Wii Fit used to be that thing you threw when the guy behind the counter told you the store was sold out of Nintendo's insanely popular console. Again. Nowadays, it's a video game and balance board peripheral claiming to make exercise "fun." Yeah, right!

No, seriously, right. The critics have done the whole Yoga thing and declared that exercise needn't be the terrifying and punishing physical activity you've dreaded all these years. It might not be the sort of game you want to play all day long, but if you're set on shedding some pounds, it sure beats going to the boring ol' gym. You can do eat!

• 1UP (83/100): "I guess I'd hoped an exercise videogame would make fitness a lot more fun -- and easier to do. And, though it doesn't quite exceed those expectations, Wii Fit will get you moving -- especially if you're looking for a gentle, fun introduction to an exercise program."
• Eurogamer (80/100): "You can compare your results with others, but really it's about setting your own targets and seeing how your performance improves. So far I've found this provides enough motivation to play Wii Fit every day - sometimes for ten minutes, sometimes for an hour. I don't know how long I'll keep this up for, but I do know switching on the Wii is a lot easier than going to the gym. Wii Fit is not as beneficial, undoubtedly, but a lot more fun."
• IGN (80/100): "But for a title that is so geared toward the everyman, it clings onto one hardcore fundamental -- unlocking challenges. So if you're the type who wants to jump right into everything that Wii Fit has to offer from the beginning, you're out of luck. You'll need to spend days upon days partaking in all of the modes to earn Wii Fit minutes, which eventually add up and open up other portions of the experience."
• GameDaily (80/100): "Like Miyamoto said a few months ago, Wii Fit won't necessarily make you fit. If you're looking to get ripped, you're better off buying some protein powder and heading to the gym. For everyone else, this is a clever way to sneak in a little extra exercise every day."

Say what you will about Nintendo, they know how to create new market segments. Case in point, the SmartBrains "State of the Brain Fitness Software Market 2008 report" which cites the Nintendo's Brain Age games as a key driver in growing the brain fitness software market to a $225 million industry, up 125% since 2005.

Though Brain Age games dominate the $80 million consumer segment of the market, the game has also been a key inspiration to the 20 companies that create similar brain training tools for everything from sports teams to the military. The various brain training products have been used in over 400 elder care facilities and five successful randomized clinical trials. One product even gained FDA approval for use in stroke rehabilitation. We just hope those stroke patients don't have an accent.

[Via BoingBoing]

Vying for a portable-gaming equivalent to the Wii Fit audience, Ubisoft has announced that their Nintendo DS title My Weight Loss Coach will ship with a pedometer peripheral, that will allow the game to track your movement throughout the day, independent of the game or DS.

The special pedometer uses an internal battery to keep track of its movement while separate from the DS. Users carry the device around with them in their pocket. Once plugged into the GBA slot of the user's DS, the device then transfers that data collected into My Weight Loss Coach, which factors in the movement into its daily health calculations.

Due out this summer, My Weight Loss Coach sounds like an interesting addition to Ubisoft's growing lineup of non-games targeted at the casual audience. And who doesn't love pedometers?

It seems the school is still the eminent source of name calling, as the Wii, which has managed to shrug off all the "little fad" comments thus far, has been subjected to yet another "another gimmick" label. This time, however, it's in relation to the UK Department of Health's endorsement of an in-school "active" games scheme designed by the Droitwich and Worcester City School Sport Partnership. Nick Seaton, chairman of the Campaign for Real Education, was unconvinced by the program's weight-loss merits, saying, "Pupils would be far better doing serious competitive sports and games than this sort of thing."

Channel 4 reports that this sort of thing has already been implemented in five schools in Worcestershire as "virtual PE," with the hopes that active gaming would lure children to participate in other physical exercise. Seaton, however, believes it "looks like another gimmick," one that's "pandering to the views of the physically idle." The Department of Health argued that the Wii makes for a good "first step" towards other forms of exercise, though failed to mention the benefits of the many, many steps required to excel in the physical strenuous Dance Dance Revolution: Hottest Party.

Mind you, the embarrassing view of the physical idol in school would likely result in even more nasty name calling.

[Via GamesIndustry.biz]

We're used to scientists, the government and even beverage companies taking the game industry to task for contributing to the childhood obesity epidemic. But now there's a new, even more unlikely source using gaming as an obesity scapegoat -- McDonald's.

Talking to the London Times, McDonald's UK chief executive Steve Easterbrook said games are part of a "lifestyle element" that has led to a rise in childhood obesity. "There's fewer green spaces and kids are sat home playing computer games on the TV when in the past they'd have been burning off energy outside," he said.

To be fair, Easterbrook didn't lay the blame completely at gaming's feet. "The issue of obesity is complex," he said, while also acknowledging that the government, the food industry, and good old personal responsibility have their part to play in solving the problem. Still, any organization that serves a "deluxe breakfast" with 59 grams of fat should be very careful when shifting the blame.

GameTrailers has uncovered a whole buttload of Japanese videos for Wii Fit that show off some previously unknown game modes. A snowboarding game, shown above, has the player turn the board perpendicular to the screen and lean left and right to navigate a simple slalom course. For those less inclined to "X-TREME" sports, the jogging mini-game simulates the, er, thrilling world of jogging, complete with fellow joggers to keep pace with. Interestingly, the beginning of the jogging video shows a Wii remote being placed in a pocket, possibly to detect vertical movement (and setting up a surprising answer to the old query, "Is that a Wii remote in your pocket or are you just happy to see me?")

An extended Japanese trailer for the game shows more scenes from the above game modes, as well as some short snippets of a previously unknown tightrope-walking game and some sort of boxing trainer. Check it out after the break..

DDR and the Wii have done a good job getting kids (and adults) off the couch and moving. Now HopeLab, a prominent contributer to the growing 'serious games' movement and developer of the surprisingly fun third-person cancer awareness shooter Re-Mission, has announced Ruckus Nation, a new online competition looking to award more than $300,000 for game-related product ideas designed to increase physical activity in children and young adults, with one one grand prize brainstorm netting the submitter a cool $75,000.

HopeLab will develop and test one or more of these ideas, turning successful prototypes into broadly distributed serious gaming products. Individuals and teams of up to six people can register at the Ruckus Nation website until October 15, with registration limited to 1,000 teams who then have until November 20 to submit their ideas online. Semifinalists will be announced in February, with winners being called out the following month in March. Maybe we've finally found an outlet to pitch our idea for a For Your Eyes Only cross country ski trainer/FPS using the Wii Zapper and balance board.

Don't want to wait until later this year try the latest spastic exergaming craze, Wii Fit? Are the Wii graphics just too high-res for you? Wish Wii Fit looked a touch more dangerous?

Gametrailers user, "neadha," answers the call to all three challenges, showing a homebrew balance game grafted to an old version of Pong. Standing on a skateboard deck on a cylinder, the Pong paddle slides up or down with every tilt. Or at least that's the idea. The game is so hardcore that the ball wings across the screen too quickly to react.

With a little tuning, the game might be cool. But clearly, a helmet is advised, lest this turn into Jackass. See the video after the break.

With all the fun of balancing combined with the appeal of yoga in front of a TV, Wii Fit isn't aiming for a gamer demographic. But gamers may still have fun getting physical later this year. GameTrailers shows some of the more playful elements: rolling balls into holes, ski jumping, and hula-hooping.

Brain Age meets body? Or is Nintendo working its way up to a seven intelligences title? See the latest from Wii Fit after the break.

While the mainstream press gets ready to crown Nintendo the innovator of fresh new gaming technology, Water Cooler Games points out the Wii Fit balance pad isn't as revolutionary as some may think. Way back in 1982 (yes, the same year Michael Jackson unleashed Thriller), Persuasive Games released a balance board accessory for the Atari VCS called the Joyboard. Only one game supported the peripheral: a ski jumping title called Mogul Maniac, and the technology wasn't nearly as advanced as the Wii Fit pad. The idea was there, however, Nintendo just came along with its magic touch and made it ten times better.

[Thanks, Vlad]

The most surprising thing about Nintendo's E3 2007 press conference wasn't the Wii Zapper or the upcoming release dates or even the official announcement of Wii Fit. No, the most surprising moment of the show was when Nintendo of America President and CEO Reggie Fils-Aime's Mii ballooned to an "overweight" body-mass index of 27.51 in front of a crowd of thousands. While the ass-kicker and name-taker claimed that the extra weight came from muscle and not fat, we agree with Shigeru Miyamoto, who said that was simply a "nice excuse."

The folks over at WiiHealthy aren't too happy with the public face for their weight-management system of choice. They've started a petition to convince the Regginator that "he has to lose some weight by playing healthy games on the Nintendo Wii!" Sure, there are probably more important issues to sign your name to (like a PS3 price drop, for instance) but we can definitely get behind the idea of continued good health for our favorite Nintendo revolutionary.

Throughout the history of mankind, our heart has been used for one thing: pumping blood. Now researchers at the University of Udine in Italy have come up with a better use: making videogames more challenging. Using a pulse oxymeter sensor worn around the upper body, players can control games by moving back and forth. As you move your heart pumps faster and the game responds by increasing the difficulty. The system is meant to be used to help maintain the right level of exertion during exercise. Being physically active is great, but if you ask us, we'd rather play with the intimate controller.

[Via Engadget]

Exercise is boring, we all know it, otherwise we'd be out there jogging across the hills instead of playing Halo 2. A new kit for Trixter's Total Body X-Bike attempts to bridge the gap between über-fun gaming and extra-boring stationary biking, but only a little. The X-Bike Sony PSP Kit attaches to the front of the bike to hold a PSP for your viewing pleasure. You won't be able to play God of War: Chains of Olympus while biking (we encourage you to try, of course), but movies are a go, and if you're one of those cheery lads who have bought UMDs, consider yourself "hooked up".

[Via PSP Fanboy]

Another day, another sensationalistic article about the hazards of Wii gaming. But this one's got a special bonus at the end -- a list of "Wii warm-ups" from Tim Hutchful of the British Chiropractic Association. Wanna prevent "Wii elbow?" Then shrug those shoulders! Stretch that wrist! Relax that lower back!

Despite the warm-up suggestions, the article concludes that you should avoid the Wii, "save £179 and buy a pair of tennis rackets instead." Um, yeah, if we wanted to play real tennis, we would have done that, Times Online. The great thing about Wii Sports is that it's semi-real exercise that's actually fun for those of us who otherwise would only be using the muscles involved in opening a fridge. Give us enough time for the bedsores to heal, then maybe we'll think about these "tennis rackets" you speak of. (Do they carry them at Gamestop?)

We've spoken ad infinitum on educational gaming, exercise gaming and serious games. It's an important cause and one that can prove mutually beneificial. (For the educators, a new way to teach and motivate children; for the game makers, a feeling of civic duty and another source of income.)

Reuters has a rather lengthy piece (with an eye-catching headline) about current efforts to incorporate the interactivity of video games with schooling. Games requiring team effort are presented (Indiana University associate professor Sasha Barab's Quest Atlantis, pictured), as are proponents of using game-related technologies in grades six through 12. The latter, Katie Salen, is speaking at a Living Game Worlds symposium later this month.

The article tackles the other side of the issue, that games have been linked (and just as often unlinked) to attention deficit disorder and aggressive behavior. Everything good comes with some consequence. We feel that aspects of the video game technology can outweigh consequences when incorporated with the bad. That, and we're hoping to rekindle our love with a new generation of Math Blasters and Mario Teaches Typing.