Games That Raise the Heart Rate 51
The Rocky Mountain News is running an article by Kotaku's Brian Crecente entitled Fit to Play, about the effect that games with a workout component have on the health of the player. From the article: "...five years later and 100 pounds lighter, Jennsen is a video evangelist in the most 21st-century sense of the word, preaching the fat-melting, muscle-building power of video games to generations that have grown up holding joysticks."
Bussiness as usual: nothing to see here :p (Score:3, Insightful)
Same thing, only cheaper ?
why not just going swimming? (Score:2)
Re:why not just going swimming? (Score:3, Insightful)
I prefer swimming in natural bodies of water, but that can be kind of hard with over 2 inches of ice on the surface.
Re:why not just going swimming? (Score:2)
Re:why not just going swimming? (Score:1)
no closed public pools?
Not every city operates indoor pools, and not every occasional swimmer can afford the annual fee for access to a pool owned by a fitness establishment.
Re:why not just going swimming? (Score:2)
Re:why not just going swimming? (Score:3, Funny)
Actually, if you tried swimming in an unheated pool at -20, you might be caught dead there.
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In Russia (not soviet) (Score:2)
In Russia some consider 0 far to warm for serious swimming. The polar bear club often swims at -20. (I do not know the units, I assume C, but they might have been converted)
Re:Bussiness as usual: nothing to see here :p (Score:3, Insightful)
Lets add it up:
PS2: $150. DDR: $50. Good pad $100. total: $300. (Subtract the cost of a PS2 if you would have it anyway)
Cheap Wal-mart treadmill/exercise bike: $400. Quality treadmill/bike: $1200.
Simming pool: $6000. Home Spa: $3000. Sauna (build it yourself): $700. adds no value to your house
Freeweights, dumbells, bars, various benches: $250.
Racquetball court $4000.
Gym membership: $7-$100/month. (the cheapest requires health insurance to cover some of the cost) Has all the above (excep
Re:Bussiness as usual: nothing to see here :p (Score:2)
This is great and all... (Score:2, Funny)
Everything I know I learned from video games.
Dead or Alive. (oh, wait wrong joystick) (Score:2)
Collecting resource games like Age of whatever etc will make you fatter. As will the online ones like Fable, NWN etc. I don't see much from online
Re:Dead or Alive. (oh, wait wrong joystick) (Score:1)
Re:Dead or Alive. (oh, wait wrong joystick) (Score:2)
Re:Dead or Alive. (oh, wait wrong joystick) (Score:2, Funny)
As for me and my household... we will DDR (Score:5, Insightful)
I think the key is to avoid the Education Game Trap (it's quite similar); the quickest way to a crappy "educational" game is to take the same-old, same-old and bolt it on to one of the Stardard Generic Game Frameworks. "Answer this math question to advance one space closer to the end." Woohoo, mommy can I please play "Advance The Squares"?
Similarly, I've seen people bolt a crappy racing game onto an exercise bike that in essense consisted of a line advancing forward that you had to stay ahead of, or lose. Woohoo, mommy can I please play "Finish The Boring Task In The Alloted Time"?
DDR isn't trying to make you exercise, but if you expect to play at the higher levels, you'll be sweating.
I'd also love to see a traditional car combat or 'kart' racing game that ran on a bike that you could turn, that used your pedaling as the acceleration with adjustable levels. See, the fun would be the cart game, the exercise the means to an end, instead of the explicit and boring goal.
I thought I didn't like to exercise. Turns out it was the boredom of doing laps that was killing me (semi-literally).
The real world works like this, too, after all, so this should hardly be a shock. Which is more fun, running a mile for no real reason, or a game of soccer, basketball, or water polo? Why do people insist that exercise has to be boring? That's really a relatively recent "innovation", you know. Maybe there's a reason that innovation has coincided with people dying due to lack of exercise?
Re:As for me and my household... we will DDR (Score:1)
I got the Xbox one, Ultramix, in November of 2003 and the official pad it came with has worked fine. I'm a heavy guy, too, 270-280 lbs (don't weight myself often). The key is to make sure you've got a hard surface under the mat (I use one of those mats made for using office chairs on a carpet) and not to wear shoes. I usually dance with socks on, or bare feet.
Re:As for me and my household... we will DDR (Score:2)
The Red Octane ignition pads, on the other hand, really do rock. They're about the best non-hard pads you can get. The foam is very, very strong, the pads actually require some real pressure to trigger, and there is some feeling there for when you're stepping on a button and when you're not. I j
Re:As for me and my household... we will DDR (Score:2)
Unfortunately, I can't tell for how long it has been doing it. We started as rank beginners and I'm still a long way from finishing Tsugaru on Heavy, let alone Extreme (I've got DDRMAX2, translate those terms as necessary and I'm assuming it's the same basic Tsugaru I'm thinking of; even so, you pr
Fixing phantom presses and buying the right DX pad (Score:2)
We started as rank beginners and I'm still a long way from finishing Tsugaru on Heavy, let alone Extreme (I've got DDRMAX2, translate those terms as necessary and I'm assuming it's the same basic Tsugaru I'm thinking of; even so, you probably know what I mean.)
"Extreme" is the name of the 8th mix, where DDRMAX2 is 7th Mix. The difficulty after "heavy" is called "challenge" or "oni".
I only relatively recently noticed how often it is false-triggering during normal use, even on buttons that our feet are
Re:Fixing phantom presses and buying the right DX (Score:2)
Thanks for the suggestion. Unfortunately, I would have caught that and that isn't it. It false-triggers sometimes even when no-one is on the mat at all. It is pretty clearly a mat failure.
(In fact, I noticed almost immediately tha
Learn to play double (Score:1)
I am in the market for exactly one pad. My wife has told me, flat out, that she prefers not knowing how much better at it I am than she is.
Then buy two pads and play the game in 8-panel mode, with the pads duct-taped together in the middle to form a hinge. Doesn't this chart [ddrfreak.com] look more interesting than this chart [ddrfreak.com]? Even if you don't want to try double, you can still get a single BNS pad for $60 shipped.
Re:Fixing phantom presses and buying the right DX (Score:2)
Re:As for me and my household... we will DDR (Score:2)
I really should have known better.
I got this Intec one that I can't find a link to online anymore. It looks just like their wireless one, but it isn't wireless. It's hard to correlate it to the reviews for other products, as it is the only pad I've ever used (never even used a real arcade game) and all the reviews for the wireless pad, assuming the hardware is identical, that I've found so far focus on the fact that the wireless doesn't work and they don't even get
Re:As for me and my household... we will DDR (Score:1)
Re:As for me and my household... we will DDR (Score:2)
Sorry, that was more the point I was trying to make; upon re-reading you are right that it looks like I'm complaining. What was that line from Douglas Adams about Sirius Cybernetics...? "Their superficial design flaws merely masked the existance of deep design flaws" or something like that. I mention that quote because it applies here...
"On the bright side, it feels squishy, and I think it would be safe to assume that if the console was receiv
Re:As for me and my household... we will DDR (Score:3, Interesting)
I love playing DDR (actually StepMania) for hours at a time though. I have those fancy RedOctane pads and they do work well. However, I ended up building my own hard pads that I could wear shoes on. You really need shoes to protect your shins and ankles (shin splints hurt). I st
Plug (Score:1)
I love playing DDR (actually StepMania) for hours at a time though.
Have you tried the so-called East Germany [pineight.com] simfile collection?
Re:As for me and my household... we will DDR (Score:2)
http://www.hartsunlimited.com/dancepads.html [hartsunlimited.com]
Note: I have no affiliation with the above company. I was just very happy to find both the mats for less than one from the store. Take not
Or... (Score:1, Redundant)
Operation, anyway? (Score:2)
suprise and shock (Score:2, Funny)
Re:suprise and shock (Score:2)
I spent a good 10 seconds wearing a hole in some dude's skull with some sort of automatic rifle the other night. It would have been quicker to convince him of the error of his evil ways in a series of councilling sessions than shooting him: "you don't want to blow up the chateau... you want to go home and rethink your life...
System Shock 2 raised my heart rate ... (Score:2)
Not what they're after, not really much of a cardio workout, but even so ...
Best quote from the article (Score:2)
"He lost a person, an entire person," Snitker said.
That's the absolute best way to phrase a success story.
Pads and Kilowatt (Score:3, Informative)
Brian Crecente
Editor
Kotaku [kotaku.com]
Uh, yeah (Score:2)
If you are genetically inclined to easy fat loss (easy for your heart to enter the fat burning zone), you may have some success with this. For the rest of us, it means getting off our asses and burning the calor
Re:Uh, yeah (Score:1)
I just don't see it.
Beat a 9-footer in DDR for the first time, and damn right you'll see it.
Re:Uh, yeah (Score:2)
Why not an exergaming health club? (Score:3, Interesting)
EyeToy: Kinetic (Score:1)
Nerd Power Opportunity (Score:2)
Re:Nerd Power Opportunity (Score:1)
Could mean the end of all worries for your monetary problems. *sheepish grin*
No, seriously, your idea really could work. I truly see a market here. Which geek doesn't want to lose some weight?