Matt Suoja: Wii! Video games are fun — and good exercise, too!

• Matt Suoja

Matt Suoja

Talk about it

Walk into the Two Harbors Pamida and go to the back and you will see some rows of video games, many of them sports.

Certainly there will be kids there, but don’t be surprised if you see adults too — especially of my generation.

Recently, the Madden NFL 10 video game was released and I decided to purchase the new version for my addiction.

While playing, I contemplated the question many people ask: Why would someone play a sports video game instead of getting off the couch and going out to play a real sport?

Well, in the real world, most people can’t play football, particularly any type of football after high school. It’s rough and injuries occur regularly. Speaking for myself, I don’t like to get pummeled.

But playing a video game is like playing in a fantasy world where, from the safety of your couch, you can make the game-winning drive of the Super Bowl without dealing with Shawne Merriman. That’s beauty of a video game like Madden, along with many others.

That’s a great defense for us couch potatoes, but stop for a minute: Whoever said that playing video games and playing sports were mutually exclusive in the first place?

Sports video games may actually be one way to get more youth outside playing in the real world. Let’s say little Jimmy starts playing video games and all a sudden he comes across one for hockey. This in turn could pique his interest to play the real sport. This could be especially true in areas — unlike ours — where hockey is not as prevalent.

Many would say that video games take away from America’s youth, but I disagree. It can only bring on ideas of what they can really do physically.

In fact, some video games actually do make you exercise, like Wii Fit.

I’m not quite sure how many calories Jimmy can burn dancing around to Wii Fit, nor have I tried it myself, but people seem to dig it. Last spring, the game-watching Web site 1up.com reported one-month sales of Wii Fit at 644,000 units. And that’s during the depths of the economic downturn.

I would bet a Guitar Hero World Tour (and it takes a lot of energy to play that) most people who are older than me would feel quite different. But who are they to judge, especially if they’ve never even played any of these games before — and Pac Man doesn’t count.

You say video games destroy youth, I say they reinvigorate it.

Hand me the chips, wouldcha please?

Tags: two harbors, sports, matt suoja, video games