Want to lose weight by playing video games? Not coordinated enough to play DDR? Tim Tucker has the solution for you: Tetris Weightlifting. It's a version of Tetris that you control with a pair of handles each attached to a set of weights. You pull the right handle to move the piece right and vice versa for the left, and press a button on either handle to rotate the piece. Tucker built the Tetris Weightlifting machine out of an open source version of Tetris and a Phidgets electronic sensor. "Users expressed high satisfaction with the system," says this promotional poster. "They focused more on game-play than on exercise, setting goals based on in-game cues rather than traditional metrics such as number of repetitions." It sounds like my kind of workout, but Tucker doesn't say how many calories players can actually burn. You can download the Java source for his customized version of Tetris as well as the C# code for his sensor controller.

[Via Waxy.org]