As I said, I was dragged into a round of Just Dance 2 on the Wii, and since I didn't know the song we were doing, I stuck around because one of the two women I was playing with wanted to do "The Power" next, and I always liked that song. Turns out it's a lot longer than I remember! Maybe it was an extended dance remix. Because by the end of it, I was sweating and exhausted! I never played Just Dance, but I have played the spin-off title Dance On Broadway, and it's all pretty much the same. You hold a Wiimote in your right hand and mirror the dance moves of the character on screen. Here it's very artistic outlines of dancers, but it's still pretty easy to follow. As usual with this type of game, the Wiimote was less-than-responsive, but as with Dance on Broadway, I expect it gets better as you learn the choreography better. It's got a good mix of songs from Rihanna to Ike and Tina Turner (come on — who doesn't want to do the "rolling on the river"?). And now they've added co-op duets where you can dance with a partner if you tire of trying to beat their score in a dance-off. Just Dance 2 is due out in the fall of 2010.

Next to that was Gold's Gym Dance Workout, also for the Wii. Again, you'll dance to a variety of popular hits, but with more of a cardio feel to the choreography, incorporating boxing. Although I did give some Merengue a shot, and the first lesson walks you through some basic steps before becoming so complicated you're practically doing it for real. Well, you would be if you're more coordinated than I am. There's also an option to practice the dancing while changing camera angles and the speed of playback, so it seems like you could almost use this to learn genuine moves to impress on the dance floor! In addition to the multiple levels of cardio boxing and Latin dance, there's also mini-games, though they were much less impressive. I simply couldn't get the hang of the bull-riding mini-game with the Wiimote, but I could see how it would be easier with a Balance Board. The sword fighting one was a little better, having you swing at various objects to slice and dice in specific directions. But no Wii Motion Plus, which I thought was odd. This is less of a stealth fitness game than Just Dance 2, but making it more of a workout might mean easier choreography, which I would definitely appreciate! Gold's Gym Dance Workout is scheduled to release August 17.

Next up was Racquet Sports, which is being ported over to the PlayStation 3 with shinier graphics. It's essentially Hot Shots, but using the Move controllers. There's five different sports: Tennis, Ping-Pong, Badminton, Squash and Beach Tennis. I just played a quick round of tennis, and naturally, they let the journalist win (she didn't even make it look close!). The graphics are nice, but it seems to play like your typical game of Wii Tennis. I didn't really feel like there was any more control with the Move controller, and in fact it actually felt a little loose and unresponsive. Now, it could be because it's an early build or perhaps it's one of the settings, because you can select assisted or expert controls. But the characters are cute and you can dress 'em up in adorable outfits you unlock as you play through the story mode! Racquet Sports will be launching this fall with the release of the PlayStation Move.

I passed up the Petz games on the DS, although I sort of wanted to check out the fashion design games they had, since they're more for our audience. But I wanted to see what they had in store for those silly rabbids with Raving Rabbids "Travel In Time." This is very much a party game where you and three of your friends play a rabbid who travel through time to play mini-games and mess up the timestream. Even the hub museum area is fun to tool around in, selecting costumes (I was a caveman with a club) and singing songs together. Or just bashing each other in the head with a flick of the Wiimote. It's fun! First we journeyed back to the Renaissance where we screwed up DaVinci's portrait of that Mona Lisa chick by making her laugh. Oops! That led into a game where we flew around a castle in a Mario Kart-style aerial combat race. Not sure what one has to do with the other, but these are the rabbids we're talking about here. I managed to crash this demo, too, so we reset and tried a different game, where you have to team up with one of the other players to collect boxes back in the '20s during the stock market crash. (I kind of missed what was in them. I just know the glowy ones were worth more points!) You have to use each other to climb to higher spots and get boxes that are just out of reach, so teamwork is key. And yes, that's toilet paper connecting you as you can see in the screenshot. The typical rabbids humor is all over this game, and there's a slew of mini-games of different types (flying, bouncing, teamwork, etc) to keep you busy when Raving Rabbids "Travel In Time" releases on November 9 in the US and November 11 in Europe.