Game Design Workshop is a new feature where we work through the fictional design of an overlooked genre of game. This is not an actual game in development, but more a pitch for a game we can’t believe no one has made yet.
The pitch
Where are the cheerleading games? Other than one scheduled for the Wii and a few others that have appeared as shovelware, where are these titles? It may sound like a silly premise for a game, but consider it for a moment more.
Sure, the stereotype is of the fat kid alone in his parents’ basement playing video games, but a new study says that may not be accurate. Well, at least it says the kid may not be quite so fat, quite so fast. West Virginia University researchers are claiming Dance Dance Revolution can at least slow weight gain in kids.
West Virginia’s pilot program was to install Dance Dance Revolution into every state middle school. But did it actually help? Researchers wanted to know, so they monitored 35 overweight children between the ages of 7 and 12. What they found was that kids who played Dance Dance Revolution on a nightly basis only gained 2 pounds during the 24 week study. That compares to kids who did not play and gained 5.3 pounds. (more…)
Want your child to lose weight? Let them play a video game-assuming it’s the right video game. That’s the sort-of advice from a new study presented in the medical journal Pediatrics by the Mayo Clinic. The actual study gets ever so slightly more complicated. That’s science for you.
The new study measured 25 children, including 15 of normal weight and ten obese, while playing video games. Researchers found that sitting still watching TV or playing with a traditional controller caused kids to expand the exact same amount of energy. However, playing a title using a video camera interface, such as the Sony EyeToy, expanded three times as much energy. Obese children burned the most calories while playing the dance games at just over six times as many as sitting still. (more…)
You take the good, you take the bad, you take it all and there you have the Dance Dance Castlevania Revolution. So, it isn’t technically a Dance Dance Revolution title, but instead Seatmania. Still, you have to admit the idea of dancing the night away to classically inspired, guitar-remixed versions of Alucard’s life soundtrack is pretty fun for any gaming fanatic. Well, maybe only the super geeky ones.
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