having fun and getting fit playing video games

Something I find very interesting is the idea of virtual reality, the idea of being totally immersed in a video game would be pretty cool but it looks like we’re a long way off, even though we not flying around in cars yet aka the Jetsons, etc. I would have thought we would all be running around in virtual reality world’s or sitting in our virtual reality mansion’s surrounded by our virtual reality playgirls, we can only hope that this becomes a reality soon, anyways..

We have made some pretty good advancements into this area in recent years and there are now commercial products we can buy that get us physically involved in a computer game and that can only be a good thing for fitness, fun fitness and getting kids healthy because if we can’t drag them away from their consoles we can now at least get them moving to play it. Of course the main product that springs to mind is the Nintendo Wii but there are others and I’ll be going through them in this blog.

Wii

Nintendo released their star console to some scepticism when it looked pretty lightweight in comparison to the PS3 and XBOX 360 but the wii has took up a pretty comfortable niche and capitalised on it’s unique ‘wiimote’ control system. The wireless controller has limitless possibilities allowing the gamer to physically interact with the game; Nintendo caught onto this pretty quick and also packaged a wiisports game with the console which included tennis, bowling, baseball and other sports. Now these games can be described as requiring you to be active to play the game however I wouldn’t be able to describe it as a method of keeping you fit unless you really want to put on a show, in fact with the right technique it’s pretty easy to hit high scores in most of the sports with a slight flick of the wrist

The Wii really pushed the envelope with ‘fitness gaming’ with the release of ‘wiifit’ a game that utilises a board that is sensitive to movement, the board allows you to balance on the board and exercise as well. The great thing about the wiifit is that it really transcends all aspects of fitness from aerobic, strength, to flexibility and balance with the yoga aspects of the game. Obviously serious fitness enthusiast’s are likely not to get a hard workout from the game however there are software title’s being released that are aimed at a more ‘hardcore market’, EA in particular have showed great interest in the market. Have a look at here for a quick overview of fitness orientated games on the wii.

Other consoles

It’s not just the Wii jumping on the fitness bandwagon, the PS3 and XBOX both have games allowing players to keep fit while playing, much before the Wii came along the PS3 had the ‘eyetoy’ a webcam based game which tracked your movements and recreated them accordingly on the screen in games such as soccer where you were required to move to head the ball, I must admit I found this a little clumsy though and the game didn’t really catch on as Playstation would have hoped. ‘Yourself fitness’ is also a great title on the Playstation which takes the player through the paces with a virtual personal trainer, and you could also try using the gamercize that allows you to exercise with pretty much any game you could want. I’ll hopefully be reviewing a few of these in future blog’s.

Fitness games in schools

I have come across some gym’s with wii’s but there are also school’s now implementing more specialised and of course more expensive equipment which allows students to get involved with fitness in a fun, computer generated way, many school’s have contacted companies that allow students to cycle or run in a virtual environment and along with the social side of the wiifit’s online community it also gives it some more fun, check out this article for example.

The future

As mentioned earlier we’re not quite yet plugged into our own virtual reality utopias yet whether that be a good or bad thing, the question’s of which that would arise would be mind boggling. We have however glimmers of hope, check out the ‘virtusphere’ or hamster ball which allows users to move around in a 360 degree plane of motion, already being trialled by the police among others, we just need the graphics technology and the other senses to be stimulated but that’s not for this blog. Of course if Playstation started shipping these hamster ball’s with their products then we truly would be in the realms of a world were computers and fitness are together.

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