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The Best Exercise Games for the Xbox Kinect

dance-central-3-fitnessWell, the good folks at Harmonix are getting into the act of helping us with our New Year’s weight loss resolutions. They’re introducing “Fitness Challenge Fridays”. The first challenge was issued this past Friday, January 4 and it looks like they’ll be posting a new “challenge” every week.

Unlike the Microsoft promotion, there are no “prizes” for taking part in this Challenge. On the other hand, it looks like Harmonix has done a little homework (as opposed to linking to a search results page with the word “fitness” :P) and has hand-selected songs from the original Dance Central, Dance Central 2, and Dance Central 3 that focus on a different goal each week.

For week 1 (January 4 to January 10) the focus is on lower body workout and strengthening of the legs.The songs they’ve selected for you to choose from focus have a lot of squat-like movements for working out the largest muscle groups in your body; your quads, glutes, hamstrings, and calves. By getting some intense activity to these muscles (and getting the soreness out of the way quick), it’ll set up you for additional workouts in the coming weeks.

Here’s a list of the songs that they’ve identified. Even beyond this challenge, you can refer back to this list if you’re looking to set up a custom workout program of your own any time in the year.

Dance Central Songs for Lower Body Workout

  • Bass Down Low (DC3)
  • Calabria 2008 (DC3)
  • Da’ Butt (DC3)
  • DJ Got Us Fallin’ In Love (DC2)
  • Gangnam Style (DLC)
  • Get Busy (DLC)
  • Get Low (DC3)
  • Get Ur Freak On (DC2)
  • Gonna Make You Sweat (Everybody Dance Now) (DLC)
  • Lap Dance (DLC)
  • Massive Attack (DC2)
  • Moves Like Jagger (DC3
  • Now That We Found Love (DC3)
  • OMG (DC3)
  • Only Girl (In The World) (DLC)
  • Party Rock Anthem (DLC)
  • Round & Round (DLC)
  • Run (I’m A Natural Disaster) (DC2)
  • Scenario (DLC)
  • Sexy and I Know It (DC3)
  • Sexy Chick (DC2)
  • Take Over Control (DC3)
  • Teach Me How To Dougie (DC3)
  • Twisted (DLC)
  • We No Speak Americano (DLC)
  • You’re A Jerk (DC2)

One thing I really appreciate that Harmonix has done that I wish Ubisoft would let you do for Just Dance 4 is to export songs from older versions of Dance Central and import them into the newest one. It will cost you 400 Microsoft Points for each disc, but at the end of the day that $5 or so will let you play all the songs and keep all your stats in one place, a much better proposition than having to re-purchase every individual song. Granted, since most of us already paid over $50 for the disc you’d think they’d let us do it for free, but I guess they have to get money out of it somehow. The good news is, you’ll only get charged once: if you’ve already paid to transfer songs from DC to DC2, you won’t be charged to move those same songs to DC3. Time permitting, I’ll document the exact process for transferring songs in another post.

Once you have the songs in DC3, you can create a playlist. The “challenge” is for you to create a playlist of 10 songs (10 of the 26 songs are downloadable content that cost 240 points a pop, of course…why not hold us by our ankles and shake the loose change out? :P) and then play each playlist all the way through during the week, preferably on Medium or Hard setting where the moves are a lot more demonstrative and the pace much quicker.

Once you’ve completed the “challenge”, you’re encouraged to post to Facebook, the forums, or Twitter. I’ll probably be posting mine on Twitter, assuming I can keep up 🙂 Here’s the playlist I’ll be setting up:

  • Bass Down Low (DC3)
  • Da’ Butt (DC3)
  • DJ Got Us Fallin’ In Love (DC2)
  • Gangnam Style (DLC)
  • Get Low (DC3)
  • Get Ur Freak On (DC2)
  • Moves Like Jagger (DC3)
  • Run (I’m A Natural Disaster) (DC2)
  • Sexy and I Know It (DC3)
  • Teach Me How To Dougie (DC3)

Here’s a little added bonus–by doing the Dance Central Fitness Challenge and buying DLC, you’ll be “earning” hours towards the 20 hours of the Xbox Live New Year New You promotion.