Akademik

n.

Elbow pain or numbness caused by excessive use of the Wii gaming console's remote control.

A videogame maker has finally succeeded in getting kids off the couch and moving around. But the new approach is turning out to be more exercise than some players bargained for.

These surprisingly vigorous workouts are being triggered by Nintendo's new Wii videogames. The Wii game console, which went on sale last weekend, competes with Microsoft's Xbox 360 and Sony's new PlayStation 3. One of the Wii's distinguishing features is a motion-sensitive technology that requires players to act out their character's movements, wielding the game's controller like a sword or swinging it like a tennis racket.

The new console has been wildly successful, selling out at stores and winning high marks from critics and game buffs. But as players spend more time with the Wii, some are noticing that hours waving the game's controller around can add up to fairly intense exertion — resulting in aches and pains common in more familiar forms of exercise. They're reporting aching backs, sore shoulders — even something some have dubbed "Wii elbow."

—Jamin Warren, "A Wii Workout: When Videogames Hurt," The Wall Street Journal, November 25, 2006

Ismaili says his brother and a friend collapsed onto a couch, exhausted, a minute into a round of Wii boxing.

"The Wii gives you one good workout," says Ismaili."Both guys were sore the next day."

The soreness and joint pain has become common enough that gamers have coined the term "Wii elbow."

—Matthew Chung, "A bad case of Wii whack," The Toronto Star, December 3, 2006

The teams also had to avoid overtaxing the players by requiring extensive movements for every action. Designers created ways for the games to work both with players standing up doing natural full-body motions and with those sitting on a couch and executing more subtle movements.

"The games don't always require exaggerated motions," said Noah Musler, director of artists and repertoire at Sega. "You don't want people to get Wii elbow."

—Ryan Kim, "The motion is the notion," The San Francisco Chronicle, September 25, 2006

Within minutes (more or less) after Nintendo announced the Wii gaming console on April 27, 2006, wordsmiths dubbed its remote control the Wiimote. Here's an early media citation (although you can find cites online in groups and forums as early as April 28):

Now to be fair, the controllers are cool. There is one for each hand, and you hold them as you would TV remotes — or Wiimotes now, I guess.

—Rob Watson, "A new name for Nintendo system? Wii protest," The Philadelphia Inquirer, May 6, 2006