Let’s get one thing clear right off the bat – video games aren’t supposed to make you sweat.  At least not the kind of wholesome, good natured, sedentary games that *I* grew up playing!

We recently bought one of these new-fangled X-Box Kinect systems that turns your own body movement into a game controller and within a week’s time, I think I’ve already gotten more exercise from it than I ever have since I first started playing the original Super Mario Bros. on the Nintendo Entertainment System way back in 1987!  It may start off simple with just an innocent game of virtual handball, but before you know it you’ve gone on half a dozen virtual rafting trips, popped countless numbers of bubbles out in virtual space, and even danced to Michael Jackson’s Thriller, even though you couldn’t conjure a single ounce of virtual rhythm out of your body if you were a resurrected member of the virtual walking dead yourself…

They trick you into thinking that “it’s just a game” until the next morning when you wake up and realize that you can’t physically move your legs anymore!  Let me tell you, I’ve played a lot of Zelda in my years but never so much that I physically lost the ability to wander around aimlessly here in real life directly as a result.  Back in my day, the closest we ever would’ve gotten to physical activity whilst gaming would’ve been with the Nintendo Power Pad, but you usually ended up just slipping off the thing during the 100 Meter Dash before any real “exercise” could actually take place!

The debacle that was essentially Nintendo’s electronic slip ‘n slide kept us solitary gamers in the clear for over a decade until Dance Dance Revolution came over the horizon … although admittedly even then unless you had a girlfriend that still didn’t really get you up off your feet, and let’s not kid ourselves here…

From there the dancing revolution transcended into the new millennium and a new Nintendo revolution with the advent of the Nintendo Wii, which featured all sorts of new motion-controlled games including a surprising number that required gestures way too similar to the one that first distracted us from playing video games as curious teenage boys when certain urges stumbled their way into our bedrooms in the first place!

Seriously, not one person at Nintendo realized what the motions in half of those Mario Party mini-games actually look like?!  Right – I’m the only one with the dirty mind…

And now with this X-Box Kinect they’ve got us all jumping up and down and working up a terrible sweat that’s all sticky and gross, and I just hope that these video game companies know what they’re getting themselves into if they keep pushing us down this slippery slope towards actually getting up off the couch because if it’s a band of physically charged, eager and active geeks that they want, they’d better be ready to deal with the consequences!  Up until now, society has depended on the muscularly deficient to sit on the sidelines and watch while the more agile and motivated dominate sports arenas and dance floors and wherever else able-bodied folk prosper, but with these new training simulators striving to get us out of our armchairs and into the spotlight, the days of the gimpy gamer may be unceremoniously coming to a close…

So where does it end?!

Gamers locking out every single gold medal at the Olympics?

Gamers going outside on the weekends to hike and camp and do other outdoors-type stuff??

Gamers edging all of the perfectly manicured males off the dance floor because they’ve mastered The Moves Like Jagger???

Are you ready to see that Pandora’s Box opened?  Just something to think about before you decide to Kinect those dots!