Thanks to the success of games such as Wii Fit, EA Sports Active and Jillian Michaels' Fitness Ultimatum 2009, the medical community is starting to take games seriously as a means to pump you up keep us healthy. Reuters reports that at this year's fifth annual Games for Health Conference in Boston, a bolstered attendance brought health experts together to talk about these games, and you'd be surprised how much money these titles generated last year. "Healthcare is 18 percent of the GDP of the United States and so games for health is probably the largest sector of activity in the serious games field long-term," said Ben Sawyer, a co-founder of The Games for Health Project. He added, "If you add up the 18 month sales of Wii Fit and the sales of EA Sports Active, Konami's Dance Dance Revolution and other healthy games, the worldwide retail numbers are over $2 billion." That's not a bad slice of the $22 billion pie that gaming lovingly prepared last year, if we may say so.Some experts think the government should look into offering these types of games in schools to help kids learn the importance of exercise, while others think that a public service campaign should be started and backed by the president, Congress, and other federal agencies. We'd comment, but we really only play Wii Fit for the hulahoop game.Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

The Wii release of Metroid Prime Trilogy just keeps getting better. Yesterday, we learned that it would include a lovely tin and an artbook, and now GameStop has just revealed that copies pre-ordered from the retailer will also come with a free t-shirt! It also comes with video games!In our opinion, the shirt looks pretty great (we're assuming it's not all dithered in real life like it is in the picture), even with the logo on the side, and even with the added baggage of identifying you as a GameStop shopper. The offer is valid for both in-store and online pre-orders.
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There's a decent chance you've never heard of the Square Enix DS title, Nanashi no Game (roughly: The Game with No Name), as it was never released outside of Japan. Essentially, it's The Ring in video game form. In the original Nanashi no Game, the player was introduced to a cursed role-playing game that killed its players within seven days if they failed to complete it. Thus, the game was split into sections of first-person exploration in 3D and sections that were styled after 8-bit role-playing games of yore (Dragon Quest, most notably).Now, a year later, Square Enix is getting ready to unleash the sequel, Nanashi no Game Me (The Game with No Name: The Eye), which includes not only a cursed RPG, but a cursed platformer as well (who's developing these cursed games, anyway?). You can check out a trailer for the game (courtesy of Famitsu) above. You can also find some more info on the game at Siliconera. We have no idea if the sequel will make its way out of Japan, but we definitely hope so.Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Filip Felberg is kind of like Mr. Miyagi, but instead of masterfully pruning bonsai (and training kids to take down Cobra Kai), he makes awesome stuff out of Lego. His flickr page shows us his latest fixation: Nintendo's Pikmin. He's remade Olimar (and his ship), along with many of the enemies encountered in the game, to great effect. His creations strike an amazing resemblance to their in-game counterparts, and we totally wouldn't mind having a few of these on our desk. How about you?[Via GameSetWatch]Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments