From the beginning, playing video games has mainly been a sedentary experience. You sit on the living room floor, or on the sofa, and use only the muscles in your thumbs (and maybe wrists or ankles, depending on what kind of controller you've got). But that's all changing: The stereotype of the idle, lazy gamer is ever so slowly giving way to the image of a more active, fit, and healthy person.

It's all about the game controllers.

For PC gamers, the keyboard and mouse typically get the most use as game controllers; a flight stick or steering wheel occasionally comes into play. Consoles have their game pads, ergonomic and sleek. But now a surprise hit out of Japan--a game called Dance Dance Revolution--has gotten gamers off their butts and onto the dance floor.

In this case, the floor is actually a grid of nine squares, each labeled with an arrow. The outer circle of eight squares have arrows pointing in the cardinal directions and at diagonals. The center square is a place to rest one foot. You play the game by tapping or stomping on the arrows on the dance grid with your feet, in sync with arrows that appear on the screen in front of you and hip-hoppy dance music that gets faster and more complicated as you advance through levels of the game.

The game was an arcade hit and came quickly to the PlayStation 2. Dance Dance Revolution's distributor, Konami, sold about 3 million copies of the game worldwide for the PlayStation and PlayStation 2 consoles. Each copy comes with a soft pad that plugs into the console's game controller port. Living room floors were transformed from seating areas to dance floors, and a whole new category of "fitness games" was born.

Games That Move You

Today, if you want to get active while gaming, there are more options to choose from than just dancing to techno pop: You can box, bike, snowboard, and even meditate.

Here are some of the more interesting games and devices I've found that can keep you fit and healthy, as well as entertained.

Cateye Interactive Game Bike: This is what you get when you turn a standard stationary exercise bicycle into a game controller. The $400 Game Bike hooks up to a PlayStation 2 and allows you to use the pedals and handlebars to control any racing game available for that console. You can even hook up more than one Game Bike to your PS2 and race head-to-head with another player. The faster you pedal, the faster your virtual vehicle goes. Now that's one slick way to kill two birds--getting your Project Gotham fix and finding time for a workout--with one stone.

The Journey to Wild Divine: Okay, put aside all the New Age-y crud in this game for just a second, and mull this one over: Here's a game you control with your mind. I'm not making this up: The $149 PC game, from a company called The Wild Divine Project, ships with a specialized biofeedback controller called the Light Stone, which has three sensors you slip over your index, middle, and ring fingers. Controlling your breathing and heart rate, and alternately tensing or relaxing your muscles in your arm, lets you move objects in the game through lush environments and progress through levels in what the developers call a spiritual journey; in reality, the levels are cleverly disguised mental exercises designed to help you relax and focus your mind. If you can get past the wacky pseudo-Indian music and "Berkeley in the 60s"-inspired game design, you'll find it's really one of the most innovative video games ever created.

Eye Toy: I've talked about this hardware/software combo in a previous column, touching briefly on the concept. Eye Toy gives you a USB camera for the PlayStation 2 and motion-capture games that put you in the middle of the action on screen. But I didn't talk about how the game gets your blood pumping. I've been spending inordinate amounts of time playing the hopelessly addictive Kung Fu game on the Eye Toy: Play disc. What I didn't realize initially is that holding my arms in fighting position and then swinging them from side to side is really hard work--as in "my arms are going to fall off" hard. And yet I can't help but keep on playing, fighting flying ninjas while I defend my territory in the middle of the screen. Want a real workout? Grab a couple of half-pound weights while you're playing. I may never get that Ahnold physique, but this is one form of exercise I don't mind at all.

All Your Iambic Pentameter Are Belong to Us

From the weird and wacky file comes this book of video-game-inspired poetry, Blue Wizard Is About to Die (Rusty Immelman Press, 2004, 800/462-6420), by first-time author Seth "Fingers" Flynn Barker. If you didn't think video games inspired the kinds of deep emotion that would make good poetry, you might want to take a look at some of the samples on the book's Web site. I've gotten permission from the author to reprint his poem "Paperboy" in this column (with a slight alteration to meet PC World's family-friendly language policy). Here it is:

If only I could save you
from the blondes in the black
Duesenbergs; hold you back,
grab your freakin' handle-bars,
shaking my head, preventing
your insane ride into traffic
saying "it's not worth it, kid;
whatever they're paying you,
it's not worth it."

Poetry isn't the only form of art inspired by video games. If you're a fan of the classic Nintendo Entertainment System, be sure to check out The Minibosses, a band that only plays covers of old NES game theme tunes. Of course, video game music isn't for everyone, but the Minibosses are, apparently, at the top of this very small and specialized field.

Have a question or comment? Drop a line to Andrew Brandt.