knockknock.biz luggage tags. Photo courtesy of justinph.

I guess it's finally time for me to level up.

It was the summer of '99 when I convinced my then editor to send me on a tour of the U.S. videogame industry. When I finally returned three weeks later, my head was still spinning. I felt as though I'd seen the future of entertainment. It was then that I made it my mission to put NEWSWEEK's coverage of this growing medium on the map. I did that in print, with cover stories on the Japanese launch of the PlayStation 2 and the spread of online gaming. I did it online, with the debut of the blog N'Gai Croal's Level Up. I did it on television, with appearances on MSNBC and CNN. You all watched me push, prod, praise, scold, discuss and debate videogames across multiple media, both mainstream and enthusiast. That's because my editors were prescient enough to let me apply my talents and establish my reach beyond the magazine, from co-blogging with MTV News to writing a monthly column for Edge and more. For this, I say to them all, thank you.

Having achieved all of this, I can say without a shadow of a doubt that I've accomplished what I set out to do ten years ago. And now it's time for me to take that decade’s worth of accumulated knowledge and do something else with it. After Friday March 6th, my passions will take me beyond the world of journalism. I’ll be wearing many hats on this new journey: videogame design consultant, media strategist, consumer technology reporter, columnist, blogger and, as always, provocateur. You’ll be able to keep track of my various adventures at ngaicroal.com, and feel free to reach out to me via email at ncroalbiz@gmail.com. It’s been a pleasure conversing with all of you, and I look forward to continuing our dialogue in the years to come.

Cheers,

 Newsweek's Anne Underwood files this report on Wii Fit:

As a health writer, I know the awesome benefits of exercise--improving cardiac and lung function, encouraging weight loss, boosting strength and endurance, improving mood and possibly even making you smarter. In theory, that's all terrific. It's the bit about getting to the gym more than twice a week that's the problem. Now Nintendo's new Wii Fit is bringing the gym--or a stripped-down version of it--to me and my Mii (the Wii's onscreen representation of me). At $90--plus $250 for the basic console--Wii Fit is not cheap, but it still costs less than an actual gym membership. And since it's in the middle of my living room, it's harder to ignore. That can only be good news.

Wii Fit follows on the success of the original Wii console, which has been a coveted item since its November 2006 release. Reaching well beyond the teenage-male fan base of the standard videogame, the basic Wii has attracted kids, soccer moms and seniors. Certain rehab centers are using it to help patients recover from strokes, injuries and, in some cases, war wounds. Physical therapists have even come up with a name for this new form of rehab--"Wiihab."

Where the original Wii featured golf, boxing, tennis, baseball and bowling, Wii Fit offers fitness training of four types--aerobics, strength training, yoga and balance games. Most of the exercises are fun, and all of them increase your heart rate or muscle tone while helping develop "core" muscle groups that aid balance and posture.

The key to all of this is the Wii Fit balance board that you stand on. It looks like a glorified kitchen cutting board but contains weight-sensitive areas for both feet. The concept came from a Nintendo developer who saw sumo wrestlers on TV weighing themselves with two scales. (Japanese scales go up to only about 300 pounds, so two scales are often necessary.) While trying out the two-scale idea, "developers noticed that keeping the balance between your left and right legs is actually very challenging and fun," says Cammie Dunaway, executive vice president of sales and marketing for Nintendo of America. Developers recruited Kaoru Matsui, a Japanese trainer, who was already using balance concepts, to advise them on specific exercises.

Don't even think about trying to fool the board. It uses four sensors to measure your body weight 60 times a second. It gauges not only the total pressure on each foot but also how your weight is distributed. It notes your tiniest wobbles and translates this into eerie insight into your posture and balance. On the ski jump, you have to position yourself just right, in alignment with a dot on the screen, as your Mii barrels down the slope. Then, as you reach the bottom of the ski jump, you straighten your knees, rise onto your toes and hold the pose to lift off and sail through the air. If you're successful, you'll enjoy waving to the applause of a virtual crowd. (If you're not, expect to tumble head over heels in an avalanche of snow and skis that's not pretty. Fall off the tightrope in the exercise of the same name, and it doesn't show us what happens.) At the end of each of the 40-plus exercises, you receive not only a numeric score but also a one-to-four star rating, from "unbalanced" at one end of the spectrum to "yoga master," "bodybuilder" or "calorie incinerator" at the other.

At their best, gadgets like Wii Fit can help people get in shape by combining exercise with the addictiveness of videogames. A half hour on the elliptical can be boring. Not so a videogame that's always offering you new rewards, like vocal encouragement ("great job") and extra points in the Wii Bank that unlock new exercises. Studies have shown that earlier games like Dance Dance Revolution helped people lose weight by making them want to come back for more. Can the Wii Fit hold one's interest for the months needed to lose weight and get in shape? Perhaps. But it certainly tries to ensnare your competitive spirit, allowing you to monitor your progress and play against family members. And there is the ever-present challenge of meeting your weight-loss goals, which the scale-based system excels in tracking.

Read the rest of the story here:

 Call of Duty 4: Modern Combat, developed by Infinity Ward and published by Activision

At Newsweek HQ, most of our colleagues are either boomers in name or boomers in spirit, which means there haven't been many serious gamers among our ranks. But from the increasing number of game-related conversations we've had with our office mates, it's clear that this is starting to change. Our de facto Xbox 360 correspondent Rolf Ebeling, who in his day job is the creative director for Newsweek.com, posted here back in October about how Electronic Arts' Skate triggered his boyhood memories of the birthplace of modern American skateboarding. In today's entry, Level Up's foremost Halo fanboy and online multiplayer aficionado explains why his uneasy reaction to the single-player experience of Call of Duty 4: Modern Combat has made it his Game of the Year for 2007.

I play games to vent. I feel weird admitting that, given that I'm an adult and should just gracefully accept life's real challenges and focus calmly on real solutions. Sometimes, though, firing a fake incendiary round into a group of fake goons and watching them fly into fake walls...well, there's a real satisfaction in that. Playing my own pop psychologist, the primary reason I've burned through two Xbox 360s is to keep a tenuous hold on my childhood and teenage years. It's the same reason I'm stupidly happy when I'm fish-tailing my mountain bike around curves, or how I can listen to "The Queen is Dead" over and over again and never really get tired of it. For that, I feel little or no guilt.

But another part of why I play is to have an experience that's insulated from the consequences or limitations of my current reality. For an hour or two, I'm can free myself of life's responsibilities (job, family, being a law-abiding citizen) and barriers (time, gravity, vulnerability to melee attacks) and put a serious hurt on somebody who deserves it (the Covenant, that sniper over flag three, whoever just ground their heel into my last nerve today). I can overreact spectacularly and get Achievement Points for it.

The very idea of Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, the franchise's first foray away from the well-trod World War II genre, has had me drooling for the past few months.

Skateboarder Tony Hawk and graphic designer David Carson

At Newsweek HQ, most of our colleagues are either boomers in name or boomers in spirit, which means there haven't been many serious gamers among our ranks. But from the increasing number of game-related conversations we've had with our office mates, it's clear that this is starting to change. Our de facto Xbox 360 correspondent Rolf Ebeling, who in his day job is the creative director for Newsweek.com, posted here back in September about getting a new post-Red Ring of Death Xbox 360 just in time for the Halo 3 launch, followed by a postcard showing off his very first kill in Halo 3 multiplayer. In today's entry, Electronic Arts' Skate serves as a jumping off point for his boyhood memories of the birthplace of modern American skateboarding.

I have some news. You might want to sit down--I've been playing a game that isn't Halo 3.

Given my almost exclusive interest in multiplayer FPS chaos, you would have thought I'd barely be able to dress myself and hold down a job after midnight on September 25th (for non-believers, that was the release day for the Master Chief's final chapter). Yes, I have been spending nearly all of the Xbox Live time I can scrape together sticking people with spiked grenades, but EA has managed to divert my attention for an hour or two with a game about plywood, polyurethane and the police: Skate.

Knowing that I grew up north of San Diego in the 70s and 80s--and if you could hear me speak, you'd detect the slight So Cal accent in my voice--you might assume I spent a fair amount of my youth loitering in front of the local 7-Eleven on a skateboard. Truth is, I could barely go twenty feet on the street without wobbling off the board and watching it sail out into the intersection. Yet, however painfully unskilled I was in the actual act, I've never lost an interest in culture and aesthetics of skateboarding; it was part of the air I breathed. Shamelessly, I've even stood in line on opening day for both "Jackass" movies.

Recently, I was fortunate enough to ride N'Gai's coattails and sneak into a preview night for Halo 3--a choice invite that would make my fellow twelve-year-olds-at-heart quietly curse my name. To be honest, it was a bittersweet experience.

When you last heard from me, I described how my love for my Xbox 360 was sliding down from unconditional by Microsoft essentially admitting that something wasn't right with the design. It is remarkable that a leading DIY solution to fixing a 360 stricken with the red ring of death is to swaddle it in towels: swaddling is how you make a baby fall asleep, not how you should have to revive home electronics. Now that I had shot my mouth off here on the permalinks of Level Up, I feared my prediction of my Xbox shuffling off its digital coil would come to pass. It flat-lined, of course. At first I was resigned, mildly annoyed that I would have to wait to play the new Ayn-Rand-with-guns-and-creepy-little-vampire-girls epic BioShock--but looking at a calendar and seeing September 25th only weeks away was no-scope shot to the head: I was going to miss Halo 3.

The HAL 9000 computer from Stanley Kubrick's "2001: A Space Odyssey"

At Newsweek HQ, most of our colleagues are either boomers in name or boomers in spirit, which means there haven't been many serious gamers among our ranks. But from the increasing number of game-related conversations we've had with our office mates, it's clear that this is starting to change. Our de facto Xbox 360 correspondent Rolf Ebeling, who in his day job is the creative director for Newsweek.com, posted here last month about his brief playtime with the Halo 3 multiplayer beta, sandwiched between the obligations--and joy--of raising his new daughter. In today's entry, he reflects on how his affection for his Xbox 360 has been tested in recent weeks.

My first Xbox 360--that's right, my first Xbox 360--died just two weeks after I received it as a surprise for my wedding anniversary last summer (my wife still gets Hall of Fame status for that gift idea.) One minute it was humming along nicely as I parachuted into position on Bridge Too Far in Battlefield 2: Modern Combat, the next it froze up and stared me down with its HAL 9000-esque eye burning three-quarters red--the dreaded "ring of death" came to visit. I somewhat sheepishly brought it back to my local Best Buy, secretly afraid--after a night of Googling message boards--that I'd suffocated it in our TV cabinet and melted its innards to mush. The salesperson at the returns desk barely looked up as I gingerly pushed the repackaged unit across the counter. "So have you been getting a lot of returns on these?" I ventured after the silence became uncomfortable. "Uh-huh," she said, eyebrows raised, "good luck with this one," pushing a new unit back across the counter. I left quickly.

Truth be told, the Xbox consoles are the first Microsoft products I've truly loved, and the only PC-based products I've spent money on--otherwise, my household is all Apple. It felt like Redmond had gotten it right with the first Xbox: solid-if-chunky industrial design; smooth and bug-free operating system; genre-defining games like Halo, and Xbox Live--the lifeblood of my nightly gaming. Miraculously, Microsoft had become the underdog I rooted for: they even wooed me away from my PlayStation 2 after only a year.

At Newsweek HQ, most of our colleagues are either boomers in name or boomers in spirit, which means there haven't been many serious gamers among our ranks. But from the increasing number of game-related conversations we've had with our office mates, it's clear that this is starting to change. Our de facto Xbox 360 correspondent Rolf Ebeling, who in his day job is the creative director for Newsweek.com, posted here last month about the compatibility of videogaming with his then-imminent fatherhood. In today's entry, he briefly steps away from the early joys of child-rearing--congrats to you and the missus, Rolf!--to write about a few stolen moments with the Halo 3 multiplayer beta.

When I last left you, fellow enthusiasts, I was on the verge of being a father and struggling with the conventional wisdom on parenthood that many have been quick to inform me of--essentially that I'll never have time to do anything I like ever again. I tried my best to spit back that bitter pill by posting about my dad's ability to merge his interests with mine as I grew up. Time will tell if I'm able to be as canny with my now week-old daughter.

I work the night shift, mostly acting as her human bassinet; she lies across my stomach in my folded arms, completely oblivious to hour nine of my "Lord of the Rings: Way Longer Than You Remember Edition" DVD marathon or cable surfing (I finally got around to seeing "Quadrophenia"...starting at 5 in the morning.) Honestly, I can't complain that much--in describing her, it's been the first time I've ever used the words "cute," "little" and "munchkin" in the same sentence with complete sincerity.

For a brief moment, however, the little one decided that it was time to sleep for more than a fifteen-minute stretch in her real bed. Yes, this was the moment for me to be responsible and finally shut my own eyes, but how could I not cash in my golden ticket and fire up the Halo 3 multiplayer beta? Shh--non-gamers and disapproving co-workers, I have the floor now; you'll be given your chance to speak. Elsewhere. Maybe.

Mother's Day is coming up. And when I'm done opening my present (bath products) and putting my spring bouquet in a vase, I may well end up picking up a videogame controller with my son. That's right. I'm a forty-something mother and there's a good chance that I'm going to play videogames with one of my sons this weekend.

I'm not drawn to them. I can think of about ten things off the top of my head I'd rather do. In fact, I curse the whole idea of them every time I trip over the console, which, inexplicably, seems to migrate from the TV to the floor whenever the lights go out. But among their other activities, my kids like videogames. They like them a lot. They talk about them, think about them, play with them and spend (too much) money on them.

Like many parents, I harshly limit the time they can spend playing. They can only watch screens of any nature--TV, video or Game Boy--before 10 a.m. Saturday and Sunday mornings and between 8 and 10 on Friday and Saturday nights. Still, I feel like it's part of my obligation as a parent to dip my toe into their world. So once in a while, I play videogames with them.

At Newsweek HQ, most of our colleagues are either boomers in name or boomers in spirit, which means there haven't been many serious gamers among our ranks. But from the increasing number of game-related conversations we've had with our office mates, it's clear that this is starting to change. Our de facto Xbox 360 correspondent Rolf Ebeling, who in his day job is the creative director for Newsweek.com, posted here earlier this month about the experience of briefly abandoning his Xbox 360 for the pleasures and pains of God of War II on the PlayStation 2. Today, he meditates on the compatibility of videogaming with his imminent fatherhood.

Two weeks of packing, moving and unpacking five years worth of belongings into a new apartment have left little time for me to sink into the couch for a night of virtual combat. In sitting down to write my latest dispatch from the (mostly) Xbox 360 front, my intent was to humorously detail the horrors of not being able to school legions of anonymous teenagers in multiplayer beatdowns. Instead, my two weeks of online abstinence have left me pensive--and admittedly, a bit apprehensive about my gaming future.

You see, in three weeks I'm due to become a father. That isolated fact gives me pause enough, but what have sometimes shaken me are the casual comments and jibes by friends, family and coworkers with children. If I make the mistake of mentioning some new band I've seen, finally getting a decent night's sleep, or--as was the case recently--that I was planning on a late night session to write about and play games, the response is, well, buddy, when the baby comes, you can pretty much forget about all of that.