I'm happy to announce that our latest book, Wii Fitness for Dummies, available soon from booksellers everywhere, is listed as being in stock on Amazon.com starting February 8, 2010. Wii Fitness for Dummies focuses on three of the top Wii fitness programs, Wii Fit Plus, EA Sports Active: Personal Trainer, and Jillian Michaels Fitness Utimatum 2010, as well as additional coverage of the entire Wii fitness phenomena. You can use Amazon's nifty Look Inside feature to take a look at a low resolution version of a sampling of the book's contents (or see PDF excerpts here), and check out the Cheat Sheet for the book on Dummies.com. We have an official book page up on Armchair Arcade, where we'll soon be posting weekly bonus content that didn't fit in the book, as well as providing links to all mentioned above and more, including a Table of Contents (TOC) and the official Facebook discussion page. Finally, since March is Dummies Month at booksellers everywhere, we're happy to announce that Wii Fitness for Dummies is one of the featured publications in that promotion. As always, feel free to ask any questions, as both Christina and I will be happy to help. More news to follow on a regular basis, so stayed tuned!

Here's the latest Matt Chat episode, this time on the Tandy CoCo classic Dungeons of Daggorath. Enjoy, and let me know if you played this game back in the day. Love to hear more about its critical reception among Tandy CoCo owners.

As I was playing Dungeons of Daggorath again this morning, I was struck by how much clever audio can enhance a game, more than making up for simplistic graphics and the like. I think we have a tendency to strongly underestimate the power of sound for suggesting certain emotions and sensations.

I've often been struck at how central maps are to gaming. I say "gaming" there instead of "videogames," because we all know that maps are also critical in tabletop games such as wargames, role-playing, and of course boardgames like Risk.

This week's episode is dedicated to Lori Ann Cole's Quest for Glory. One of a few truly successful "hybrid" adventure/RPGs, QFG is widely admired even today, with a huge fanbase and plenty of homebrew remakes and patches to enhance the experience on modern computers. Check it out and let me know what you think!

In a surprise to no one, Apple announced the iPad, their long rumored and hoped for tablet-style device. Despite being saddled with what in my opinion is the worst name for a new product since the Wii, it will surely be lapped up by Apple fans. Unlike the Wii, though, I don't think the name will eventually become catchy or memorable, particularly since a single letter separates it from Apple's own iPod. Basically an upsized iPhone and compatible with all existing apps for that platform, the major revelation thus far about the new device is the companion iBooks store, which I imagine would be a subset of iTunes. While iBooks is an important step for the eReader market and digital books in general - shockingly Apple is supporting the industry's ePub standard - it remains to be seen even with a no doubt beautiful 10inch color screen whether it will have any of the gentle-to-the-eye qualities of eInk displays. (Owners of recent gen eBook readers will know what I'm talking about, i.e., eInk is as paper like as we have at this point, and it's a huge distinction for electronic reading from traditional displays.)

As both an iPhone 3G owner and an enthusiast of and user of graphics tablets (a Gateway Tablet PC is my primary personal laptop these days), I'll be curious if there is any stylus support, as that would make this device much more useful for sketching and note taking than standard finger input. If it's missing that feature AND it has a high price tag, I fail to see the niche such a device could ultimately fill, particularly with netbooks being fully functional mini computers with keyboards and similar 10 hour battery life.

Further news, updates and discussions will take place in the comments to this blog post. Let us know what YOU think!

Hello again, everyone, I'm back with Episode 2 of "Armchair Arcade TV", this time on Datasoft's 1984 closet classic, Mancopter for the Commodore 64 (C-64). The majority of technical issues from last episode - which were mostly related to a dying hard drive - have been resolved, plus I've gained another episode's worth of experience on Adobe Premiere Elements. I have a proper HD camera coming soon, so that may make it for Episode 3 or 4, improving video quality of the host segments, and after that I'll address the audio issues. In any case, I'm much happier with this episode and look forward to future productions. The full episode transcript is below the video.

This week I interview R.A. "Ray" Montgomery, author and publisher of the famous Choose Your Own Adventure series. If you haven't ever read one of these books, I strongly suggest you get your butt to the local bookshop and pick up a few--they're still very fun today (and they've been updated and re-published by the author's own publishing company). In the video, Ray talks about the origin of the series, what makes them so fun, and also shares some moving personal history involving the loss of his amazing son (who also penned some of the books).

This episode all about GameFan magazine, a cool glossy videogame publication that unfortunately was the source of some controversy back in the day. Find out the details in the video and as always please comment, rate, subscribe and send friend requests!

Magazine info and history: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GameFan

The GameFan controversy: http://www.goodcowfilms.com/farm/basement/ga-archive/gamefan-incident-01... and http://wapedia.mobi/en/Gamefan