Health Meter: Where We Stand (and Run and Jump) in 2009

1/27/2009 5:50 PM | 0 Comments | Page 1 of 2

It's always cool to witness the birth of a new gaming genre. I was there the first time gamers got to use a primitive first-person view to take down Hitler and his minions, and I was there the first time gamers got to take to the air as a voyeuristic mosquito to suck the blood of cute animated Japanese girls. Obviously, though, as Darwin pointed out in a 1997 letter to the editors of Electronic Gaming Monthly, the continued existence of a species comes down to survival of the fittest. Today, we have no shortage of ways to lay waste to a menagerie of nasties in first-person-shooters; yet the number of titles in the "perverted winged insect" genre remains at one. Some genres survive and prosper; some become extinct.

A few years ago, the idea of a "fitness" genre in gaming would have been laughable. Gamers, it was assumed, were sedentary endomorphs whose only concept of strength, endurance or agility related to boosting these attributes to affect the killing power of their World of Warcraft warrior or their Final Fantasy "Chosen One." Amazingly, though, the fitness genre has grown from a handful of novelty titles released haphazardly over the past decade to a shelf's worth of disks and carts designed to raise the strength, endurance and agility levels of the person who's actually playing the game. Heck, the genre has even supported a full year of my monthly Health Meter columns.

As far as console makers go, none did more to get gamers up and moving in 2008 than Nintendo. The movement-based gaming that had been around since the Wii dropped took a decidedly fitness-friendly turn with Wii Fit, which was released in the spring. The game -- which shipped with the technologically crazy-cool Wii Balance Board -- managed to attach to exercise that feeling of wanting "just one more try." Attempting to set a new record in something as goofy as hula-hooping was just as compelling and time-consuming, and delivered the same "gamer's high," as attempting to take down the final boss in any action game or take first place in any racing game.

There was more good news in the fall when third-party publishers released games that supported the Balance Board. EA's Skate It and Ubisoft's Shaun White Snowboarding: Road Trip and Rayman Raving Rabbids TV Party came up with creative uses for the peripheral. In 2009, there'll be even more reasons to fire up your Balance Board. Konami's and Hudson's Marble Saga: Kororinpa -- the follow-up to 1997's Kororinpa: Marble Mania -- will let gamers use their Boards to guide a marble through a world that's just as bizarre and oddball as the word "Kororinpa"; and PlayLogic's and Icon's Vertigo will unleash the Board on the racing genre.

The biggest title on the horizon for gamers looking to get a real-life "health boost" is EA's EA Sports Active. The game will support the Balance Board, but the primary mode of exercising will be with resistance bands. The game -- which is looking to be the first Wii Fit-killer -- comes complete with the blessing of Oprah's health guru, Bob Greene. Oprah is, of course, a kingmaker. So, even if the game falls short of expectations, expect it get a whole mess of push from the Big O. Look for EA Sports Active to become "The Eckhart Tolle of Fitness Games."