Friday, June 13, 2008
Video Game Fitness Gurus: Jillian Michaels and Shigeru Miyamoto
Getting fat is fun. Getting skinny is boring.
That's a bad equation particularly for two groups of people: those of us getting a little bit older and those of us who spend an inordinate amount of time playing video games (and it's even worse for those of us who are doing both).
But the man who brought the world Donkey Kong and Mario has teamed up with the fitness trainer from the television show The Biggest Loser to create a video game that combines playing games with losing weight.
Nintendo's Shigeru Miyamoto and trainer Jillian Michaels are set to launch Nintendo's Fitness Ultimatum, where players join Michaels' fitness boot camp and face a series of increasingly difficult aerobic tasks.
The game, slated for release this Christmas, uses a fitness balance board as a controller and Nintendo's real-motion sensors that allow players physical movements to control action on the screen.
Miyamoto and Michaels developed the game, he said, after his family started to go to they gym together. Working out, he said, was no fun when the only thing you did was hop on a scale.
Games for Miyamoto have always been about exploration, creating puzzles and challenges that were stimulating beyond the mind-numbing repetition of pushing buttons. With the Wii Fit platform, he's hoping to do the same for health.
By Brad at 10:56 AM | Comments (2)
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