Following in the trailblazing footsteps of titles like Nintendogs and Brain Age, Wii Fit is another brainchild of Shigeru Miyamoto. The game was inspired by the practice of weighing oneself daily and, according to its creator, is more about self-awareness than it is about weight loss. The game that comes packed with a Balance Board peripheral doesn’t worry about plot or graphics or even new concepts in play, instead it focuses intently on motivating gamers to get on that board.
Wii Fit is in many ways the next step in Wii Sports, a title that boils gaming down to it’s most rudimentary elements of interaction and fun. But can even Miyamoto make tracking your BMI and doing Yoga interesting?
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The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation has revealed 12 universities that will receive grants to research the use of video games as healthcare tools. Games have shown clear potential to serve healthcare, from helping stroke victims rehabilitate, encouraging seniors to exercise and teaching behavior for therapy. Exhaustive research and hard data will further drive the growth of games as healthcare tools for people of all ages, and the grant recipients aim to support this goal.
It’s about taking advantage of the burgeoning video game trend instead of attacking it, said Deborah Lieberman Ph.D., communications researcher at the University of California at Santa Barbara, during the organization’s announcement conference today.
“Research has shown you can learn whatever a video game offers. The question is, what are you going to teach?” said Lieberman.
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Filed under: Gaming, Peripherals
So Nintendo showed up at our place today with a Wii Fit — and an accompanying personal trainer to crack the whip and make sure our half hour of intro exercises and fitness games burned a sufficient amount of calories. Things we learned: our BMI is on the upper end of the “normal” bracket (shocking, considering how sedentary we are blogging 12 hours a day), our balance is kind of crappy, our “body age” is 39 — over a decade more than our real age — and no, not even Nintendo can make a fitness game that doesn’t feel at least vaguely like PE. And now the 64k question:
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(Credit: Nyko)
Time’s running out: You’ve got only two more days to get the Wii Fit and offend mom on Mother’s Day–or at least pre-order one, as it’s not available until May 19. And to make up for the tardiness of the misguided gift, there’s …
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