Play Tetris, lose weight
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]
With Halloween fast approaching, it's a great time to get in some practice defending your territory against zombies. In Graveyard Shift, you take aim at zombies and other creepy-crawlies, blasting them into splatters of cartoony green guts. It's a casual first-person shooter, and it's very easy to get the hang of - use the mouse to aim, click to fire. Graveyard Shift has at least 15 levels, and it might even have some secret stages I haven't unlocked yet.
They key to getting good at Graveyard Shift is learning to use ...
