10 Innovative Game Features

Watch yourself struggle, sweat, collapse as you turn your video game console into a personal trainer.

Here are ten ways the latest development by Eye-Toy technology is doing away with the couch-potato stigma that's commonly attached to gaming, and developing the hottest new innovation moving the video game industry right now.

1. Dubbed Eye-Toy Kinetic, the game assesses your weight and your height to devise a workout for you. In some cases it will even devise a certain number of calories to burn. It designs a personalized physical training or workout program. You can customize your workouts to make it suitable for getting you in shape, losing weight, or toning your muscle. It feature exercises from four different disciplines, four exercise zones available to you: cardio, combat, toning, and mind & body, such as meditation and yoga.

2. You go at your own pace and monitor your progress along the way. It will also take advantage of the PS2's internal clock to keep you on a regimented 12-week workout. It's not a game so much as a virtual home fitness center and cheaper than a gym membership.

3. You interact with one of two virtual fitness trainers to keep you motivated. One is male, the more gung-ho type with his loud fitness platitudes, and one is female, the more reassuring of the two. Miss a workout and expect to get an earful from one of them.

4. This game technology requires a user to step face to face with the screen used with a console. A minicamera beneath the screen to project your image onto the screen and allow you to capture a full range of motion onscreen. It will use the EyeToy peripheral to actually track your activity and motion.

5. A boxing match places you in the center of your TV screen and pits the virtual you against a Mr. Universe. Another challenging game has you facing off with an likeness of yourself, punching balls coming at you on the screen, while steering clear of other ones. Here you are playing the game with real punches that tire a you out, jumping on a small mat. You work up a good sweat.

6. Exercise different muscles, muscles that you don't normally use. Staying fit is the name of this game. It's a good cardiovascular workout. You work up a light sweat, be short of breath, and sweaty at the brow after punching for almost 10 minutes.

7. The exercise factor has become a hot new selling point. Manufacturers' biggest problem is getting women more interested in gaming. Now, for the first time, they are going to see it. It's made for all fitness abilities. For example, in one three-minute exercise you beat back punching bags coming towards you from the four corners of the screen. This could be accomplished either through precise punching and kicking or wild flailing; either way, you burn calories. It's fairly intense as the bags coming at you faster and faster.

8. It would allow players to have their body interact with the machine, instead of twiddling a joystick wiht buttons. The next wave in video gaming is all about bombarding your senses with real sensations. So plan on throwing away your old plastic joysticks.

9. Eye-Toy isn't only for virtual boxing; it comes in versions that include ping-pong and even dancing in a dance studio or a Zen garden.

10. Games do not have to be an unhealthy exercise. Now you can finally put a video game to work for you with EyeToy. Appease your addiction to games with your body's need for exercise.