Christina Loguidice unboxes a free www.houseparty.com Ubisoft package, entitled "Fun, Fit & Guilt-Free House Party". This package is sponsored by Ubisoft's Your Shape, JELL-O, and House Party. This follows Bill Loguidice's earlier unboxing of the Windows 7 Ultimate party pack. The two most interesting items (assuming you don't REALLY love JELL-O mousse) are the Your Shape bundle and the Just Dance game, both for the Nintendo Wii. Your Shape is a direct upgrade to My Fitness Coach, sort of like Wii Fit Plus is the direct upgrade to Wii Fit. Of course My Fitness Coach is itself a follow up to the earlier Yourself Fitness. "Celebrity" branding aside, where Your Shape trumps them all is with the addition of the camera peripheral (it's also available on PC), though of course lighting conditions and other factors will affect tracking. Finally, Just Dance is an original game for up to four players to dance either for fun or as a workout, with no need for a dance mat.

Wii Fitness for Dummies (2010), by Christina and Bill Loguidice, through

Wii Fitness for Dummies (2010), by Christina and Bill Loguidice, through Wiley.

We just finished primary author review on the book, so it's now considered at 100%, though there are still a few minor things to do. Since it's at that point, I'm now able to release what should be the final Table of Contents. Check it out here: http://www.armchairarcade.com/neo/node/3046 . As always, any questions, ask away. We're still looking at a February/March 2010 release.

Wii Fitness for Dummies, available from retailers worldwide, is THE book on the Nintendo Wii fitness revolution. Part 1 covers Nintendo's Wii Fit Plus, Part 2 covers EA Sports Active: Personal Trainer from Electronic Arts, and Part 3 covers Majesco's Jillian Michaels Fitness Ultimatum 2010. There are two parts of ten at the back of book, as well, which cover ten Wii fitness accessories, and ten other Wii fitness games, respectively. You'll not only get to know all of the games inside and out, but also learn proper exercise form, theory and methodology to maximize your fitness experience, all in the inimitable friendly and approachable for Dummies style.

I thought you guys might get a kick out of my students' latest YouTube video. These guys and gals are having such a blast in my English 403/503 class (Computers & English), and I'll be damned if they aren't making videos that are just as good if not better than most anything else on Youtube. Check it out, and please give them a comment or two if you like what you see.

Wii Fitness for Dummies (2010), by

I thought you guys might get a kick out of one of the projects my students are working on this semester: Wii Fit is the Shizznit. I draw your attention to this video:

Now tell me you how much you'd like to be in this class! :P They've also made a podcast.

Why not make a few comments on their channel or join their ning site? It's a great group.

Here's another of the student projects:

Freeware Chronicles
Here's their video and podcast.

One more: Anatomy of a Comic. Great stuff.

Bad-with-naming-them-but-still-undeniably-legendary-videogame-designer Shigeru Miyamoto has confirmed to USA Today that the forthcoming New Super Mario Bros. Wii will be first to incorporate a special "help" feature, otherwise known as "demo play". What this comes down to is whenever a player so chooses, they can pause the game and let it essentially play itself, then resume control whenever he or she chooses. While superficially this sounds like it's turning interactive videogames into passive entertainment no better than television, as someone who sometimes gets impossibly stuck in games and doesn't like to use cheat codes, I can see this being a useful feature. This is also one of those "so obvious, why hasn't someone done this before" type of deals.

While I support the concept, I can't help but feel a bit "icky" about the whole thing, just like I do with cheat codes. Certainly the whole idea of this is to continue to make videogames accessible to everyone, from the very, very young to the extraordinarily uncoordinated, but wouldn't dynamic difficulty adjustments or even - at its simplest implementation - having more selectable difficulty levels at the beginning address this issue just as well, particularly for what is ostensibly an action game (i.e., no difficult puzzles to figure out, just hard jumps to make)? What do you think of this new design wrinkle that will surely make its way into lots of other games?

I was one of a handful of videogame journalists invited to a 2K Sports' Major League Baseball 2K8 conference call that ended a few minutes ago with producer Ben Brinkman and others. Despite some static (the person who didn't mute did eventually jump off the call, but then the static came back) and technical issues with the conference call (not on my end), I was able to record the full presentation on my Windows Mobile cell phone. UPDATE: Or at least I thought - the phone recorded the whole thing but only as silence, so that's not a good future option obviously. I'll have to use an alternative recording method in the future. I would have uploaded the entire conference call exclusively for the benefit of Armchair Arcade members if it had worked. Even if you're not a fan of baseball or videogame baseball, it would have still been interesting to hear some of the behind-the-scenes stuff (if the recording is made available to me, I'll upload it and make it available).

LAST UPDATE: 20pGaming.com has made the audio available, here: http://2opgaming.com/2008/02/22/mlb2k8-conference-call-full-audio/

As a long time videogame baseball fan, I'm on record in regards to modern interpretations as being a fan of Sony's "MLB The Show" series (PS2, PSP, PS3) since the demise of 3DO's "High Heat Baseball" series after the 2004 edition (my favorite being the Xbox version). I actually liked EA's first version of "MVP Baseball" (Xbox, PS2, etc.), but it never really evolved properly to my liking from there. 2K Sport's "Major League Baseball 2K" series has had some interesting elements, but they never quite came together in my opinion to form a cohesive and fun videogame baseball experience (and its audio-visual presentation was comparatively lacking). Based on the data already released and this conference call, it looks like 2K Sports' "Major League Baseball 2K8" is on a very, very promising track to being a top game, finally, if not THE top game. I should be receiving a review copy of the game very soon (Xbox 360 version was my first choice for the achievements, though it's available for several other platforms including Wii and PS3) and I'll see first hand how it ultimately plays, which is really 95% of what matters.

We were invited to submit three to five questions ahead of time. It seems a lot of questions were focused on technical aspects, though mine, as I always attempt, were more focused on other areas that don't typically get asked...

PRESS RELEASE:

2K Sports Reveals Renowned Lineup of Current and Legendary Stars for Top Spin 3

Tennis greats get back in the game, marking a first for next-generation consoles
New York, NY – February 20, 2008 – 2K Sports, the sports publishing label of Take-Two Interactive Software, Inc. (NASDAQ: TTWO), is pleased to announce the all-star player lineup for Top Spin 3, the industry’s most realistic and action-packed tennis video game experience. The star-studded lineup features today’s sensations, including Roger Federer and Maria Sharapova, as well as Boris Becker, Bjorn Borg and Monica Seles, three of the sport’s legendary players. Top Spin 3 marks the first time these iconic pros have appeared in a next-generation video game.