PowerBoxing on the XAVIX

I am posting about this cool game console, called XAVIXSports. It is a series of indoor sports games, such as baseball, boxing, bowling, tennis, dancing and golf. It has been around for a while, but we recently acquired it in our Learning Games Lab, which is an exploratory environment where gamers play and evaluate games. The cool thing about XAVIX is that it includes real sports equipment that act as the controllers. For example, in the boxing game, gamers can play with real boxing gloves, giving the game a realistic feel, and in the tennis game; mini tennis rackets are the controllers.

Recently I have become interested in videogame boxing so I spent some time playing the Jackie Chan PowerBoxing game on the Xavix this morning. It claims to focus on toning and endurance using ring action that is both challenging and fun. Well I can say it is definitely a good cardio workout. One of the first training modes concentrates on punching the bag so many times in so many seconds. I think you are supposed to work up levels, but I somehow started out on a high level and was supposed to punch the bag 180 times in 30 seconds, and as hard as I tried, it didn’t happen, and my arms were very sore from repeatedly trying to do so. If the calorie counter is accurate, I burned 19 calories each time I tried, and I tried 5 times so that is 95 calories I burned in 2 and a half minutes. It would take me 15 minutes of walking to burn that many calories, and honestly I would much rather workout punching a video punching bag and relieve some stress and aggression while I am at it than take a brisk, boring walk. The punching is really intense and definitely works out your arms and brings up your heart rate.  My initial thought is that it truly is a workout disguised as fun.

Now for the bad part, the graphics are very poor, in fact they are just plain awful, but if you can get past that and go the distance, it has great workout potential. So for me, as I am in it for the exercise potential, I will overlook the graphics and enjoy turning on the TV, putting in the game cartridge (yes it’s a cartridge), slipping on the boxing gloves, and getting sweaty.

I can’t wait until we have another group of kids come into the lab for a testing session so we can get their opinion of the Xavix- I wonder if they will enjoy the gameplay and cool controllers or be distracted by the poor graphics?