No, Nintendo haven't invented dog tennis - but they have invented a way to let you to hook little Fido up to the Wii Fit. He doesn't actually get to play games, or even do any dog specific exercises, but you can weigh him and see how his diet is doing.

The key feature of the original Wii Fit game is the plastic Wii Balance board, which doubles up as a game controller, calorie burn counter, and now in the new Wii Fit Plus game it also serves as a weighing machine for your pet.

You can also create a Mii avatar for your dog. I think that's something we've all wanted to do for a while.

At last - the geography geek comes into her own!

A new iPhone game ask you to place the cities of the world on a map - and the more accurately and quicker you can do it, the better you do. The game, Geomaster costing £1.19 from Visuamobile is also available on the iPod Touch. Finally those youthful hours spent poring over atlases will be useful.

Played over time, of course this would actually teach you about the world's geography as well. Where is Addis Ababa for example. There's a US cities challenge as well as the worldwide one and more challenges planned: a US state game, countries of Asia, Europe, South America... and a lot more.

Perhaps this should be made compulsory for those people they always interview in documentaries who think Afghanistan is in France etc.
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Related: Super Obama World: The best virtual Obama gameage yet

If there's anything that would improve your living room surely it's some large pieces of green plastic from the games accessories manufacturer Thrustmaster.

Though they may look like pieces of a nu-rave S&M bondage kit, these are muscle and fitness enhancing accessories which can combine with your Ninentdo Wii. As the days get chillier, exercising outside gets less appealing and staying in the sitting room with your Wii becomes a more pleasant option... so Thrustmaster has designed their products to maximise the exercise benefits you get from a Wii game.

There are weighted wrist and ankle bands, devices which make you burn that much more energy when you move those particular parts of your body, and a step aerobic riser that makes stepping up and down that much more strenuous.

Follow on after the jump

For those Hello Kitty fangirls out there, there's a new cute cat in town, Angel Cat Sugar. From the creator of the world's most famous cat, Yuko Shimizu, she is the star of a new computer game, coming out the 1st October.

Combing three lovely things in her name, she has angel wings and spreads love and happiness through her kindness to others. She's been around since 2002, but is only hitting the games market now. Angel Cat and her best friends Basil, Parsley and Thyme all feature.

The game, on Nintendo DS, brings Angel Cat Sugar to life as it takes players into "the magical Angel World, where they too can help make the world a better place through kindness".

See the story of the game after the jump

Sims 3 is a bit of a marvel, and its new neighbourhood feature makes social interaction a lot easier and more realistic.

In a brilliant blog, games design student Robin Burkinshaw tells the tragic but fascinating story of what happened when she stripped two characters of their possessions and left them in a place designed to look an abandoned park, letting her simulated humans fend for themselves.

It's a virtual social experiment that relies almost entirely on the programming of the characters to decide what happens next.

Like some kind of David Attenborough of the Sims world, her reportage of how they try to keep surviving is slow, clear and keeps you begging for more. It is testament to How Amazing Sims 3 is that - minus a few thought bubbles here and there - this could be a true story IRL, and it's gaining a big following.

Read more after the jump:

E3 excitement has most gamers rubbing their hands in a frenzy of anticipation and trying to wonder what they can pawn/steal to afford some of the releases soon heading to our shores. Burt amongst the many, many great game son offer, are some whose quality is slightly more questionable. Here's our round up of the games you SHOULDN'T get this year...

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Rumours have abounded for some time now in regards to the hotly aanticipated PSP announcement, and some have described the launch of the new handheld device as 'the worst-kept secret of E3'. We now have confirmation on the new device, but will it live up to stylish mock up pic (above) that we coveted?

We said: No more UMD Discs

We got: No UMD discs! Instead the device will have a 16GB flash memory, so there's no need for that pesky drive! They've also added in Bluetooth support so you can potentially 'share' games.

The battle for the console crown is full steam ahead, as Sony reveals its new 'Wii-like' controller for the PS3, which seems to directly rival Microsoft's Project Natal. This woks by using a Playstation Eye camera to connect with the newly designed remote, which vaguely resembles a magic wand, with a flashing pink orb at the top.

Gaming with no controllers? Sounds like the kind of thing dreamed up by people who spent to much time watching the Fifth Element. Nonetheless, this exciting proposition is to become a reality- and it's going to be a lot more intuitive and involved than the ill fated Eyetoy.

What you're looking at is a system which allow your body to be the gamepad- as your various wiggles, kicks and actions will be decoded by the system and interpreted into game action. Essentially the aim is to allow you to become a giant Wiimote- but how do they plan to do this?

It's all to do with the Project Natal sensor, a device which combines an RGB camera, depth sensor, mic and processor in one. Simply stand in front of the camera and your movements will be tracked and translated- in 3D! The issue with previous incarnations of this type (the Eyetoy again) were that they viewed the body in 2D which led to slow reaction times and jerky gameplay.

The heat is on for DJ style games, and it seems DJ Hero from Activision has some competition on its hands, with the scarily similar looking Scratch Deck. The game is called Scratch: The Ultimate DJ.Wouldn't you know it- it also features a peripheral set of decks to allow you to score points on a turntable-style highway.

It's one of those curses of modern day living- batteries will die at the most inopportune times, and then your spare set/charger is nowhere to be found. Well it seems gamers aren't going to sit back and let their rating levels drop due to juiced out equipment, and a novel idea to keep the Wii working has been introduced.

Say hello to the Wiimote inductive charging system, which needs no batteries or plug sockets to keep your controller in power.

Ah Carol, mistress of so many things, from strange detox diets to complicated calibrations of the Countdown kind. She's using her many talents to support Britons getting fit, by teaming up with Nintendo to launch Active Health on the DS.

The game follows in the same vein as the soon to be released EA Active and already popular My Health Coach by allowing players an easy way to monitor their calorific intake, work out their BMI and get a tailored exercise plan.

Guitar Hero has been around since 2005, letting frustrated rockers and wannabe popstars strum out to their hearts content with the plastic shaped peripheral. Rock Band joined in the fun with a drum kit, and there are mic options for wannabe warblers. Up till now, these options were pretty much all you got, even though people are getting quite excited about the forthcoming DJ Hero game. Still, I can't help feel that the dancers are missing out. OK, at 26 I may be to old to ever entertain hopes of achieving Dirty Dancing style moves, but with the popularity of shows such as Strictly Come Dancing and So you Think You can Dance, I reckon Activision are missing a trick here.

If you're a fan of Rock Band and guitar Hero you can't have avoided the murmurings on the net about another piece of hardware to join their family, the much touted DJ Hero.

This piece of kit emulates the decks we see DJ's use at clubs and gives you the option to play the game by following cues on a turntable like highway.

If you thought Will Smith in Wild Wild West and Call of Juarez version 1 was the bees knees then the latest installment in this first person western shooter will have you weak with excitement. The game features the McCall brothers teaming up to find the legendary Gold of Juarez, and you follow their journey through the ravaged landscape of Georgia, right up to the Aztec ruins in Mexico. The production values are excellent, and switching between weapons is incredibly simple, with a multitude of options and targets to test out.

There's very little information about this mat other than the fact that it has the ubiquitous Jonas brothers on the front, so whether that's enough of a selling point for you, will be anyone's guess.

Having accidentally downloaded the film, it quickly got deleted when I realized what a bunch of neophytes they were but nonetheless, they do have an army of teen fans. The Camp Rock mat features a mere 4 (too many or not enough?) songs from the movie that you can pound away to, and you go through the different levels of difficulty by following the lights on the mat. Think of this as a poor mans version of DDR and you'll get the idea, but at least it won't break the bank (and you do get to stomp on their faces...)

£13.89 from Amazon

More games here

Fans of the Star Wars franchise will be pleased to hear about the imminent release date of the latest game, Star Wars The Clone Wars: Republic Heroes. The new game will be available on all platforms, and will allow you to play as either a Jedi or a Clone Trooper. Depending on which character you choose you either get to blast off with rocket launchers and thermal detonators, or slice and dice with a laser. The game continues on from the popular TV series, and gives you 30 fresh missions to play with.

I have a rather soft spot for Armin Van Buuren which comes of spending an evening with him at The Cross, and then beating him at Connect 4 all night. I'm pleased to announce that he's now making a foray into the gaming world with the launch of his new game,'In the mix'.

The player gets to be a DJ, and will learn how to mix various tracks and use effects such as looping, equalizers and scratching.

The game will also feature exclusive content from Armin including previously unreleased tracks- a must for any trance fan! It will be out around Q3 this yearand I can't wait!

More gaming news here

It wasn't so long ago I told you about the Raymond Chandler novel being turned into a computer game. It's a common trend to create a game off the back of successful book/movie mashups, but for every creation that's an astounding success there are those that flop heavier than Oprah in a fat suit. There's no perfect key to creating a winning game, but I think it would be great if companies started using some lesser known books for plot inspiration. Here's my guide to the top ten fantasy books that deserve to get the multi-player treatment- and I'm only including those that HAVEN'T ever had this, before you start moaning that I didn't mention Neil Gaiman's Coraline or Pratchett's Discworld.

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Just what the next generation PSP will look like has been the topic of many debates in the games world. We're dying to know the full specs of the anticipated PSP2 and want to know when can we expect to get our grubby mitts on it. Well the above image is NOT the finalized version of the PSP2, but an artists rendition of what the new model may look like.