guitar, bass, vocals, and drums. The great thing about the drums peripheral is that just playing the game actually teaches you drumming. If you can play this game on the Hard level, you can basically play drums. Which turns out to be a decent workout! At least it was for me - I was tired and had sore arms and shoulders after a few hours of play. I suspect as you get better at drumming you move more efficiently so it's not quite as much exercise for an expert as it would be for a novice, but then you can play faster and fuller rhythms.

Here's a real drummer playing in Expert mode:

As for me, I can currently get through 41 of the 58 songs in Hard mode. Yesterday I was stuck on Vasoline, so to speak. Green Grass and High Tides is exhausting. Ballroom Blitz is a blast! Go With The Flow is kind of insane. Once Hard level is mastered I'll probably buy a real (albeit still electronic) drum kit and see what I can do with some dynamic range...

A few links:

Harmonix's Top Tips for Drummers
You can buy 3rd-party stick-on pads that dampen the sound a bit and add "springiness".
here's xkcd's take.

Plus as a special added bonus - a collection of jokes:

Q: What do you call a guy who hangs out with musicians?
A: A drummer.

Q: How can you tell that there's a drummer at your front door?
A: The knocking gets faster and faster.
A: He doesn't know when to come in.

Q: What's the difference between a musician and a savings bond?
A: One of them eventually matures and earns money.

Q: Why is a drum machine better than a drummer?
A: Because it can keep good time and won't sleep with your girlfriend.

Q: Why do guitarists put drumsticks on the dash of their car?
A: So they can park in the handicapped spot

Q: How many drummers does it take to change a light bulb?
A: None, they have machines that do that now.

Q: How do you tell if the stage is level?
A: The drummer is drooling from both sides of his mouth.

Q: What's the thing you would never hear a drummer says?
A: "Hey guys, why don't we try one of my songs?

Q: How is a drum solo like a sneeze?
A: You can tell it's coming, but you can't do anything about it.

Q: How do you get a drummer away from your front door?
A: Pay him for the pizza.

Q: What do you call a drummer that breaks up with his girlfriend?
A: Homeless.

Q: What's the difference between a large pizza and a drummer?
A: The pizza can feed a family.

Cyberwalk: an omnidirectional treadmill

2008-04-18T11:22:00.001-07:00

Cyberwalk is a treadmill-of-treadmills (produced by a German company) that allows someone to physically walk or run any distance in any direction in a virtual world while remaining in a single space. Here's a video.

They have a website. There's a brochure on the project here (pdf).

So which would you rather have in your house: a Cyberwalk, or a VirtuSphere?

Wii Fit finally to be released in US

2008-04-18T08:46:00.000-07:00

Wii Fit will finally be available in the US starting May 19, 2008 for a retail price of $89.99. You can preorder now from amazon.

One blogger successfully used the Japanese version to get in shape and lose weight for his wedding. Here's the final report on what he calls The Great Experiment and here are his individual weekly reports.

Real-life Donkey Kong

2007-09-21T12:04:00.000-07:00

Here's an attempt to play the first level of Donkey Kong in real life. Looks like fun!

Arm-wrestling game recalled for breaking arms

2007-08-22T19:50:00.000-07:00

Some games are apparently more vigorous than others. The Story:

Japanese game maker Atlus said on Tuesday that it would remove 150 Arm Spirit arm-wrestling machines from Japanese arcades after three players broke their arms while wrestling with the machine's mechanized appendage.

"The machine isn't that strong, much less so than a muscular man," said an Atlus spokeswoman. "Even women should be able to beat it," the company claimed, saying that it would check the machines for malfunctions as "a precaution."

Wii Fit

2007-08-02T07:09:00.000-07:00

Wii Fit is new software for staying in shape with the Nintendo Wii. Here's the 2007 E3 demo reel:

The new controller is tentatively named the "Wii Balance Board". The game is intended to release in Japan Q4 2007, then in the US in the first half of 2008.

UPDATE: Here's a parody version of the same video, courtesy of SarcasticGamer.com:

Another take on live-action Pacman

2007-07-26T08:27:00.000-07:00

Not so much "exercise" as "silly", but you gotta love Japanese game shows...

Exercise, or the (virtual) puppy gets it!

2007-05-31T03:20:00.000-07:00

Combine the idea of tamigotchi - a virtual pet - with a real-world exercise interface. Wear a step counter and set yourself a daily exercise goal. If you meet the goal, your virtual pet gets healthier. Miss your goal, and your pet gets more sickly and weak.

The research study (pdf) used virtual fish in a common fishbowl and standard pedometers whose displays were read using OCR. There are many obvious potential improvements, but it seems like an excellent start at a way to motivate people to achieve any number of goals.

a persuasive data visualization that maps a player’s daily foot step count to the growth & activity of an animated virtual character, a fish in a fish tank. the "Fish’n’Steps" application links the size of a fish as the step count, while success in reaching a participant’s daily goal affects its facial expression (e.g. happy, angry or sad). baby fish appear once the upper appearance level is reached.

some fish tanks also include other players’ fish, to create an environment of both cooperation & competition. in a 14-week study with 19 participants, the game served as a catalyst for promoting exercise & for improving game players’ attitudes towards physical activity.

(ht: information aesthetics )

UPDATE: In the comments, Dani mentions vMigo, a virtual dog product where the game controller includes a pedometer and you get "pet points" for taking your virtual dog on walks with you. What a great feature!

Human Tetris!

2007-05-29T02:49:00.000-07:00

There's a Japanese game show in which contestants must quickly contort themselves to fit through a hole in an approaching wall. Fail to fit properly and you'll get pushed into the water! Here's a video instruction:

And a late round of play:

It's not very aerobic, but seems like it could do wonders for one's flexibility. Several more video examples here.

More schools adopting exercise games

2007-05-01T14:55:00.000-07:00

The New York Times just had a good article on the continuing trend, with comments by educators and parents in several states:

Dance Dance Revolution [is] the latest weapon in the nation’s battle against the epidemic of childhood obesity. While traditional video games are often criticized for contributing to the expanding waistlines of the nation’s children, at least several hundred schools in at least 10 states are now using Dance Dance Revolution, or D.D.R., as a regular part of their physical education curriculum.

Based on current plans, more than 1,500 schools are expected to be using the game by the end of the decade. [...]

“Traditionally, physical education was about team sports and was very skills oriented,” said Chad Fenwick, who oversees physical education for the Los Angeles Unified School District, where about 40 schools now use Dance Dance Revolution. “What you’re seeing is a move toward activities where you don’t need to be so great at catching and throwing and things like that, so we can appeal to a wider range of kids.” [...]

As a result of a partnership among West Virginia’s Department of Education, its Public Employees Insurance Agency and West Virginia University, the state has committed to installing the game in all 765 of its public schools by next year. Almost all of its 185 middle schools already use it.

Maya's sequel is back in the works!

2007-02-19T18:31:00.000-08:00

According to a recent posting to the Yourself!Fitness discussion board, the long-delayed next installment of the franchise, Yourself!Fitness Lifestyle, is back on track. Full details to be released "soon". Hurray!

Here's the full announcement:

Dear faithful Yourself!Fitness customers,

The responDESIGN Team wishes all the fans of Maya and Yourself!Fitness a happy and healthy Valentine's Day!

We are as excited as ever about the future of fitness gaming and are looking forward to a bright future for Maya and the Yourself!Fitness brand of fitness products.

We have inventory of our Yourself!Fitness for the Xbox, Playstation 2 and PC, as well as many of the accessories you've asked for like the Y!F Stability Ball, Y!F Water Bottles and more.

We are working on the next Yourself!Fitness title called Y!F Lifestyle to be released on the new game consoles and the PC. Y!F Lifestyle has many of the new features that you asked us to create and we will be releasing the details for this new product soon!

Please stay tuned for more great fitness gaming products from your friends at responDESIGN and Yourself!Fitness.

Sincerely,
The responDESIGN/Yourself!Fitness Team.

--
maya

Action Videogames Improve Eyesight

2007-02-06T01:07:00.000-08:00

From this article:

Video games that contain high levels of action, such as Unreal Tournament, can actually improve your vision, according to a group of Researchers at the University of Rochester.

In an article to be published in Psychological Science, they have shown that people who played action video games for a few hours a day over the course of a month improved by about 20 percent in their ability to identify letters presented in clutter—a visual acuity test similar to ones used in regular ophthalmology clinics.

In essence, playing video game improves your bottom line on a standard eye chart.

Conan O'Brien beats Serena Williams at Wii Tennis

2007-02-02T16:04:00.000-08:00

Time: "Is the Wii Really Good for Your Health?"

2007-02-02T13:42:00.000-08:00

Time magazine recently posted an excellent article on videogame fitness, focusing mainly on the Wii but also bringing in a variety of related articles and scientific findings on using videogames as exercise or rehabilitative therapy.

Not only have some gamers started turning the Wii and other similar active gaming consoles into a new form of exercise, but medical researchers are touting their health potential for more than just weight loss. A research team at the University of Toronto is developing a "therapeutic video game" to treat children who suffer from hemiplegic cerebral palsy, a condition that can partially paralyze one side of the body. If the children regularly use their weaker side, their motor function can improve. The problem is getting the children to do so outside of therapy sessions. Active video games might do the trick, thought William Li, an undergraduate engineering student at the University of Toronto who is conducting research at the university's Bloorview Kids Rehab teaching hospital.

[...]

But weight loss is still probably the biggest health benefit the Wii will have for users. Active video games like the Wii can fight child obesity, according to a report published by the Mayo Clinic in the January issue of Pediatrics. In that study, researchers found that children burned three times as many calories playing "active" video games versus playing traditional hand-held video games. Because the study was done before the Wii debuted, researchers tested Sony's EyeToy and Microsoft's Xbox. But Lorraine Lanningham-Foster, the report's lead researcher, expects the Wii to have the same effect. "If children are up moving around versus sitting down, then they're going to burn more calories," she says.

Also, our previously-mentioned Mickey DeLorenzo has signed a deal on a book tentatively titled The Wii Workout. Read the whole thing.

Live-Action BomberMan!

2007-01-24T14:46:00.000-08:00

This is seriously cool:

In a large empty room, an overhead fisheye lens identifies players by the color of their caps and roughly maps human movement to game character movement. What other games would this interface work well for? Frogger? Donkey Kong? Pac Man?

ArsTechnica on Videogame Fitness

2007-01-18T19:13:00.000-08:00

Arstechnica has a good feature article called Gaming your way into better shape. The writer tried DDR, Yourself!Fitness, EyeToy!Kinetic, and Wii.

I knew I wanted to try Dance Dance Revolution; it's the game that gave me this unholy idea in the first place. I've played the game before and knew that I wanted the newest version with an official Konami pad. One copy of Dance Dance Revolution Extreme 2 with a pad, $60—check. I'll treat myself to a nice aftermarket pad if I stick with it.

For the second game I decided on Yourself!Fitness, and I'd be lying if I said I didn't take into account the fact that the girl on the cover was pretty hot. Our own Dr. Gitlin recommends it highly. It was hard to find: it seems to be out of print and none of my local stores had it used. I found it at Overstock.com for $40.

I wanted to stay away from anything too expensive and needing a lot of hardware, so specialized fitness equipment for consoles is out. At that point you might as well join a gym for the cost. But this does need to be fun, so for my third game I decided on EyeToy Kinetic, a Nike-endorsed fitness game that uses the EyeToy to put your image into the game and uses your own movements to interact with the images on the screen.
[...]
Total price: $150 for three games and two pieces of hardware.

By the end, the Fearless Writer lost about 20 pounds from DDR and Yourself!Fitness. He had trouble getting Kinetic to work reliably and didn't find Wii sufficiently intense to be interesting. Read the whole thing.

In the comments, I found DDR-diet.com, a daily log of yet another blogger's attempt to lose weight with DDR.

The Wii Workout

2007-01-16T17:07:00.000-08:00

The protocol is: play Wii 30 minutes a day for 30 days. this guy seems to have been first to complete. Here's a nice time-lapse sampling the movement that produced quite a nice end result:

Tom Coffee is also doing the Wii Workout with amusing commentary at his site Spilling Coffee. He's lost 10 pounds in the first two weeks. Tom's doing an interesting variation: he plays Wii using wrist weights to increase the workout. That seems like a high injury risk but it would depend on the game and how hard you're playing it.

As for me: I'm no longer wearing a sling and my shoulder is "stable", but I don't yet have full range of motion so I can't get in on the action. Also, I still have no Wii. But give me a few more weeks of healing and then I'll see about doing some Wiihabilitation...

Scale Walls Like a Videogame Character

2007-01-13T12:35:00.000-08:00

If the Prince of Persia competed on Japanese game shows, this is what it would look like...

Shangri-la Diet on CBC

2007-01-06T13:27:00.000-08:00

This news video does a nice job summarizing Seth Robert's Shangri-La Diet:

Call me "Lefty!"

2007-01-05T02:40:00.000-08:00

So: why no recent posts?

One month ago today, on my way to a firespinning rehearsal at the Palace of Fine Arts, I tripped and fell. I had been running and a little overloaded - carrying a big can of fuel in my right hand and a bucket of poi materials in my left, which somehow caused me to land without much ability to successfully block or deflect the impact. Landing badly, I bumped my head and broke my collarbone. Officially, I have a "closed, displaced, mid-clavicular fracture".

Another firespinner took me to the nearest emergency room he could find, the Kaiser on Geary, a land where everyone is competent and friendly and even the ER doctors are adorable. (I should break bones more often!)

I am currently wearing an immobilization splint that keeps my right arm pinned to my side. I'm supposed to move that arm as little as possible for about 6 weeks to let it heal. Took the first couple weeks off work, mostly staying at home watching DVDs, napping, taking pills for pain and inflammation.

Surprisingly difficult tasks with minimal use of the dominant arm:

Tying shoes. (trick: give up and buy shoes that don't lace.)
Putting on a belt. (trick: put the belt on the pants first, then put on the pants.
Putting on pants. (wear something loose and avoid button-fly)
Changing a shirt and reassembling the sling with no shoulder movement.
Eating! (I can now use chopsticks with my left hand! Almost!)
Blogging!
Sleeping!

Since I cannot tie my shoes while wearing them, I bought some fine italian loafers. To avoid overloading the other shoulder on small errands, I bought a folding shopping cart from The Container Store. In some ways it's actually been fun - figuring out from first principles how to accomplish basic tasks in unfamiliar ways. Like a baby learning to walk, I can take pride in accomplishments that in any other context would seem trivial.

The firespinning show went on without me - I watched from the sidelines. (there'll be another in the spring.) This will have been 6 weeks (minimum!) in which I don't spin and don't play guitar and do very little exercise. Even reading isn't very comfortable. Watching Netflix disks from the couch is about my speed - get comfy and sit perfectly still for hours, patiently letting the bones heal. (The first season of "24" is excellent.) Napping is good, too.

I miss playing guitar. I miss social interaction. I miss spinning. I'll have a lot of catching up to do once I heal. But all things considered, I'm not doing too badly.

Blogging will likely remain infrequent. For a while.

(cross-posted to Blogjack.net.)

Live-Action Tekken

2006-11-30T03:20:00.000-08:00

If fighting arcade games were real, this is what it might look like.

When Videogames Hurt

2006-11-25T20:29:00.000-08:00

The Nintendo Wii was released last weekend. Here's a good Wall Street Journal article on wii-related injuries

The new console has been wildly successful, selling out at stores and winning high marks from critics and game buffs. But as players spend more time with the Wii, some are noticing that hours waving the game's controller around can add up to fairly intense exertion -- resulting in aches and pains common in more familiar forms of exercise. They're reporting aching backs, sore shoulders -- even something some have dubbed "Wii elbow."

"It's harder than playing basketball," says Kaitlin Franke, a 12-year-old from Louisville, Ky. She has been camped out in front of her family's TV, fine-tuning her bowling motion and practicing boxing footwork in two of the Wii's games. Almost immediately, she says, her right arm started to feel numb.

In Rochester, Minn., Jeremy Scherer and his wife spent three hours playing tennis and bowling, two of the games included with the Wii. Mr. Scherer says he managed to improve his scores -- at the cost of shoulders and back that were still aching the next day. "I was using muscles I hadn't used in a while," says Mr. Scherer, a computer programmer who describes himself as "not very active." Mr. Scherer is vowing nightly "Wii workouts" to get in better shape.

GameCycle - Videogaming as Upper-Body Rehabilitation

2006-11-21T13:53:00.000-08:00

From the name, I had been assuming the GameCycle was yet another pedal-powered game controller. Nope! It's actually quite nifty. GameCycle is a hand-driven pedal controller that lets the user determine forward motion and steer using just the upper body. Wheelchair-bound gamers use it in therapy to play driving games.

"In the clinic, the GameCycle is used by people who have experienced stroke, traumatic brain injury, spinal cord injury, spina bifida, and other neurological disorders or diseases of the spine."

"Fitzgerald and her colleagues (2004) compared exercising with an arm ergometer (without a videogame) to exercising with the GameCycle (arm ergometer with videogame). Fitzgerald found that although metabolic data indicated that more calories were being expended while using the GameCycle (compared with the standard arm ergometer), research participants did not perceive greater exertion. In other words, participants were exercising harder with the GameCycle, but did not feel it or realize it."

Videogame-based therapy at its best. More here and here.

Rollerman: Move Like a Videogame Character

2006-11-09T16:59:00.000-08:00

In much the same goofy vein as Powerisers, here's a suit that allows rolling movement in almost any position, even down stairs, at speeds of up to 60 mph. Start with a pair of rollerblades with pads and then just keep adding more wheels and armor until you're nothing but one big machine for movement.

Frenchman Jean-Yves Blondeau first conceived of his plastic Buggy Rollin' suit in 1994, while he was a student at Olivier de Serres design school, in Paris. But the invention, which allows a wearer to top 60 miles per hour while maintaining any position found in the Kama Sutra, didn't exactly catch fire with consumers. Not one to give up, Blondeau recently refined the suit to a stripped-down 31-wheel version and developed his own playbook of moves, like the Zaphial (rolling flat on your back with all four limbs pointed straight up) and the Smooth Buggy Dog (three limbs on the ground and one rolling along a wall).

This french-only clip gives a better sense of how the suit is put together:

This guy would fit right in as a James Bond villain...

Tetris Weightlifting

2006-10-28T22:02:00.000-07:00

Take two pulldown handle grips. Add a small "rotate" thumb button to each grip. Pull the right handle down to move the tetris object to the right, pull the left handle down to move it left, pull both handles to drop the object faster. Adjust the weight bucket and the required pull distance as needed to make the game challenging. You've got a serious workout game.

This isn't just a wacky idea; it's a wacky idea with a prototype, tested and functional. The control software is open source, so have at it!

It's a great idea for a controller, but I'm not sure tetris is the best game to demonstrate the concept. Given the same control set, I think I'd make a parachuting game. Or if we have to stick with old-school 2D graphics, what about Lunar Lander? Make the controllers return analog values instead of on/off. Given a right and left jet, pulling one cord more than the other turns the craft, pulling both chords equally applies central thrust to slow the craft, and within the allowable movement range the further you pull down, the more the rocket slows the ship. Yessss!

Somebody call Konami. Have my people and your people set up a meeting; we'll do lunch.

Who Killed the Yourself!Fitness Sequel?

2006-10-26T11:50:00.000-07:00

Roger Avary. Apparently this lawsuit is still active and there's no point in releasing a sequel under that sort of unresolved threat.

Pulp Fiction co-writer Roger Avary has sued Microsoft Corp. for $30 million, claiming the software giant stole his idea for a virtual yoga game. The Academy Award-winning screenwriter has also asked a judge to stop Microsoft and responDESIGN from selling Yourself!Fitness, the first fitness game program for the Xbox.

According to his lawsuit, Avary met several times with the Microsoft team, and in 2003, pitched them a detailed concept for a videogame designed to lead players through yoga poses using Microsoft's Xbox game console.

A source within ResponDesign confirmed the unlikelihood of a sequel but added "it is still remotely possible, if international sales are good and the lawsuit ever gets settled."

Games For Health Competion

2006-10-19T18:34:00.000-07:00

Got an idea for a health-related videogame you'd like to share with the world? Here's an idea:

The Games for Health Competition runs from October 19 to April 1, 2007.

[there are] three specific competitions - two for storyboards & game treatments, and a grand prize for best working prototype/game. The following links provide basic information on each competition:

Student Storyboard & Treatment ($5,000 prize)
Organization Storyboard & Treatment ($5,000 prize)
Open Prototype/Health Game ($20,000 prize)

Five finalists will be announced in each competition with one finalist receiving the prize for that competition.

Official Rules are available here.

Games For Health Intro

2006-10-19T13:45:00.000-07:00

Here's a short (5-minute) promo for the Games4Health movement.

Free USB Dance Pad from Kraft!

2006-10-18T13:51:00.000-07:00

If you've got a Windows PC, check this out: Kraft is giving away free USB dance pads plus a small collection of games.

So what's the catch? Advertising. The free games include "ad breaks" between levels that advertise Kraft products. I could live with that. There's a nice symmetry there: buy some Kraft food, then exercise on the Kraft dance pad to work off the calories!

(okay, so there's $6 shipping & handling.)

No Yourself!Fitness Sequel? Augh!

2006-10-17T00:22:00.000-07:00

Games for Health is a series of conferences intended to "develop a community and best practices platform for the numerous games being built for health care applications." Games for getting in shape, games for recovering from illness, games to teach health concepts.

A recent talk on the state of exergaming included this sad news for Maya's fans:

ResponDesign, the creators of Yourself Fitness [brought news of] Yourself Fitness no longer being in stores and [that] there is no sequel in the works. While ResponDesigns has an uncertain future there is still strong support and need for the exergaming space. They also feel having compelling software is what is required to get people to exercise and to solve the obesity epidemic.

Compelling software is important, but so is good marketing and branding. To buy these products, you have to know they exist and where to find them. Despite the lovely New York Times article, "Yourself!Fitness" and "EyeToy:Kinetic" don't roll trippingly off the tongue and haven't become household names. Hey! Maybe what the field needs is a celebrity! Like Tiger Woods Golf and John Madden Football, our instructor could be based on a real person! Although, come to think of it, that's been tried too - the XaviX console has a series of Jackie Chan fitness products. Or does it? Jackie Chan Studio Fitness just says "our new site is coming soon - check back shortly!"

Since January.

Of the "serious exercise game" triumvirate: XaviX's site is mostly dead, Y!F is slowly disappearing without a sequel, and the official EyeToy:Kinetic blog hasn't posted anything since May, which seems like a bad sign for their rumored sequel EyeToy:Kinetic Combat.

So is there any good news?

Wii is on the way with the explicit goal of making full-body movement fun and part of not just a few games but every game on the platform. They're making "get up and move" a required part of the game experience. If Wii succeeds, others will follow.
Dance Dance Revolution is no longer a game, it's a game category. It's a genre. Every platform needs a dancing game as much as it needs a fighting game and a first-person shooter.
Exergaming and real-world gaming have conferences. It's not just a few weirdoes working on this stuff, it's enough weirdoes to have a Games4Health conference. To have an exergaming area at CES or E3. Like DDR, the idea of a videogame workout has enough momentum to survive the death of any one product. Or two. Or three.

(hat tip: iPortion)

Wii Preview

2006-10-16T14:59:00.000-07:00

A British magazine recently got to try Wii for extended play sessions. First, they consider the challenge level:

Some gamers have shown concern that the activity level required to play Wii games, especially the sporty titles, may be too high. There are concerns that you have to stand for long periods of time and use body actions such as swinging your arm above your head or at the side of your body... [this was not a problem]...even the most active title on the launch line up, Wii Sports, doesn’t require you to make large body motions unless you want to. You can play it moving very little if you want, and some of the games can be played sitting down.

I love that people are starting to worry that potential videogame options might be too strenuous. Seriously, think about that for a minute - being concerned that consumers might not be in good enough physical condition to play a video game! We've sure come a long way from the notion that videogames produce couch potatoes, haven't we? Pretty soon, parents will be reminding their kids to do their daily videogame exercise...

When introduced to Wii Boxing, all a player has to do is hold a nunchuck in one hand and the Wii remote in the other and then move exactly as you would a boxer – lean back or side to side, blocking, jabbing, upper cutting etc. The Wii detects the movement of the nunchuck exactly the same way as it does your main remote. There’s no need to press buttons in this game, you simply move. This is truly an awesome innovation in gaming and not an experience you’d expect outside of the arcades.

Coooool!

The QA guy on hand to talk us through the launch line up also informed us that there may be plans to invent shin remotes of some form to enable kicking in games in the future. As far as I am aware, this would definitely be a first in home entertainment, if not any entertainment!

It wouldn't be a first. At the last CES I was able to play Street Fighter using arcademx shin and wrist sensors. Still, it'll be nice to see what Nintendo comes up with.

Geek-a-Cycle Exercise Workstation

2006-10-09T15:26:00.000-07:00

SlimGeek is selling a $349 computer desk/exercise bike combination called Geek-a-Cycle. It's an odd beast. It's merely a small computer desk that fit over a recumbent exercise bike. The desk has no drawer space, but has a keyboard tray that angles up to get out of the way of your knees.

Gizmondo and Slashdot claims to the contrary, the Geek-a-Cycle does not require you to keep pedalling in order to make the computer work. It's just a bike. Perhaps they'll add that as an upgrade feature.

Better yet, they could put a computer desk on a real bike so you can get some work done on your way to the office!

Videogame-Related Injury

2006-09-30T11:26:00.000-07:00

Have you ever hurt yourself playing an exercise game? When I play Dance Dance Revolution too much, I tend to hurt my feet. "DDR heel" is my latest complaint - that's the pain you get when walking after having stomped your heel too hard on a game controller.

DDR Freak often has injury discussions related to Dance Dance Revolution and Pump It Up, and has even done polls. Here's a sample of complaints:

stepped off the pad and twisted my ankle.

Slipped playing doubles (someone drank water while playing before me) and hit my head on the bar

cutting my toe open on the first time i beat paranoia survivor

I had an asthma attack

My friend has a heart disease and only discovered it after playing a few games of DDR - Her heart was racing and she had to be rushed to the hospital.

Dislocated my sholder while playing MaxX Unlimited. In the arcade I had one arm on the bar I had to do a few steps very fast. The arm that was not on the bar got jurked by moving so fast. I walked off the stage and left...in pain.

blisters, sprained ankle, almost fainted (literally) broke off my left big toe-nail.

[regarding the toenail quote:]
Wow, that happend to me, too! And i'll never DDR in 2-inch platforms again...

My left big toenail fell off after playing ~6 hours a day on a cruise ship last summer.

my friend went for a double knee drop and smacked his shins on the sides of the pad.

My knees really hurt from playing DDR.

I have a 3/4 inch scar accross my right knee from sliding into the metal at the back of one center down arrows at the end of Foxy Lady... The metal doesn't round down around the outer edge.

Probably a compound injury is mine. Under my knee caps on both legs I have calcified spots which have happened from knee dropping during freestyles. Yeah...I don't feel anything in those spots anymore. Other than that anything else have been screw corner-piece bruises/cuts in my knees and palms from misplaced hands and other stupidity (like the end of LIADZ Remix Nightmare).

I have suffered with many bruised knees to where I also don't feel them anymore and also, I have bent my fingers wrong coming down to hit the pad with my hands a few times. Recently I had a full combo on Soca Make Yu Ram Ram on nightmare and during the spin I slipped and busted my knee.... ouch...

Most of the injuries I usually get while playing are hurt fingers or busted knees... I get over it...

I nearly broke my own kneecaps once coming to an unexpected stop during R3 Heavy Doubles - I'm not quite sure what exactly I did to them, but they made this unpleasant cracking noise and were essentially immobile for several days.

I usually go with a few toe touch stetches before play, lol, that doesn't usually work for most of the songs I play....well, i have bruised my leg and now it is hard for me to even walk right now, I still play PIU though!

Like any other sport, videogame exercise can hurt. Know your limitations. Wear sensible gear, warm up a little, do an easy song or two to warm up. Oh, and if you don't already do knee drops, don't start now.

(Sources: mostly DDR Freak and Indy DDR.)

Overtime Fitness offers teens a videogame workout

2006-09-22T11:54:00.000-07:00

A new fitness center that uses videogames to get teens excited about exercise opens this Saturday in Mountain View, CA.

Overtime Fitness restricts its membership to teens aged 13 through 18. "It's a first-of-its-kind fitness center because it's focused solely on teens," founder and president Patrick Ferrell told Ars Technica. "Getting kids interested in fitness has some interesting challenges which we've managed to overcome by having the right combination of electronics, fitness equipment, and a place to socialize."

In addition to DDR, PowerGrid and the other usual suspects, their offerings include a machine I hadn't previously heard of, the Cybex Trazer:

The Trazer is a "virtual reality" fitness machine that "puts you in the game," as Neale-May describes it. The kids put on an infrared belt which then maps their movements to the action onscreen. They play games that involve lunging, jumping, and other vigorous movements, which show up on the monitor as the user reacts to virtual dodgeballs and other stimuli. "We had kids try out the Trazer. They'd have a blast and come out completely drenched in sweat after ten minutes," said Ferrell.

Big Brain Academy - exercise your brain!

2006-09-16T11:25:00.000-07:00

Big Brain Academy was announced as one of the initial shipping games for the Nintendo Wii. It'll work a lot like the DS version. Here's a video preview.

UPDATE: There's also a good article on brain training software in the latest BusinessWeek. The evidence that puzzle-solving games really help improve brain function is still pretty slim. Many studies show no effect. But on the plus side of the ledger:

This summer Posit released two studies [of their $395 Brain Fitness program] that Merzenich says prove its worth. One, involving 182 healthy people 60 and over, assigned half the group to Posit's brain exercises for eight weeks. The rest were asked only to watch educational DVDs. The researchers found that 93% of the Brain Fitness group significantly improved their memory function, while the control group did not.

In a second study released this summer, Posit's program was tried on 45 people diagnosed with MCI. PET scans of the brains of 15 participants were taken before and after the study. There was some evidence of memory gains in the Brain Fitness group, and the PET scans revealed a decline in brain activity in those who did not use the brain exercises. Brain activity held steady for the rest. "We've seen 80-year-old people improve from being sluggish and slow to having the mental performance level of a 35-year-old," says Merzenich.

DDR: Never too young to start!

2006-09-16T10:15:00.000-07:00

This japanese 5-year-old is pretty good - that's a 5-foot song:

In a few years, the kid will play like these guys:

Or these.

Or this guy.

Nothing can stop a determined DDRer:

Wii is on the way

2006-09-08T21:08:00.000-07:00

The Wii - Nintendo's next big console - has a new style of wireless position-sensing controller that enables all the same sorts of games we've previously seen on the XaviXPort - but done on a bigger budget with better hardware and marketing. The Wii should be a good platform for fitness games. A Bloomberg report says Nintendo is working on diet-related software but details are scarce. In the meantime there will be Tennis and Wario...

The controller allows peripherals to be plugged into it. I'm thinking we need a "free weight" accessory - something you plug in whose only purpose is to make the controller weigh more.

Wii is expected to launch "in the 4th quarter of 2006". Possibly November 6th.

Are we waiting for Wii?

An early Wii commercial:

Live Wii Tennis demo:

UPDATE: Wii is now expected to ship November 19th in the US for the price of $250.

And the award goes to...

2006-09-04T21:51:00.000-07:00

Brainwash Cafe's "editor's choice awards" include what they call the 10 Best Blogs for a Stronger You.

The list is heavily oriented to the fighting arts - karate, thai boxing and such - but they managed to squeeze us in at #10. Yay, us! Though I did notice they gave as our one-line description:

Videogame Workout: okay, the title can be a little bit misleading but the site is definitely a must visit.

So my question is: is the title misleading? And if you think it is, what would make it better or clearer or less misleading?

(oh, and FWIW: No, I didn't die in my second shot at skydiving)

Who punched Maya in the face?

2006-09-03T17:57:00.000-07:00

A few days ago I booted up Yourself!Fitness on my PS2 and selected a workout: 30 minutes, main focus weight loss, secondary focus upper body. Maya asked her traditional first question: "How are you feeling today?" but I didn't select an answer - something else came up - and since I still meant to do that exact workout sometime in the near future I just turned off the TV and left the program running with that question on the screen. Three days later I turned the TV on, answered the question, and did my workout.

There was something dreadfully wrong with Maya's face.

After running for so long continuously, the code controlling her mouth movements seems to have hit a bug. But it didn't only look wrong while talking, it looked wrong all the time. It rather looked like Maya had been punched in the mouth, possibly hit with a right hook. With lots of swelling. Still, she came to work and gave a hundred percent to the job. Nary a complaint. What a trooper!

Okay, so she did seem a little more sarcastic than normal...

PumpOne for iPod

2006-09-02T18:29:00.000-07:00

PumpOne has designed a variety of workouts tailored for display on an iPod or a Palm device. It's a simple idea, well executed: a couple screens of text and pictures for each exercise to remind you what to do next and help you keep the right form. There are several exercise levels for each focus area, so you can order a collection and rotate through them for variety.

If you have an iPod that does photos - even a nano - you should give this a try. Though the regular workouts are $19 each, there is a free sample lesson for download.

(ht: Alex)

Getting back into fitness with Maya

2006-08-27T01:10:00.000-07:00

I haven't posted for a while. There's a reason for that: I haven't been exercising. Not even with videogames. I just turned into a slug for a while.

It's funny how both exercising and not exercising are stable equilibria. When you don't exercise, you don't feel like exercising. You say "I'm too tired." or "I don't have time today, maybe tomorrow." On the other hand, when you do exercise, it's pretty easy to just keep doing it. The tricky part is making that first step, overcoming your inertia to just get it done. From there on it's all downhill.

I jumped back into it last week, returning to Maya of Yourself!Fitness (PS2). Rather than continue from where I left off, I deleted my old user account and started entirely fresh. (I'm hoping to unlock the final area this time - this always eluded me before). After the initial fitness evaluation, you are asked whether your current level of fitness is sedentary, moderately active, or active. The answer matters. The program scales your difficulty level appropriately. The first time I tried Y!F I said I was "sedentary" and had many workouts of answering "no sweat!" to Maya's "How hard was that?" queries before it got difficult enough to be interesting. This time around I said I was "moderately active" and the difficulty of my half-hour workouts was just about right from day one.

Speaking of overcoming inertia, jumping into things, and things being all downhill, I might have found a new real-world hobby:

(that's me with Connie of BayAreaSkydiving.)

Real World Games: Be Mario, PacManhattan

2006-06-05T10:46:00.000-07:00

Wired has an article about another "jump like in a video game" project:

The Nintendo Amusement Park is a project by three New York University students who want to create a life-size obstacle course based on Super Mario Bros. that lets players strap into a bungee system to jump 12 feet in the air, smash Goombas, collect coins and snag magic mushrooms, just like in the classic video game.

They are currently in open beta, so if you are in the New York area you can sign up to try it. Looks like fun!

PacManhattan is a project to play PacMan in the real world, running around city streets with position-sensing equipment.

(Both of these games come from NYU's Big Games lecture class)

Playing video games makes surgery safer!

2006-05-26T15:54:00.000-07:00

A new study finds surgeons make fewer mistakes if they play videogames on the job prior to an operation.

Surgeons who warmed up by playing video games like "Super Monkey Ball" for 20 minutes immediately prior to performing surgical drills were faster and made fewer errors than those who did not, said Dr. James "Butch" Rosser, lead investigator on the study slated for release on Wednesday.

The research involved 303 surgeons participating in a medical training course that included video games and was focused on laparoscopic surgical procedures -- which use a tiny video camera and long, slender instruments inserted through small incisions. The study was conducted by Beth Israel Medical Center in New York City in conjunction with the National Institute on Media and the Family.

I say it's high time we had a policy of regular on-the-job videogame breaks for all professionals. Maybe start with doctors, firemen, pilots, bus drivers, and police officers...

Powerisers - Jump Like a Videogame Character in Real Life

2006-05-08T19:31:00.000-07:00

Characters in videogames often have unlikely jumping abilities. From Donkey Kong and Street Fighter up through modern 1st-person shooters, we expect there to be a "jump" button. If you've got one, your onscreen character can hop all over the place without ever seeming to tire. But what about real life? Check out this commercial to see what life would be like if everybody wore Powerisers.

One professional acrobat put some amazing videos online showing flips and spins, even a double somersault.

Then there's leaping over a truck...

I went bounding around town on my Powerisers yesterday for the first time this year - it's amazing how many smiling people you meet when doing something that silly. It's even more amazing how sore I am today - especially my hip flexors. It works an entirely different set of muscles than running or rollerblading.

Great goofy fun.

Kung-fu computer game delivers real kicks

2006-05-02T14:55:00.000-07:00

Today's New Scientist describes a great new exercise game in development:

Kick Ass Kung Fu lets players fight onscreen enemies using real kicks, punches, head-butts or by wielding any improvised weapon they choose. A video camera captures their movements from one side and superimposes a two-dimensional silhouette of them onto a computer screen. A computer then translates the silhouette's moves into real-time computerised kicks and punches, enabling a player to take on virtual opponents.

So it's like Eyetoy:Kinetic but even more directly interactive. The current version requires a large space but they are working to commercialize the same technology in a home version.

The main website for the product is kickasskungfu.net, where they say:

Kick Ass Kung-Fu is an immersive game installation that transforms computer gaming into a visual, physical performance like dance or sports. You can fight and defy gravity like kung-fu movie actors - only there's no wires or post-production needed, thanks to the real-time embodied interaction and virtual set technology.[...]
The game takes place on a 5 meter cushioned playfield suitable for martial arts and acrobatics training. Using custom computer vision technology, you are taken inside an artificial reality where the normal laws of physics no longer apply. Your movements are exaggerated so that you can easily dodge your opponent's bullets by jumping five meters in the air and landing behind his back. Using the dual projected screens, one at each end of the playfield, you can also continue by counter-attacking your stupefied enemy from the behind.

I can't wait to try this game. Check out the video!

(hat tip: "Andrea")

Trampoline Simon

2006-04-28T15:58:00.000-07:00

Also seen at the Maker Faire: a project to play Simon by jumping on mini-trampolines. Sadly, I didn't get a chance to try it - by the time I noticed this one the faire was winding down. But it looked like fun. And a heckuva lot cheaper to construct and store than, say, a VirtuSphere.

Trampoline Simon video (youtube)

Playdocam: Webcam Games in Your Browser

2006-04-28T01:48:00.000-07:00

Got a webcam? Got Flash installed? A technology demo called Playdocam lets you play pong or basketball on your Mac or PC without installing any new software by the interface mechanism of waving your hands in the air. It's not terribly aerobic -- no substitute for Eyetoy:Kinetic -- but hey, you can't beat the price or convenience.

Build Your Own Video Game Exerciser!

2006-04-26T22:31:00.000-07:00

Suppose you already have an exercise bike and would like to use it as a PS2 controller to play racing games. One option is do it yourself: get the parts from Radio Shack and build a small circuit board that connects the components.

That was Bill Pfeil's project at the Maker Faire in San Mateo last week, and it worked quite well. I got to see a standard recumbent exercise bike being used to play Crazy Taxi. Bill writes:

Build your own exercise fitness bike video game controller for less than $20 in electronics! All parts are available from your local RadioShack(tm).
Here is what you should already have: A PlayStation 2, a Pelican TT Cobra racing wheel for PS2 (around $20 at Fry's Electronics), and an exercise bike (or other fitness equipment). The exercise bike needs to have a speed/distance monitor. If it has this monitor, it should have the motion sensor we need already built in.

Full details, including a larger circuit diagram, are here. Good luck!

UPDATE: in the comments, Kevin notes that GameCycles (which usually has an ad on this page - go click it, you know you want to...) sells a prebuilt solution to the same problem. The NeoRacer PS1/PS2 Game Controller sells fully assembled (apart from providing the input source) for $35. For those who don't want to assemble their own circuit board.

The Shangri-La Diet - Lose Weight Without Hunger While Eating Whatever You Want

2006-04-20T01:30:00.000-07:00

The rules are:

Consume 100-400 calories of sugar water and/or flavorless edible oil daily.
Consume the sugar water and/or oil before or well after meals - at least an hour away.

Strangely enough, this dramatically reduces hunger, making it easy to lose weight. Under the influence of this regime, you are less hungry, you think about food less often, and when do eat you feel full faster. So it's easy to eat less and even skip meals now and then.

Seth Roberts is the inventor of this diet, which he describes in a just-released book called The Shangri-La Diet (amazon link). I received an advance copy of the book.

Does the diet work? Yes. As far as I can tell, it works just as advertised. And the book has all the specific instructions, tips, caveats, explanations, and related ideas you might need to try it out for yourself.

I'm still not sure I believe Seth's explanation for why it works, but that it does work is clear.

What's the rationale? Seth thinks of hunger as an addiction mechanism - a Pavlovian response to the connection between taste and calories. According to Seth, the most fattening foods have these characteristics:

a strong taste
quickly accessible calories
consistent taste - the same every time
familiarity - you've had it many times

Foods that satisfy all those criteria are fattening, not merely because they have calories but because they reinforce the addiction - you eat, are satisfied, and are prone to repeat the experience.

According to the theory, foods with weak or no taste fail to reinforce your tendency to get hungry and thereby lower your set-point so you can get thin.

So lately I've been taking about 300 calories of sugar water (20 sugar cubes dissolved in a liter of water) daily and an occasional tablespoon of extra-light olive oil at bedtime. This makes it easy to reduce snacking and eat smaller and/or fewer meals. Augmenting "less food" with my usual videogame exercise regime (In The Groove is my main exercise this week), I have been steadily losing weight and reducing my bodyfat percentage.

If you're having trouble losing weight, I highly recommend getting the book and trying it out. I am a satisfied customer.

Links:

Shangri-La Diet (amazon)

Welcome, North Carolinians!

2006-04-13T10:38:00.000-07:00

North Carolina's News & Observer (serving "Raleigh, Durham, Cary, and Chapel Hill") just reprinted the New York Times article on virtual trainers. My picture was even more prominently featured, which I have mixed feelings about...

Article: Trainer Never Sweats

Any other sightings?

Fight Exercise Boredom With Podcasts!

2006-03-31T01:17:00.000-08:00

Yourself!Fitness is certainly the most effective videogame workout I've found. There is a lot of variety, it uses time effectively, it's easy and it covers just about every type of exercise you need. But...it can get a little boring. Much of the problem is that it's not really a game so you're not being challenged to win or beat a high score. At first there's the challenge of learning all the new exercises and improving your Physical Challenge scores and unlocking new areas, but now that I'm coming up on 70 workouts that sort of stuff has tapered off. The novelty has worn as well, and the cheesy MIDI songs were already annoying after the first week.

I love my regular 45-minute workouts, but I was starting to feel unproductive doing them. So as of today I've hit on a new strategy: Podcasts!

Now that I know all the exercises down cold, I don't really need to hear Maya's description or the music to play along. So I tried turning down the sound and playing other music, music I actually like, but it's distracting to exercise when the beat of the music isn't the same as the rhythm Maya is following. What I can do, though, is listen to podcasts. Whether it's instructional or just for fun, a good spoken program distracts me from the exercise and makes me feel more productive - stimulating the brain as well as the body. So I turn the TV volume way down, turn my computer volume up, watch Maya, and do my exercises while I listen to, say, the Penn Jillette talk radio show downloaded via iTunes. It's a great combination!

So, what do you do to keep workouts interesting?

Maya is Victorious!

2006-03-28T01:39:00.000-08:00

At the end of each exercise segment Maya asks "how was that?" Possible answers:

"No sweat!"
"I was working hard."
"I couldn't keep up!"

In the early days of using Yourself!Fitness - the honeymoon period - workouts were easy. It took quite a few "no sweat!" responses before they became uniformly challenging. But having reached that point - having improved my conditoning and tailored the workouts to match over the course of 50 sessions - I slacked off a bit. Forsaking Maya, I flirted with Kinetic's Anna and DDR and even - gasp! - not actually exercising.

When I returned to Maya, she did not forget being slighted - she is a (virtual) woman scorned! What's that, you say? No, it couldn't be that I got flabby and lazy. No, I'm convinced Maya made the exercises harder, on purpose, out of spite.

Tonight's "Core" workout kicked my ass. Crunches? Bring 'em on! Squat/Lunge Combo? No problem. But then the loooong Plank Twist, the Leg Raises, the V-Ups and finally three Bicycles in a row clinched it: I'm out of my depth.

Help! I couldn't keep up!

Maya took pity on me and agreed to make it easier next time. She's so forgiving.

Amazing Breast Penetration!

2006-03-27T00:52:00.000-08:00

In the New York Times article on virtual trainers I mentioned a glitch in Yourself!Fitness: sometimes a weight passes through Maya's breast rather than in front of it. At the time of the interview I couldn't remember which exercise it was that had that, um, feature. Could I have imagined it? Nope, it just came up again tonight. So for the record, it is:

Upright Rows (15) (with hand weights)

On the upward movement of the row, the left weight and her left hand pass through Maya's left breast. As glitches go, it's amusing.

So let's hear it for sloppy motion capture!

[kermit voice]Yaaaaaaaay![/kermit]

Video Game Brain Therapy

2006-03-20T09:14:00.000-08:00

More on using videogames to exercise the mind. Here's the recent CNET story:

Doctors pronounced Ethan Myers brain dead after a car accident dealt the 9-year-old a severe brain injury in 2002. After he miraculously awoke from a nearly month-long coma, doctors declared he would never again eat on his own, walk or talk.

Yet, thanks partly to a video game system, Myers has caught up with his peers in school and even read a speech to a large group of students.

"I'm doing the exact same things as them. I'm getting buddies and stuff," said Myers, who had relearned to walk and was reading at a second-grade level before his video game therapy began in May 2004.
[...]
CyberLearning's Smart BrainGames system, which Myers still uses, targets symptoms arising from brain injuries, attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and learning disabilities.

Priced at $584, the system is built on NASA technology that used video games and neurofeedback to train pilots to stay alert during long flights and calm during emergencies. It is compatible with Sony's PlayStation 1 and 2 consoles as well as Microsoft's Xbox, which video game-crazed kids are quite familiar with.

Users wear a helmet with built-in sensors to measure brain waves. That data is relayed to a neurofeedback system that affects the game controller.

Car racing games work best with the system, which rewards users by telling the controller to allow them to go fast and steer with control, doctors said. When patients' brain waves aren't in "the zone" the controller makes it harder to accelerate and steer.

Families generally pay $2,000 to $2,500 for a six-month supervised program with one of CyberLearning's 55 licensed health professionals trained on the Smart BrainGames system.

Read the whole thing.

The software Ethan used can be purchased at smartbraingames.com where they say:

Imagine playing a race car game. You are racing in time trials or against other players. As you improve your focus, your car goes faster. If your focus wanders you lose ground to the other racers. Your brain is the accelerator, your calmness the steering.

Using patented NASA technology, S.M.A.R.T. BrainGames provides the only true fun, interactive training experience in neurofeedback. Neurofeedback is just like exercise, the more you do it the more you benefit. Although many people recognize the benefits of exercise, too few exercise regularly because it is more chore than fun.

That certainly sounds familiar!

Can I Play Games With CSAFE?

2006-03-17T17:01:00.000-08:00

Q: "My new Precor elliptical machine has a CSAFE interface. Are there any games that can utilize this interface? What is it used for?"

A: CSAFE (Communication Specification for Fitness Equipment) enables many cardio machines to be part of a local area network. This is useful in a commercial gym setting but isn't used much at home. I don't know of any games that use it.

CSAFE includes stereo audio input signals, so a gym can use CSAFE to send music or TV audio to each exercise machine. (see also: Cardio Theater)

CSAFE also sends and receives status and configuration info so you can control the machine or track exercise in a more sophisticated way than made possible with the built-in controls. This seems to be what FitLinxx invented it for:

FitLinxx is a computerized system that attaches directly to existing fitness equipment, adding an extraordinary “intelligent” dimension to the workout experience for the first time.
FitLinxx “learns” users' programs, “coaches” them individually through their workout for better form, safety and confidence during every exercise, and “tracks” their progress over time.

On strength equipment, FitLinxx appears as an easy-to-read touch-screen display that's attached to the machine. For cardiovascular equipment, each machine's existing console is simply networked to FitLinxx. Users simply tap in their PIN to display their targets - FitLinxx then coaches them on speed, form, heart rate, etc., and tracks the workout session - every rep, set and step.

Behind the scenes, all the exercise machines are networked into a central database, providing exercisers and staff access to a wealth of information on individual progress and a unique set of motivational tools. The system can be accessed on workout-floor kiosks, at the staff computer station, or anytime/anywhere on the web.

As for an interface that lets you use CSAFE as a game controller, Ian Holmes has thought about it but I'm not aware of anyone yet selling such a system. You can get all sorts of pedal controllers to drive games, but none use CSAFE. Perhaps Ian and I should start a company to make one. (I'm sure GameCycles.com would be happy to sell it!)

What's Your Toughest Maya Exercise?

2006-03-15T01:00:00.000-08:00

I nominate these:

Legs: One-leg Bridge on Stability Ball
Arms: Pushup with Stability Ball
Balance: Half Moon
Abs: V-ups

How about you?

Yourself!Fitness Lifestyle

2006-03-12T01:47:00.000-08:00

The sequel to Yourself!Fitness will be called Yourself!Fitness Lifestyle. This Gamasutra interview gives a lot of info about Y!F, a little info about the sequel and a few early screenshots.

"We're going to be addressing a lot of the concerns of our userbase," said Leighton. "We're really going to get down into the science of fitness, so we can track a lot more variables, and have Maya respond in a more intelligent way, in terms of how your fitness program should progress."

"Customizable music was our biggest criticism," he continued. "We had I think 75 different songs in the first game, and after using it for 3-4 months, people were like, "I've heard these songs way too many times, I don't want to hear them anymore." "Overall, though the feedback that we've gotten has been overwhelmingly positive. People write in and say "This program has changed my life," and that's enormously satisfying. Doing something that has a positive impact is great."

The sequel should be out by this Christmas.

"Beat PMS With Calcium!" Uh, Thanks...

2006-03-12T01:26:00.000-08:00

When starting and ending a workout, Yourself!Fitness shows a variety of general health tips from "Prevention Magazine". The program knows the gender of the user - it's part of your profile - but doesn't care to screen out the tips that don't fit.

Thus, today's tip was about how to "Beat PMS with Calcium!"

My previous favorite inappropriate tip was:

"Exercise with weights won't make you bulk up! Women don't have enough of male hormones such as testosterone to produce large muscles."

Incidentally, if you want to discuss Yourself!Fitness in depth, there is an official discussion forum with a great many tips, rants, and support suggestions.

Iportion Interview

2006-03-08T03:13:00.000-08:00

Valerie Hardin of the fitness blog iportion.com interviewed me for a personal profile; the resulting posting is here.

On the flipside, that NYT feature on exercise games seems to have finally disappeared behind the firewall, ending my latest 15 minutes of fame. In case you missed it, here is a temporary mirror of the main article and the sidebar.

Yourself!Fitness Annoyances

2006-03-07T08:20:00.000-08:00

I was able to resume where I left off 12 weeks ago without much difficulty. A few Maya annoyances:

Audio glitches - music and voice will suddenly cut out and go silent for ten seconds or more while switching tracks. This happens just about every workout.
Missing the beat - Maya will slow down for no obvious reason and get off the beat that was previously established. Sometimes she'll catch up later, sometimes not. If she catches up, it might be to the wrong beat, such that she and I went from perfectly in sync to perfectly out of snyc.
Mistimed verbal cues - She'll often say "and...done!" when the exercise is nowhere near done. Any long sequence such as the Bicep Combo tends to suffer from this - she'll announce it's over as the last "rep" in the set begins, no matter how long it might take to finish.

One nice thing I didn't notice last time around is how much stretching Maya does. She actually does quite a bit if you include movement during the rest periods between sets. Stretching at the end is perfunctory, but the overall situation is fine.

Eyetoy:Kinetic Week 12 - DONE!

2006-03-03T02:13:00.000-08:00

I just finished the full 12-week EyeToy:Kinetic training course. Phew!

How'd I do? I mastered most of the games on medium difficulty and some on hard difficulty. Physically, my legs are in fine shape from all those squats and lunges during the warmups and from playing Protector. My cardio fitness is good due to surviving Pulsate, my shoulder flexibility is good from playing Arcburst, and my balance is excellent from playing Equilibrium.

However, I've lost a little muscle tone (compared to my prior exercise regimen) in my mid and upper body. This is largely because I stopped doing the "optional" segments. As my training progressed the main game portion got longer and more intense and I started to feel like I had neither the time nor the energy left to do a full toning segment. The Kinetic toning segments are so hard as to be daunting - they go on for quite a while doing substantially similar exercises in sequence with minor variations and little rest time. I'd prefer to do a couple of sets in one area, move on to something else, then come back to it. Rather than start a workout segment I know I'd have to bail out of, I just skip right to stretches.

I think it would be more motivational if:

The segments had staged difficulty - started out easy (ie, short) and increased on subsequent workouts
The trainer "recommended" a specific segment for each day rather than leaving it totally up to me. ("None" would still be an option, but it wouldn't seem like the default choice.)
I knew in advance how long my day's workout was expected to take.
I had the ability to commit myself to an "optional" segment at the beginning of my workout (when I am optimistic) rather than at the end (when I am tired).

Anyway, it's been a lot of fun, even with the occasional frustration.

Anna, my Kinetic trainer, recommends I immediately start a new course on the expert level, but I'll probably hold off a bit and use some other programs for a while.

In related (though not actually new) news, there is an official Eyetoy:Kinetic blog. They update at least weekly and talk about general fitness as well as that specific program.

Fixing Eyetoy:Kinetic Frustrations

2006-03-02T01:45:00.000-08:00

Eyetoy:Kinetic can be frustrating. Sometimes the game thinks you moved where you didn't - a false positive. Other times you can pass right through a target without triggering it - a false negative. What to do about this?

First, make sure you've got lots of indirect light. The camera needs extra light to see the scene clearly to reduce false negatives. But not just any light - you want indirect light. Light that bounces off walls is better than light that's aimed straight at you from a point source. Why is indirect light better? Fewer shadows. Shadows are a big source of unfair false positives. I play Reactivate, move my arm, my arm's shadow on the couch behind me touches a wrong button, I lose that round. So adjust lights such that they cast weaker shadows or just play in the daytime - sunlight beats most artificial light at filling a room.

Next, look for reflective surfaces. Is there a brass lamp in the scene? A bit of tinfoil? Anything shiny? These will be a source of false positives because the shiny surface will reflect changes on your TV screen and other movement in the room. Remove or cover all reflective surfaces in the field of view.

Now are you still getting false negatives? Suppose you wave your hands and it doesn't trigger. It might be a timing issue - perhaps you didn't wait long enough for the target to activate - but often the problem is that there isn't enough contrast between the tone of your hands and the background they are moving against. You can increase the contrast by changing the background - hang a drapecloth - or by changing the foreground - wear brightly patterned gloves. If you don't have suitable gloves handy try putting socks over each hand. Any color will do. (In between games, wave your hands around and look at the patterns generated to verify that your new polka-dot socks have a bigger "footprint" than your bare hands.)

(Wearing socks or gloves works poorly for Arcburst because it requires clapping; you can't make much noise clapping while wearing socks. You could, however, shout "Clap!" to augment the sound to trigger success. Or wait for sunshine.)

If you have particular games you know you can't do well at given the current lighting conditions, hit the "shuffle" key to change up the game list before you start your workout to avoid your problem game.

Lastly, watch the tutorial carefully for each game - you might be doing something wrong - and keep in mind that faster is not always better - for both Arcburst and Pulsate if you touch the target too soon it won't trigger and you will lose points for missing it. So hold back a little.

Do you have other tips, tricks or complaints about Kinetic? Leave a comment!

Qmotions Motion Sports Controllers

2006-03-01T08:30:00.000-08:00

Qmotions - best known for their golf controller - looks to be working on some interesting new projects:

Qmotions-XBoard: No wax needed. Compatible with current surfing, skateboarding, snowboarding and even windsurfing video games, the board plugs in to existing game consoles to enhance video gameplay, provide a lifelike board-sport experience and offer a unique avenue for at-home fitness. Available: Spring 2006 for under $100.
Qmotions-Fun Fitness: Race to victory -- and health. A brand new device that converts recumbent bikes into video game machines, Qmotions-Fun Fitness is compatible with auto racing and jet ski games and existing game consoles. Gamers and cyclists control the speed of their video game vehicle by pedaling their recumbent bike. Other game commands are handled through a complementary Qmotions controller. Available: Spring 2006 for under $100.
Qmotions-Baseball: Batter up. Qmotions- Baseball delivers actual "full motion" player participation in popular Windows and console based video games. Players step up to the plate with the Batter-Up sleeve equipped bat and swing: full swing batting, bunting, pull, up-the-middle, and opposite field hitting. Available: Now for $149 MSRB.

These were all apparently shown in New York at last month's American International Toy Fair. Alas, I can't seem to find pictures or reviews of the XBoard or the Fun Fitness. Has anyone else tried these yet?

UPDATE: I found a review:

Fun Fitness is a fairly simple device; attach it to pretty much any recumbent exercise bike, patch the cords into your Xbox console, and suddenly, the faster you pedal on your bike, the faster your video game car or jet ski goes on the screen. You may feel a little like a hamster on a wheel after a while, but QMotions-Fun Fitness is a great way to kill two birds with one stone.

The Xboard is more like QMotions-Golf; it's an interactive simulation device that's designed to act like a real skateboard or surfboard. I hadn't really seen anything like QMotions' sports simulators outside of an ESPN Zone - and I love ESPN Zones.[...]

So I gave the Xboard a whirl on the Xbox game Amped 2 (at least, I think it was). I quickly realized that A) I was way out of practice when it came to skateboarding, and B) the Xboard was a little small for my size 15 feet. I gave it my best, and it actually was a quite a bit of fun. Just like the Exer-station, the Xboard boasts amazing sensitivity and fairly quick reaction times, which made me feel like I had accurate control over the game. Of course, it took a while to get the hang of controlling the board, and I stumbled quite a bit (both in real life and on screen) before I could really enjoy working the Xboard. But even when I crashed, the Xboard delivered a much more authentic experience for the game - without the head injuries and broken bones, of course.

Workout More Than Just Your Thumbs

2006-02-28T20:51:00.000-08:00

Killer Betties, a gaming magazine for women, has a good feature article on videogame fitness:

You don't need a gym membership and barbells to get a good workout anymore. With today's videogame technology, it is surprisingly easy to workout, lose weight, and have fun while doing it all. Yes, the holy trinity of keeping fit can be easily accomplished by playing videogames.

The article goes through the full history of the genre, all the way from the original Nintendo Power Pad through today's range of more sophisticated options.

With enough exercise, perhaps one day we'll all be as happy as this family...

Exercise Makes You Smarter Too!

2006-02-27T21:17:00.000-08:00

From the latest article in Science News Online:

New research suggests that physical exercise encourages healthy brains to function at their optimum levels. Fitness prompts nerve cells to multiply, strengthens their connections, and protects them from harm. Benefits seem to extend to brains and nerves that are diseased or damaged. These findings could suggest new treatments for people with Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease, and spinal cord injuries.
[...]
Preliminary studies indicated that when lab animals exercise, their nerve cells release chemicals called neurotrophic factors. These proteins buffer nerve cells against illness or injury, prompt them to grow and multiply, and strengthen each neuron's connection with other nerve cells.
[...]
Furthermore, memory tests given to 1,740 people over 65 during a 6-year project have linked moderate exercise to reduced risk of dementia. These results were published in the Jan. 17 Annals of Internal Medicine by a Seattle research team.

Right! So no more excuses - let's get those videogames out and start exercising! We need to take a break from our computers anyway. I'll start; I'm booting up Kinetic right now.

You can read the rest when you come back.

Yourself!Fitness in a Few Words

2006-02-25T12:44:00.000-08:00

Maya knows and can effortlessly demonstrate basic aerobics, step routines, yoga, stability ball exercises, hand weight exercises, and a few stretches. She is also occasionally funny, including self-referential jabs.

She pays no attention to current events, is a poor conversationalist, and couldn't do a math problem to save her life. But in her limited domain, she is a true master. She's not human, but she's human enough for the task at hand.

I was getting into great shape when I was doing workouts with Maya full-time. I've backslid a bit in the months since I switched to Kinetic - it's fun but doesn't do as thorough a job for me - so I'll switch back to Y!F in another week or so.

NeoRacer and Island Worlds

2006-02-24T01:01:00.000-08:00

The NeoRacer pedal controller has been upgraded since my previous roundup and now can interact with just about anything: Xbox, GameCube, Playstation, PS2 or PC.

What is it? A compact, portable exercise bike controller (with adjustable magnetic resistance) which you can use to control forward motion in your favorite videogame while you use a standard joystick to control everything else.

In addition to letting you play games such as Crazy Taxi, what else can you do with this sort of controller? 3D Innovations is developing a "cyber-fitness" PC application called Island Worlds. Ahem:

Island Worlds is a cyber-fitness software application that runs on your PC. With Island Worlds you can
Explore 3D worlds alone using a stationary bike, treadmill, stair-stepper or any other form of stationary fitness equipment.
Explore worlds with others over the internet. This requires interactive fitness equipment. Presently the NeoRacer, GameBike, GameBike Pro and Recumbent GameBike Pro interact with Island Worlds. The GameRunner will be supported in the near future.
Directly speak with your cyber fitness partners using voice chat.
Create and customize your own worlds in minutes using our World Editor.
Add your own music to your worlds.

The initial screenshots don't wow me but it's still in beta and they seem to be hoping for a flood of user-generated content to make the space compelling. Good luck with that. Meanwhile, you can get the controller here for $209.

(Or $129 if you don't need to control a videogame and just want to use it as a standalone exercise bike, but where's the fun in that?)

UPDATE: I overstated the price; Fixed.

Videogame Workout Q&A

2006-02-23T08:05:00.000-08:00

Q: What is this site about?

A: Getting in shape by playing videogames.

Q: Why?

A: Going to the gym is inconvenient and kind of boring. Playing videogames is fun and easy and (if it's at home) extremely convenient. You don't have to get dressed or travel anywhere. Just turn on the TV and game machine whenever you're free.

Q: How does one use videogames to get fit?

A: In the arcades, play movement-oriented games such as Dance Dance Revolution and MoCap Boxing. At home, you can (a) purchase special controllers to play movement-oriented games, (b) purchase controllers that force you to exercise while playing traditional games, or (c) if you want a more rigorous fitness experience, buy a fitness program. There are two major comprehensive fitness programs for home machines: Yourself!Fitness (for PC, PS2, and XBox) and EyeToy:Kinetic (for PS2).

Q: What if I want to get fit using videogame technology, but I don't own or want to buy a modern game console?

A#1: Do you have a PC? Get the version of Yourself!Fitness that runs on Windows PCs.

A#2: Would you be willing to buy a console if it were smaller and cheaper than a PS2 or XBox and could ONLY be used to play games that are exercise oriented? Get a XaviX console and start with the Jackie Chan Fitness J-Mat.

A#3: The cheapest option would be to find a used original Playstation and an old copy of DDR Konamix or DDR USA. you'd still need to buy the soft pad, though.

Q: I already have some (non-movement) games I like to play. Can I get a controller that makes playing them into a workout?

A: Sure. You can make forward movement in your game a lower-body workout with a pedal controller such as NeoRacer or with a treadmill controller such as GameRunner. You can make moving your character around an upper-body workout with a Kilowatt strain-gauge controller.

Q: I already have a treadmill (or eliptic trainer, or exercise bike). Can I make it so I have to keep exercising or the game shuts off?

A: Yes, you can force yourself to keep your heartrate up as a condition of playing a game (or watching a movie, or watching TV) with an EnterTrainer controller.

Q: Which is better - Yourself!Fitness or EyeToy:Kinetic?

A: Better for what? Both are excellent, both can help keep you or get you fit, both can be addictive and both can be frustrating at times. Kinetic is more "game-like"; Yourself!Fitness is more like having a personal trainer lead you through a customized exercise video.

Q: What are some home motion games?

A: Dance Dance Revolution - many versions exist for every platform. EyeToy games for PS2 such as Play, Play2, and AntiGrav. Music games such as Taiko Drummer, Samba De Amigo, and Donkey Conga. Xavix games - golf, tennis, boxing, etcetera with positional controllers.

Q: What are some arcade motion games?

A: Dance Dance Revolution and its variants, Para Para Paradise and other arm-motion sensing games, Mocap Boxing, Police 911, Skiing and Stateboarding games, Drum Freaks, Heavy machinegun games like Gunblade, Firefighting games, sword-fighting games, and many more.

UPDATE: added some linkage. This is the start of an FAQ - I'll be building it out over time. Got a question? Ask in the comments!

NYT article on videogame exercise

2006-02-23T01:18:00.000-08:00

The New York Times article on videogame fitness trainers came out, and it's great! I don't know why I'm surprised any time newspaper articles are accurate, but everything there I had anything to do with is correct. The article covers Yourself!Fitness and Eyetoy:Kinetic in some detail, and I got to provide color commentary:

IT'S not every personal trainer who inspires a client to write poetry in her honor. But after a few weeks of training with doe-eyed Maya, Glen Raphael couldn't help but extol her virtues in verse: "Sweet Maya never sleeps or even tires/I rarely get a sense that she perspires."

Hey! I'm a published poet! Coool!

Posting such ardent poetry might be embarrassing — if Maya could actually read it.

Or...if an excerpt were published in newspapers around the world so everyone else could read it. That also might be embarrassing. [the full poem, cheesy as it is, may be found here.]

But Maya is not a real person; she is a computer-simulated woman designed to be an ideal trainer. "She's my personal trainer," said Mr. Raphael, 38, a software engineer in San Francisco. "She just happens to live in my television."

Yup! Read the whole thing.

[cross-posted with blogjack.net]

NYT article coming up...

2006-02-22T01:47:00.000-08:00

There should be a good feature article related to fitness videogames in the Style section of this Thursday's New York Times (2/23/06).

World Series of Video Games

2006-02-20T02:21:00.000-08:00

Games Media Properties today announced the first-ever World Series of Video Games international gaming competition, set to kick off in June 2006 in Louisville, Kentucky with four subsequent circuit events taking place throughout the year and culminating in a final event in December 2006. With $1 Million in cash prizing, the World Series of Video Games will combine PC and Xbox games to establish true world champions under standardized rules and procedures across a circuit of multiple tournaments. The 3-5 day events will be open to the public and will encompass 150,000 square feet of tournaments, exhibitions, concerts and other attractions. The World Series of Video Games is presented by Intel and sponsored by Xbox 360.

What a great idea! No word yet on whether or to what degree exercise games will be featured but it seems like only a matter of time. Dance Dance Revolution would be an obvious pick as it is one of the most entertaining games to watch and requires actual athleticism.

Arcade gyms - XRtainment and Energy Factory

2006-02-13T08:00:00.000-08:00

Traditional gyms have been slow to incorporate videogame-based exercise. Instead, what we're starting to see is a new kind of video arcade that features nothing but exercise games.

The Energy Factory in Tenafly, NJ is billed as an "indoor electronic fitness center for kids."

The brainchild of Alex Ehrlich, The Energy Factory is the first center of its kind in the country. Don't expect it to be the last.

Software engineers and game designers are the new warriors in the battle against childhood obesity and inactivity. The National Institutes of Health even is funding video-game research projects as part of its anti-obesity efforts.

The Hoover School, which does not have its own gymnasium, used a federal grant to pay for its visits to The Energy Factory. Grades 1 to 5 each stayed one hour, with seven minutes at every station.

Next up: The XRtainment Zone family fitness center is currently being built in Redlands, California.

“Exertainment” is a mix of entertainment and exercise. Exertainment games are fun and exciting, and will engage you in exercise by moving your entire body! Challenge yourself on XRtainment Zone’s games such as Makoto, 3Kick, EyeToy, DDR, GameBike, Jackie Chan Fitness Studio and more! XRtainment Zone makes exercising together fun; and when it’s fun, kids, parents and adults of all ages will be more successful in keeping fit.

Their blog hints at interesting things to come:

On this last day of January, we had our first big piece of equipment come in. It's called 3Kick, a machine where you stand inside 3 towers, kicking and punching the pads as they light up and beep. We can't wait to be able to put it together! Mark Alexander, the founder/inventor of this product, and his sister drove from Utah to deliver this to us.

UPDATE: The website for 3Kick turns out to be, naturally enough, http://www.3kick.com . The product looks like a great way to practice martial arts strikes at various angles:

Kinetic Week 11

2006-02-12T01:50:00.000-08:00

I'm in my tenth week of the 12-week EyeToy:Kinetic training course.

The good news is that the program really does live up to its billing. You are indeeed getting fit by playing video games. They cheat a little in that the "warm up" and "cool down" do some of the work, but by and large you're being told "today we'll play this set of games, here's how..." you play the games and at the end you've stretched, balanced, punched, kicked and ducked your way into a bit better shape.

Most of the games are forgiving enough that you can still do well and get a high score without playing perfectly. But a couple of the games are not sufficiently forgiving, and I find them infuriating. I've mostly figured out the problems and have some workarounds, but they don't work all that well.

The games I have the most trouble with are Arcburst and Reactivate. One is due to false negatives, the other false positives.

Arcburst requires your hand (or whatever) to traverse an arc of targets in a particular direction. If you miss one target and hit others, that's a penalty. But I often get false negatives, where my hand passes through the first target without triggering it. Sometimes there's a "dead area" on the screen, where no matter how I wave my hand over a trigger, the game misses it. In other games that have a false negative issue I figured out a cheap hack solution which is to put a pair of strongly-patterned socks over my hands. The socks give my hand greater contrast with the wall. Which would be fine except that Arcburst requires CLAPS as well as target hits, and you can't make a loud noise while wearing socks on your hands. The workaround for THAT is to shout "CLAP!" every time you clap your mittened hands.

Reactive requires you touch a specified list of targets in a specified order while avoiding all other targets. It's that "while avoiding" part I have trouble with; I hit so many wrong targets that sometimes I can't pass the first level. Diagnosis: At first I thought I was just being clumsy - which I certainly was - but gradually I realized my body wasn't anywhere near the mis-hit targets. It turns out it's THE SHADOWS. When I move my body, the light casts a shadow on the wall and sofa behind me, and that shadow can, on its own, trigger a bad hit.

I still don't have a solution for this except perhaps "get a darker-colored couch". Or perhaps "make the lighting more diffuse".

Video Games Make You Smarter Too?

2006-02-12T01:27:00.000-08:00

From a recent Globe and Mail article:

A new study of 100 university undergraduates in Toronto has found that video gamers consistently outperform their non-playing peers in a series of tricky mental tests. If they also happened to be bilingual, they were unbeatable.

"The people who were video game players were better and faster performers," said psychologist Ellen Bialystok, a research professor at York University. "Those who were bilingual and video game addicts scored best -- particularly at the most difficult tasks."

The York study, which tested subjects' responses to various misleading visual cues, is to be published next month in the Canadian Journal of Experimental Psychology. Three other studies published in the past two years have also concluded that action video games can lead to mental gains involving visual skills and short-term memory.

So videogames can make you smarter as well as - as we all know - more physically fit. Cool! Where was this knowledge when I was growing up? That's it; I must be officially "old". I have an irresistible urge to say "the kids these days have it easy! Why, when I was in grade school they thought video games were a waste of time..."

So let me get this straight: Dance Dance Revolution is part of physical education in the schools, adults are buying Nintendo DS to run brain training software, and the media claims videogames make you smart. It's not a bad world to live in. I think I'll keep it.

Harness the Energy of Exercise?

2006-02-07T21:26:00.000-08:00

Notions of Expenditure is devoted to proposals to harness the energy expended in exercise. Yesterday's Wired article sets the stage:

Back in the 19th century, researchers studied prisoners at Bellevue Prison in New York as they walked on a treadmill as punishment. They produced about 100 watts each, with the energy used to grind grain to make bread for the prisoners, said Steve Vogel, professor of biology at Duke University.

"Apparently they hated it roundly," he said. Now, of course, people pay good money to do the same thing -- and use up electricity in the process.

Okay, so NoE is more of an odd art project than anything serious - but the proposals are amusing and a couple are even practical. Raj Pandian's entry includes a plausible model to support the claim that

When large numbers of children play on equipment such as a teetertotter, swing, or merry-go-round, part of the energy of their play can be converted into energy to power low-power equipment such as lights, fans, etcetera.

So let's think about this. Treadmill-walking and riding an exercise bike is easy, but how could, say, stepping on a DDR pad be made to perform useful work? Ideas? Anyone? Bueller?

Gamespot's Top Ten Rhythm Games

2006-01-30T10:41:00.000-08:00

Gamespot has a feature article on what they consider the top ten rhythm games. The most exercise oriented on their list are Dance Dance Revolution 3rd Mix (dancing) and Samba De Amigo (shaking maracas). DDR is of course number one:

Something should be said about the emergence of DDR as a whole, since the game has come to typify everything that the rhythm genre offers. There's a peripheral, there's a variety of songs, and there's a difficulty level that ranges from simple to impossibly hard. While the game holds great appeal for small (yet coordinated) children, it also provides challenge to the fiercest competitors, and this wide range of appeal has helped it to breathe its life into the dying arcade scene in North America.

The article ends with a Reader's Choice poll where you can select your favorite rhythm game from a ridiculous array of choices - or write in your own.

Still More CES Fitness

2006-01-28T09:59:00.000-08:00

Starling Fitness blogged CES extensively. Laura spotted products I missed and covered several I didn't in greater depth. Links, glorious links...

Konami and DDR "I expected a lot of noise and people playing. Instead, it was a small booth with two employees of Konami playing."

Powergrid Fitness "This is the first product from PowerGrid Fitness that I would be willing to shell out the bucks for."

Arcademx "wins my award for favorite product that I can’t buy yet."

Gamerunner "I hope they are successful and are able to create a product with a treadmill that looks a little more sturdy."

Jackie Chan J-mat "You run down the street, dodge things in your way and jump over barriers. Ninjas come at you and you need to step on them to get them to disappear. It’s not very realistic because the Jackie doesn’t run faster when you jump faster on the mat, but it got my heart rate higher than when I was playing in the Fitness Mode. I really wanted to beat up those ninjas."

Jackie Chan Powerboxing "I found it to be quite fun, but it wasn’t very aerobic."

Xavix Baseball "it’s not aerobic at all. I barely made it into the light intensity range, so this game is just for fun..."

Xavix Prototypes: Health & Fitness Manager, Stepper "Think Monkey Ball with a ferret and a stair stepper. That might give you an idea of what this game was like. "

Garmin GPS and heart-monitor "The Forerunner 305’s suggested retail price is $377, which is almost four times the cost of my Nike Imara."

Tacx and Intel "...it would be so cool if someone filmed video of roads and turned them into a game where you could ride your bike on famous bike courses. Tacx beat us to it and they have executed it well."

Tacx videos for your bike trainer "These DVDs might be a great compromise between true virtual reality and simulated reality."

Navman "It measures your speed, distance, and pace. It would work while running or on your bicycle."

Journey to the wild divine "Las Vegas Convention Center is the worst place on the planet to test meditation software."

Fitcentric "The software places you on a track with several other runners. You can try to catch up to the ones ahead of you or slow down and run at whatever pace you decide."

CES wrap-up "If a new toy will motivate you to exercise, then the investment is worth it."

Fighting Android FA1

2006-01-27T21:31:00.000-08:00

Among the many interesting robots featured at CES:

Self Defense Technologies, Inc. (SDT) has developed the world’s first “true” fighting android. Specifically, SDT’s invention is known as an electromechanical training apparatus or Fighting Android FA1. This android will revolutionize the training and conditioning of participants in boxing, martial arts and kick boxing along with providing both recreation and entertainment for the general public
[...]
Instructors and fitness center owners are in dire need of a means of demonstrating various punches, kicks and other contact techniques without risking injury to themselves or their students and patrons. Several devices that are basically padded dummies or wooden structures are available that reduce the risk of injury; yet, they are passive in nature. The user does not experience any real-life sparring opportunity since these devices are restrictive, immobile and noncompetitive. SDT’s fighting android provides an active means of training for martial arts, boxing and kick boxing; as well as, improving the general aerobic conditioning of recreational users.

Since it's a robot, you can hit it full-force without injuring it and it can punch back at you at full speed but stop the instant it makes contact so that - apart from your pride - you don't get injured. Read the whole thing.

CES Leftovers: Arcademx, Lightglove, Exerstation, Launchpad

2006-01-27T21:20:00.000-08:00

arcademx is coming out with wrist and foot position sensors that work with a DDR-style footpad for playing fighting games at home using physical movement. Kick to kick, punch to punch, step on the pad to move and jump. I played StreetFighter using the prototype and it was fun but frustrating. The control is kinda squishy and had a slight lag, so you probably wouldn't want to use this against somebody playing with a standard controller. This will probably retail for around $50.

The new smaller sit-down version of PowerGrid's Kilowatt is called the Exerstation and should be available in March for around $200.

The Lightglove seems like it might work well as a virtual gaming controller in concert with other devices such as treadmills.

The Golf launchpad is an impressive high-end controller for golf videogames. ps2/pc/mac; $200

West Virginia Schools Fight Obesity with DDR

2006-01-25T15:14:00.000-08:00

It's official: Dance Dance Revolution will soon be part of the physical education curriculum in West Virginia.

State and school officials have struck a partnership with Redwood City's Konami Digital Entertainment Inc. to use its Dance Dance Revolution in all of its 765 public schools, Konami announced today. The innovative plan, the first statewide program to employ the dance video game, is intended to attack West Virginia's youth obesity problem.

Dance Dance Revolution, a favorite at arcades, has built up a solid following among youth and adults, who enjoy the game's fast pace, fun music and sweat-inducing challenges. In the game, players must dance on a large pad lined with sensors, timing their rapid steps carefully to the music and to video prompts on the screen. Since the game was introduced on American video consoles in 2001, Konami has sold 3 million units.

The program in West Virginia will roll out in the coming weeks at 103 middle schools and junior high schools and will reach the remaining schools by the end of the 2006-07 school year. The games, which will run on Microsoft Xboxes, will be incorporated into physical education curricula and after-school programs.

Together with a video game console, a television and rugged dance pad, the Dance Dance Revolution unit being purchased by West Virginia costs $740 each. Konami will take in about $30 for each game.

Power Your TV With Exercise

2006-01-16T17:10:00.000-08:00

Suppose you've got a traditional exercise machine - a treadmill, an exercise bike, a healthrider, a nordicTrack, whatever - which you like using to keep your heart rate up while watching TV or a DVD or playing videogames. Is there some cheap, convenient way to force yourself to keep exercising while you engage in more passive entertainments? Yup!

The Entertrainer simulates powering the TV with your own exercise. What is it? A universal remote control that interacts with a wireless heart monitor. Wear the heart monitor belt around your chest and set up the controller facing the TV; it will help you to stay in your target exercise zone. How? Work too hard and your TV volume gets too loud. Work too little and the volume drops. Stop working out entirely and the TV powers off. For a hundred bucks. Cool!

Videos about the product can be found here.

GameRunner Treadmill

2006-01-11T17:10:00.000-08:00

[My virtual trainer Anna seemed pretty angry that I missed two EyeToy:Kinetic workouts to attend CES. The first words out of her mouth: "Where WERE you last week!?!" Fortunately, she never stays angry for long. I'm sorry! I'll do better this week, I promise!]

In other CES news, Game Runner is an unpowered gaming treadmill with USB outputs that emulate a mouse/keyboard so you can play PC games with a treadmill controlling forward motion. I got to play a prototype.

Speed on the treadmill and speed in the game are only loosely coupled; what's happening under the hood is that when you walk it sends a stream of "move forward" keypresses as if you were tapping or holding down the up-arrow on a USB keybard. There's an upper limit on travel speed - if you run faster than that your character doesn't go faster. This is probably good from an exercise perspective - game controllers shouldn't encourage players to collapse of exhaustion to get a better score - but it does takes some getting used to. Walking backwards has no effect.

As for the other controls, it's like a motorcycle handlebar - push right or left for one axis of joystick motion, turn the handle for another axis. There are a bunch of buttons positioned for easy thumb axis and it seems like they haven't quite decided where all the buttons go or what they should look like. Overall, an interesting option.

GameRunner is expected to be available "in about three months" for $450.

UPDATE: A commenter tells me the "upper limit on travel speed" is imposed by the game, not the controller. Also, the correspondence between tread movement and game movement is adjustable - you could make it require more or less speed to max out whatever game you are playing depending on what shape you are in.

Jackie Chan Knows Fitness

2006-01-09T15:33:00.000-08:00

By now you've heard about Yourself!Fitness and Eyetoy:Kinetic and get the idea of a software-based personal trainer, but you're not yet convinced. You feel like something's missing, and find yourself asking "Why couldn't Jackie Chan be my personal fitness instructor?"

Glad you asked!

Jackie Chan wants to help you get in shape. The Jackie Chan Action J-Mat looks like a DDR pad but it only has four padded buttons and they are all in a single line. What can you do with four buttons? Walk or run in three locations - left, right, or center - do jumping jacks, and various other step patterns and rhythms. Use your mad stepping-on-a-big-button skillz to help Jackie Chan evade obstacles in the streets of Hong Kong or let Jackie lead you through a musical cardio fitness routine in a studio complete with goofy claps and hand motions.

The XavixPort console that plugs into your TV is $79; individual games (software carts with a custom controller ) go for between $49 and $89. Radio Shack sells the system or you can get it online at the Xavix store.

Another shipping Jackie Chan title is Power Boxing, which uses boxing gloves with a radio position sensor. Other Xavix games include tennis, table tennis, baseball, bowling, bass fishing, and golf.

UPDATE:
I just realized I left off my take on the whole thing. Which is: the Action J-Mat is fun! Goofy, exhausting fun. Sure, the graphics are primitive, the controller looks dorky, the box itself lacks charisma...but the game works on its own terms and will get your heartrate up in no time. The retro nature of the graphics and gameplay is part of the charm, and Jackie Chan's charisma somehow survives being pixelized and animated even to this ridiculous degree. If you want a little box to plug into your TV and help you get in shape by playing videogames, $170 for a Xavix console with a copy of J-Mat will get you there, and there are many other exercise-oriented games you can add to the system later on if you later get bored with it.

If you do buy a Xavix, be on the lookout for a followup product that will probably be called the Action J-Stick. It's a heavy stick you wave in the air to block ninja attacks while getting a good upper-body workout. I played the prototype at CES; the game is nowhere near ready to ship but what I saw and tried seemed pretty promising. When it's ready, you'll probably find more info at Jackie Chan Studio Fitness.

Off to Vegas Consumer Electronics Show

2006-01-05T15:01:00.000-08:00

There's apparently an area in the Sands Expo center called "Cardio Play Zone". I expect I'll have a lot to blog about when I get back.

Kinetic Week Four

2006-01-04T13:51:00.000-08:00

I'm now one month into my 12-week Eyetoy:Kinetic fitness program. The number of workouts per week varies - it started with three but seems to be upping the workout frequency along with the difficulty of the games therein. Now it wants 4 or 5 workouts per week. On the other hand, the Optional segments really are optional. If I leave them out and cut the warmup a bit short, I can get the full workout down to a half hour. The Optional segments are also hard, especially the upper body segment after a few arm-heavy game sessions.

There are a lot of good games, and the program doles them out gradually over time to maintain interest. "Arcburst" was new for this week:

A nice touch I hadn't noticed before is that Kinetic pays attention to your time of day and adjusts the natural light in the studio areas to match the likely level of daylight outside.

I'm coming around to like the consistency of the cooldown. When you do the same moves in the same order regularly, the whole sequence can be relaxing. Meditative. Reassuring.

Kinetic week three

2005-12-28T12:31:00.000-08:00

Still continuing my 12-week Eyetoy:Kinetic fitness program. Difficulty levels have increased since I was starting to get perfect scores on some of the games.

A full Kinetic workout takes about an hour. There doesn't seem to be a way to do more than one optional segment in a workout and it never remembers what segment you did last or what room you used last - the interface always resets to the first in the list.

You can always pause an Eyetoy game by holding your hand right over the camera lens. If you do this during a Kinetic workout, then select "continue", it skips the rest of the current segment rather than finishing it. This is annoying if you do it by accident while trying to aim the camera better.

It's very hard to do the "meditate" segment while being pestered by a cat. :-)

At full speed, the "Pulsate" game is exhausting!

It's difficult to get a good score in the games while using good form, moving gracefully, not overextending. It might be better to start at the beginner level even if you're capable of intermediate level.

Repeated dialog snippets gets old, especially during cool down. I wish the warmup and cool down sequences varied more and the trainers had a wider range of comments to make. That would make it feel more like having a personal trainer and less like watching an exercise video.

I like how high-resolution the trainers are and that you can see them breathing. The game designers made all the backgrounds static -- there's no camera movement, no passing birds or helicopters, nothing of that sort -- in order to focus more polygons on the trainers.

The training program wants you to work out three times a week. If you miss one, you get a failing letter grade for that workout, but you can still get a decent overall grade for the week if you do well on the other two.

I work out standing 6-7 feet from the camera. This works for most of the games, but I have to adjust the camera angle downward to see myself for the floor routines.

Eyetoy Kinetic

2005-12-08T12:21:00.000-08:00

I finally received a copy of Kinetic. First impression time!

The trainers have strong personalities - much less generic than Maya. I like that "Anna", my Kinetic trainer, has a british accent, slightly messy hair, and a lot of vocal enthusiasm. The backgrounds and the trainers are well-rendered, have strong useful shadows, and the camera views make it clear what they are doing most of the time. The post-workout stretching is fantastic - very comprehensive. I like that the workout is divided into a mandatory minimum set and optional extra components, so you can do more or less depending on how you feel towards the end of the main segment. I like the games - the idea that my workout has a "score" and a "grade" associated with it. Being able to compare a video of myself to a video of a trainer is useful, if occasionally depressing. :-)

You don't have enough control over scheduling. For instance, my training program has a session scheduled for Sat/Sun. If I'm going away for the weekend I may not be able to make that, but there's no obvious way to tell it to shift those sessions earlier or later. There's no way to tell how long any exercise segment (or the entire set) is likely to last. The EyeToy interface for entering personal data is terrible; they should give up on the eyetoy and have the user enter a name, weight, or whatever using the standard controller.

The eyetoy control can be sloppy and inaccurate and it's a pain to get the camera aimed properly but so far the games seem to be forgiving enough that it doesn't matter all that much.

So far, I am favorably impressed. I'm going to put Maya on hold and try my recommended EyeToy:Kinetic "12 week fitness plan" for a while and see how it feels.

For the Gamer Who Has Everything: VirtuSphere

2005-11-29T17:15:00.000-08:00

Are you addicted to Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games? Would you like to get in shape with a setup such that walking in the real world causes your virtual character to walk in the simulated world? Is money no object? What you need is a VirtuSphere:

"The device consists of a large hollow sphere, which is placed on a special platform that allows the sphere to rotate in any direction as the user walks within the sphere.

The user enters the sphere with a head mounted display, which permits virtual vision in any direction. As the user moves, the sensors under the sphere transmit information about the users speed and direction to the computer. The user looks at the head mounted display and sees a virtual three dimensional space which is generated by the computer in response to his-or-her movements. The user can interact with objects in virtual space with the help of a special manipulator."

Perfect! Great! Now all I need to try it out is a room with a 9-foot tall ceiling, and, well, a spare hundred thousand dollars ($100,000).

Hmm.

Maybe if I added a paypal donation link?

And Now, a Poem!

2005-11-03T13:00:00.000-08:00

"V-Step on the bench!"
She says, and I comply;
I really don't know why it couldn't wait,
Yet still we finish to a count of eight.
Then roll, or stretch, or sprawl across the floor
To start again: two sets, and then one more!

"Side Plank Right!"
She asks, and so we try
To stretch our left-hand fingers to the sky.
Once right-hand wrists and elbows barely hold,
I let her lead us on to Forward Fold.
Then Downward Dog, or Half Moon Left, a pose
Which makes me think I'll fall upon my nose!

Sweet Maya never sleeps or even tires;
I rarely get a sense that she perspires
Or even breathes, or pulls a student near
When props are done, they simply disappear.
She lives inside a world behind my screen
Her only wish? To teach a new routine.

From this day forth, I'll only get more fit;
I turn the console on and I submit
To tasks that Maya sets for me each day
Until at last I finish up and say:
"My core...is sore!" I slowly stand upright
To turn the console off and say goodnight.

How Many Cookies Do You Want?

2005-10-27T18:59:00.000-07:00

I'm not good at moderation.

Janeane Garofalo once noted that "How many cookies do you want?" is a pointless question, as the correct answer is "All." However many there are, that's how many I want.

(A slightly more useful question is "How many cookies will you have?" as it balances the firm desire to eat all available cookies with the competing desire not to look like a glutton or end up weighing 300 pounds. In private, the social disapproval factor is greatly diminished, so the best strategy for one who doesn't want to have eaten cookies is to not buy cookies.)

But it's not just food; I'm also a glutton for books, DVDs, and videogames. I stay up too late reading or watching. Or stay in playing a game or watching a video when I should go out and exercise or spend more time with people.

The videogame workout is an attempt to harness the power of gluttony in the service of physical health. An exercise game should be addictive and entertaining in the way videogames are, but have the side effect of making one more fit. It still tastes like a cookie, but it's highly nutritious!

One way to accomplish this is to bolt disparate parts together, adding an exercise component to a game that doesn't inherently need one. Like adding wheat germ to a chocolate-chip cookie recipe. Make the game require some physical activity as a cost of progress. The problem is that the exercise reduces the fun. It means you're playing a sub-optimal videogame, one that could easily be improved by removing the exercise component.

The best exercise games combine the addictive nature of videogames with the addictive nature of exercise. The movement is part of the fun, not a cost one has to pay to get the fun. The exercise component is there because it adds to the realism, adds to the challenge, and adds to the sense of accomplishment when you meet a goal along the way.

Yourself!Fitness, meet Eyetoy: Kinetic

2005-10-24T17:25:00.000-07:00

For the past two weeks I've been improving strength, balance, and flexibility with Maya, my PS2-based personal trainer. And starting to like yoga. My current favorite pose is Side Plank...

The Yourself!Fitness workouts are fun, varied, cheap, convenient, and really do feel like having a personal trainer there in the room with you. Still, there's room for improvement. Greater variety in types of exercise and better music would be welcome. And the "fun" factor is sometimes lost. Compared with something like DDR, interacting with Maya really does feel more like a workout than playing a video game. Great when you want that level of rigor, but sometimes you don't. Exercise with Maya is fun as exercise, because you feel like you're making progress, but it's not fun the way a regular videogame is. There's still room to explore the space between the two. What we need is some competition, a few more companies trying to do the same thing Maya does - make exercise convenient, fun, and comprehensive, personalized to your individual needs.

Enter Eyetoy: Kinetic.

Remember the "Kung2" game in Eyetoy: Play2? Kinetic uses the same general dynamic to teach fullblown fitness routines. Fast like cardio Kickboxing, or slow like Tai Chi. Plus it does warmups, cooldowns, and customized workout routines. The eyetoy camera lets you observe your form and compare it to the onscreen graphics.

EyeToy:Kinetic won't be available for another month - I'll be sure to snag a copy and give a full review then - but in the meantime, here's an excellent review comparing Eyetoy:Kinetic to Yourself!Fitness.

In The Groove (PS2)

2005-10-23T09:33:00.000-07:00

In The Groove was made by and for dance game fanatics. The core new feature is a large set of modifiers ("mods") which change the way the arrows move along the screen. In Marathon Mode you play a preset menu of songs in a preset order with a preset sequence of modifiers. There are still arrows to indicate steps, but rather than the arrows marching uniformly up the screen they swoop in, or they move in waves, or they spin as they approach targets which are also allowed to meander about the screen. The upshot is that you are really forced to get in the groove and step based on the beat more than the onscreen graphics.

The background is simplified compared to standard DDR - there are no annoying onscreen cartoon dancers or full music videos to distract from the steps and the music. The normal DDR difficulty scale goes up to 10; this one goes much higher by adding mods and hand steps - places where you have to drop to the floor and slap the pads with a knee or a hand to trigger three or even four spots at once. The game also adds bombs - moments when you need to not be on a specified pad to avoid losing health and points!

For working out, Fitness Mode lets you play a random selection of songs at a given step difficulty until a specified calorie total is achieved. Recently I've been using it to play 1000 calories' worth of 6-foot songs a few times a week. Note that In The Groove extends the scale in both directions - compared to a standard DDR game it has more super-easy step sequences to get started with as well as more super-hard ones to work up to.

All in all, In The Groove is a worthy addition to the DDR genre. Hard-core players should buy it immediately (or at least, as soon as they get tired with their current game). First-time players might find it too intimidating and be better advised to start with a more traditional game - I suggest DDR Max 2.

Amazon links:

Big Video Arcade Exercise Game List

2005-10-14T20:04:00.000-07:00

Rated by exercise intensity, impact, and what area is being strengthened to what degree (U=Upper body, L=Lower body)...

	intensity
game	max	min	impact	aerobic	strength
Dance Dance Revolution	10	1	high	high	med L
Propcycle	7	1	low	high	med L
Mocap Boxing	8	2	med	med	med
Whitewater Rafting(?)	9	2	low	high	med U
Downhill Bikers	9	2	low	high	med L
Police 911	6	1	low	high	med L
Para Para Paradise	6	1	low	med	low U
Sega Ski Super G	4	1	low	low	low L
Alpine Racer(1,2)	3	1	low	low	low L
Alpine Surfer	3	1	low	low	low L
Top Skater	3	1	low	low	low L
Hangliding(?)	3	1	none	low	low U
Samurai(?)	3	1	low	med	low
Gunblade NY	2	1	low	low	low U
L.A. Machinegun	2	1	low	low	low U
Brave Firefighters	2	1	low	low	low U
Wave Runner/Wave Shark	1	1	low	low	low L
Motocross Go!	1	1	low	low	low L
Manx TT Superbike Twin	1	1	low	low	low L
Motor Raid	1	1	low	low	low L

I know I'm missing a bunch of great games, so please add a comment or email if you have specific favorites I left out (including /your/ suggested ratings, or corrections to what I've listed above). Incidentally, the few I've marked with a "?" are descriptive - these are games for which I don't know the exact name - help there would also be appreciated.

UPDATE: I had to take out the "general comments" column because it made the table too wide. I'll make a separate page with the full table as part of a general site FAQ soon enough; for now the abbreviated list must suffice.

Maya is Kinda Creepy

2005-10-13T21:47:00.000-07:00

So far, I've done six sessions with Maya of Yourself!Fitness. I love the workouts and it really does help get the moves right to watch Maya do them and mirror what she does...but I have to tell you, she's starting to creep me out.

Maya falls smack into the uncanny valley.

First, there's the neck/head thing. Her neck doesn't move quite right and the head doesn't always face the right direction relative to the rest of the body. Especially when doing something where the body hunches forward such as a sideways step-touch, the head is all wrong. She reminds me of the zombies in a shoot-em-up...it's like the neck is broken and wobbling around a little but the body doesn't realize it yet and keeps on going.

Then there's the face. She talks, and her lips move, but the rest of the face doesn't move with the lips. And the lip movements aren't right - it's like a badly-dubbed movie. And her head sometimes seems too small for her body. Though she looks fine in posed shots and at key points starting and stopping an exercise, some of the transition frames are just plain...odd.

Her chatter is often inappropriate to the situation in ways a good programmer could have fixed but didn't think to. She'll announce "Moving on to kicks!" when it's the first exercise so there's nothing to move on from. Or when we just did kicks. When we do X on the right leg followed by X on the left leg, she'll say "Let's do X!" both times rather than saying "Now let's try the other side" at the transition. Sometimes the last segment in a workout is a rest; she'll say "let's take a moment" and sit there for ten seconds before announcing the workout is actually complete. When the music changes, sometimes it goes silent for a half minute. Which I wouldn't mind if it were worth the wait, but the new track is usually just as cheesy as what it replaced. I just want Maya to go find the hidden Deejay and smack him upside the head for sleeping on the job while she's trying to give a good workout, but she never seems to notice the silence. Maybe she's asleep too!

So it's still a fantastic program - and you should buy it right now - but there's room for improvement.

A Videogame Exercise Triathlon!

2005-10-12T12:04:00.000-07:00

Last night I believe I completed the first-ever videogame exercise triathlon. Three events, one game console (PS2).

First, I completed my scheduled half-hour general daily workout using Yourself!Fitness. (Maya recommended I work on lower body, since I'd done upper on Monday).

Then, I did some upper-body strength training by playing Prince Of Persia:Warrior Within for a half-hour on the Kilowatt Sport.

Lastly, for additional aerobic exercise I brought out the DDR pad and played Dance Dance Revolution Extreme for a half hour, working through a variety of "Nonstop Mode" and "Challenge Mode" routines. Now that's a workout!

Could one use this series as a real competition event? Not without some substitutions. You can't use Maya in a competition - there's no point-scoring component - so we'd have to substitute a different third event. An EyeToy fighting game would be ideal - either Boxing or Kung2. As for the Kilowatt Sport, we'd want a game that's a little more hard-core and score oriented than PoP. How about Gran Turismo? Okay, so now we have three exercise events that require wildly different skillsets. Gran Turismo (in arcade mode, with a specified exercise level, track, and car), DDR (with a specified nonstop-mode sequence), and Kung2. The final score for the triathlon is the sum of the scores for each set, possibly with some multiplier to deal with scalability.

Clearly I'm going to have to try this out, work out the rules in more detail and see if it can actually be held as a competition. Seems like it would be a good candidate for the next PAX, either on its own or as a feeder event into the Omegathon.

Your own personal trainer (Yourself!Fitness)

2005-10-10T10:41:00.000-07:00

Wouldn't it be great to have your own personal trainer?

A personal trainer could evaluate your fitness level, design a varied workout customized to your fitness goals, abilities and available tools and lead you through that workout. Your trainer would periodically ask you how you're doing and adjust the difficulty level, stopping to explain the tricky bits or to rest for a bit. At the end, he/she would congratulate you on a job well done and remind you of the next scheduled workout.

Why haven't you got one yet?

Well, it's inconvenient to get to the gym and to coordinate your schedule with somebody else. And it's expensive to pay somebody just to help you exercise. And maybe you don't want to feel like you're being judged or are wasting somebody's time (or failing to get your money's worth) when they keep having to stop and explain all the moves.

Enter Maya.

Maya is your personal trainer. All you have to do is buy a copy of Yourself!Fitness for your platform of choice - you can get it from Amazon for PS2, XBox, or PC. Maya will tailor the workouts to the tools you have - for the full range of activity you'll eventually want to get hand weights, a stability ball, a step, and a yoga mat, but you can get started without any of these. Maya can also lead you through yoga exercises to relax you and improve your flexibility.

This is not actually a game, but it does fall into the category of using videogame technology to make getting in shape more convenient and enjoyable. Like cereal brand X is "part of a well-balanced breakfast", Maya is part of a well-balanced fitness regimen. Something a little more traditional alongside the music games and the Kilowatt-mediated shoot-em-ups. Good for what ails ya.

Eyetoy:Play2 (PS2)

2005-10-06T15:39:00.000-07:00

The Eyetoy is a USB camera accessory for the Playstation 2. Amazon offers it bundled with the game "Play2" for about $50 here.

Play2 is a collection of silly party games. The two with the most exercise potential are fighting games: Knockout and Kung2. Knockout is a boxing game much like the arcade game Mocap Boxing except that the camera is facing an image of you in the ring. You can punch your opponent and you can duck his punches. It feels a bit like real fighting. It's better than Mocap in that you can try to punch the other guy whenever he looks open - you don't have to wait for a target area to be explictly announced and there's no boring/tiring "punch him 37 times straight" nonsense. The best part is how you shrug off being knocked down: a bunch of stars are swimming on the screen around you and you have to wave them aside. The worse the blow, the more stars and the more waving they require. Very creative and intuitive!

In Kung2, cute tiny ninjas launch attacks on you from all sides, which you swat aside with a convincing WHAP. If you have a martial arts background, it's a surprisingly good way to exercise your block and punch combinations.

The most generally enjoyable games in the set aren't necessarily the best exercise. I got a kick out of Secret Agent, in which you spend a lot of time standing perfectly still to avoid detection while you use one free arm to slowly and stealthily pick a lock. Mr. Chef lets you practice your short-order cooking skills. And Air Guitar is a nod to the music game genre - it lets you play a simplified Guitar Freak equivalent without a physical controller.

Cyclescore on applying exercise to games

2005-09-30T14:21:00.000-07:00

MIT's CycleScore has an FAQ:

What's the most unusual thing you've found in your research?
We wanted to make use of existing commercial games (rather than design our own), but our research showed that commercial games are too complex. They distract the user and result in sub-optimal workouts. They also have problems with discontinuity (i.e. if you adapt a commercial car game to a bike, what happens when the car in the game crashes? Why are you still pedaling? These kinds of logical discontinuities make adapting commercial games problematic.)

So we had to design games from scratch that would be simple but still fun, and that would motivate the user to push themselves without annoying them....

We've also found that the racing games typically co-opted by most exertainment startups don't work extremely well in the context of exercise. The problem is, the player is too aware of the fact that their pedaling corresponds directly to the speed of their virtual vehicle. They are constantly concerned about pedalling enough to win the race, which sounds good in theory, but in practice, it just leads to a tiring experience. Not super-motivational. We've found that if you disassociate pedaling from speed (and even movement), you're more likely to distract the player, increase motivation, but still create a solid exercise experience.

Agreed. This is why Prince of Persia is a better overall Kilowatt Sport experience than Grand Turismo. When the Kilowatt folks claim their controller gives you a more nuanced control range, the trouble is that standard games were designed for traditional control pads that don't have that nuance so it's mostly wasted on them. The optimum exercise-game experience requires designing the game and the controller together as a unified whole rather than bolting together mix-and-match parts.

One of the cooler CycleScore game ideas was to have the user pedal to recharge the weapon rather than to move the ship. Then the game can be tailored to ramp smoothly and require some certain minimum amount of exertion but no more than that; additional effort doesn't help win the game so there's no incentive to pedal yourself silly (and then collapse of exhaustion) trying to get a better score.

That's Exertainment!

2005-09-28T21:27:00.000-07:00

This rather appalling coinage comes from an actual product:

The Life Fitness Exertainment system was a collaboration between Nintendo and Life Fitness, a maker of exercise equipment...It was first scheduled to be released in the fall of 1995. The heart of the system in the original design was a special adaptor that allows Life Fitness Lifecycle to be connected to a Super Nintendo. With this setup, pedaling on the cycle is transmitted as digital information to the SNES.
[...]
There are two games that were released for the Exertainment system...Mountain Bike Rally and Speed Racer. In both games, players have the choice of either flat or hilly terrain, with hilly terrain offering more pedaling resistance. In Mountain Bike Rally, produced by Radical Entertainment, you have a choice of eight riders, bike type, steering ability, resistance, and courses. Races last several miles, making the game an endurance test. You can punch other riders in the game, which makes for some action other than pedaling. The game also features stuff like ramps, different riding surfaces, and guys throwing stuff at you while you're trying to bike. Speed Racer is essentially the same game that Accolade released in 1994, though I doubt they kept the platform action parts. Radical Entertainment kept the Boosters, gripping tires, and, naturally, the MACH 5, and they added some hills.

Yup, it's basically the Expresso Spark using the best home gaming technology that 1995 had to offer. Yeesh.

Exertainment. Rolls off the tongue, doesn't it? Are you being sufficiently exertained? Is your home system extertaining enough?