For years, video games have been slammed for the reason that prolonged hours of gaming can result in lack of physical activity, which is linked to obesity and many more health hazards. Doesn’t matter how fond we are of the luxury of having everything at your fingertips, it is a well-established fact that human beings can stay fit and healthy only if their daily routine involves sufficient physical activity, and while it is hard to keep moving at our workplaces or classrooms, sports and games were meant to be an ideal activity for providing our bodies with the much needed workout, but video games took that away. However, we see the gaming industry making some reprimands with the introduction of rhythm games, and now with camera based controls and motion sensors; we have got a number of games that calls for the players to get up from their couches and move some muscles (finally).

These games are fun to play, but they serve even more important purposes i.e. making your exercise a lot more fun, while you will find some games meant specifically for this purpose, you can take just about any dance game and use it for doing some exercise and losing those extra pounds.

Let’s have a look at the top five dance games which are available in the market.

Dance Central 2:

Dance Central 2 is one of the most popular dance games for xBox 360 Kinect, recently introduced by Harmonix Music Systems. The players score points by performing the required dance moves, you can play in both single player and two player mode, and while it is primarily a dance game, for people using it as an exercise routine, there are milestones including calories burned or star count. There are a total of 44 songs available for the players to choose from, while you can download some tracks as well. The game has been receiving mostly positive reviews from the players and critics so far.

Just Dance 3:

As the name suggest, Just Dance 3 is all about dancing and partying, but there’s something that would be of interest to people looking to have a workout via this game, and that’s the “Just Sweat” option where you can chose the type of your workout and observe your progress. There are different categories for the playlists including Pop Pop, Sweet Attack, 80’s or Oldies but Goldies, with more than 50 tracks to choose from. The game is available for all three platforms including Wii, Kinect, and PS3.

Your Shape Fitness Evolved:

Your Shape is one of the best games out there, for the people looking to use their gaming consoles for losing some weight and getting a toned up body, the game has everything, from warm ups to yoga classes, and from dance to more than 90 hours of various activities. Your Shape Fitness Evolved is not really a dance game, even though there are some dance activities that will make you sweat, but still the points, medal system, and all kinds of progress reports will make it an ideal game for fitness freaks. Some have complained about the inaccuracy of motion sensors, but then, hardly any of these games can offer flawless motions sensing technology, and it is something we will definitely see improving in coming releases of all these games.

Everybody Dance 3:

Everybody Dance 3 is the third sequel for one of the most popular dance games for Play Station. You and your friends can dance for hours on any of the 40 tracks, or even better, you can submit your own moves and challenge your friends to hit the floor with these moves. While mainly a dance game that you can enjoy with your friends, it can serve as a great workout when you are alone.

Michael Jackson – The Experience:

You can’t talk about dance and then keep the Micheal Jackson’s name from coming up in the discussion, and same goes for the dance games. So here we are, this game is all about experiencing some of the legendary songs from the artist who has kept the audience mesmerized by his dance moves for years, you will especially enjoy this game if you have grown up in the era of thriller, if that’s the case then working out can’t be more fun than dancing on the beats of the songs like thriller, beat it, bad, smooth criminal, remember the time, black and white, and the likes.

Joel of WeightLossTriumph.com writes on topics related to fitness and weight loss, including a description of the Diet-to-Go program. At his website, you will also find information about BistroMD. Bistro MD is a diet delivery program developed by Dr Caroline Cederquist. It delivers chef-prepared, freshly cooked food to your door.