The Week in Review

This week we learn that exercise games aren’t really getting the expected results, a possible alien ship is screwing with electronics in the Baltic and Anime fans have something to look forward to.

If you’re of the camp that thinks playing games like Dance Dance Revolution will help gamers young and old stay in shape, think again. A new study disputes the claims that exercise games like Wii Sports encourage more active behavior in kids, and instead reveals they’re more likely to slack off in other ways to make up for playing hours of Wii Fit. The study, conducted by the Children’s Nutrition Research Center at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas chose several children ranging from 9 to 12-years-of-age who had a body mass index that was above average and lived in vidoegame console free households. (Link)

Today, Ryan Cleary, 20, and Jake David, 19, both told the Southwark Crown Court that they took part in the DDOS attacks on Sony, Nintendo, 20th Century Fox, the NHS and the British branch of News Corp. Cleary pleaded guilty to six of the eight charges laid against him, while David pleaded guilty to two out of four. Two other men, Ryan Ackroyd and an unnamed 17-year-old, pleaded not guilty to similar charges. “Arrest us. We dare you,” the (ugh) hacktivist group tweeted back in July of last year. The authorities did exactly that. Several alleged members of the group were arrested after a joint investigation by Scotland Yard and the FBI. (Link)

Back in the summer of 2011, explorers discovered a large, disc-like object lying 285 feet below the surface of the Baltic Sea. It was estimated to be about 20 meters in diameter, with a 200 meter flattened “trail” behind it, as though it had crashed and ground to a halt, and looked like nothing so much as the Millennium Falcon come to grief. Nobody knows what it is, but further investigation has revealed some rather baffling weirdness. The object appears to be giving off some kind of interference that cripples nearby electronic devices. (Link)

This fall, Viz will be launching a 24-hour anime service called “Neon Alley” on one of the major game consoles. A US$6.99 per month subscription to the service – assuming you live in Canada or the US – will net you uncut, dubbed and HD (where available) anime shows and movies, as well as original content in the form of news and behind-the-scenes footage. The service will play host to the English dub premieres of Tiger & Bunny, Inuyasha: The Final Act, Zetman, Lagrange – The Flower of Rin-ne and new episodes of endless, shonen punch-festival, Naruto Shippūden. (Link)

Electronic Arts has partnered with non-profit organization Institute of Play and the Electronic Software Association to establish a “games lab” for making games to be used in classrooms across the USA. The Games, Learning and Assessment (GLASS) lab, announced at the Aspen Ideas Festival, will be researching the skills students need to succeed at a collegiate level. The lab’s developers will then proceed to make new games and modify existing ones based on the results, possibly with one of EA’s bountiful IPs sprinkled on top. (Link)