Kinect Sports Review

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(More customer reviews)I just got finished playing all of the sports in Kinect Sports and here is my evaluation:
1. Track & Field: This area includes a variety of different activities that work well with the basic body movements the Kinect can control. These include running , jumping, and throwing things (javelins & discus). I think young and old would both have fun with this! This may actually be my favorite activity in this game.
2. Bowling: Not as much control as Wi Sports bowling--but it is actually feels more like bowling when you can just stick your hand out to pick up the ball and then swing your arm to bowl. No controller to hold on to or push buttons. Once again this is an activity that would appeal to both young and old. Personally, I still like the bowling in Wii Sports better because of the more precise control.

3. Boxing: I like this better than the Wii Sports Boxing--but there is still some lag time and I just don't get the feel that all my moves are translating accurately. Plus, like an earlier reveiwer indicated it seems like punching wildly is actually a winning approach in this game. I do like how you can just hold your arms up to block--this felt very natural. I'm waiting for the Kick Boxing version because when you kick your legs in this activity your avatar kicks its legs--but they don't seem to translate to "hits" in the game.
4. Beach Volleyball: This one will take some time to master. It can get a bit confusing because there are several different techniques involved--jumping, hitting, and blocking. If you're tall--make sure you don't have a ceiling fan above you--or at least make sure it's not on!
5. Table Tennis: Once again it was fun to play without a controller in my hand but I felt there were a few times when the intensity of my hits were not reflected in what actually happened on screen. For example, when an opportunity comes up for a "smash" the game announces it and then actually does it regardless of whether I swung harder or not.
6. Soccer: Fun and interesting. You don't have to run around the field yourself. Your player magically appears where the ball is kicked to. Simple body movements control your kicks and blocks. Gray directional lines on the screen show the directionally options when kicking and your location when blocking.
Throughout the games the Kinect takes photos and short videos of your movements. These are played at the end of each game. The images are saved so you can share them with others. This feature will appeal to some and not to others. For example, I find the images of my son interesting and humorous--but I need to find out how to erase the images of me!
Adding a second player was extremely easy. If I wanted to join my son all I had to do was step in front of the TV and the Kinect added me to the in-play game. The graphics are also much better than the Wii! Kinect Sports looked great on a 40" HDTV. We don't even play the Wii on this TV because of how bad it looks.
Bottom line: If you have an XBOX already--adding the Kinect and Kinect Sports really adds a nice dimension to your video game experience. If you have young kids or older folks that have trouble remembering what buttons to push on a remote--it doesn't get any easier than the Kinect.
P.S. It is a neat and strange sensation to be standing in front of your TV and the avatar on the screen is doing the same movements that you are. You can sway, move your arms and legs, and dance, and the avatar mimics it. This alone makes for good entertainment!

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With Kinect Sports, anyone can become the next star of the living room, and it's fun no matter how fit you are. Add your style to any of the six action-packed games - Soccer, Volleyball, Track & Field, Bowling, Table Tennis or Boxing - with Full Body Play. Compete against yourself to set a personal best or win as a team. Either way, you will unlock new content and thrills as you play.

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TV iSports Interactive System w/6 games Review

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(More customer reviews)This game is nothing like what you expect...you expect it to be some-what like the WII game and it's horrible. Recommended not to purchase.

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Hyperkin is proud to present the iSports Interactive TV Plug-N-Play Game for you and your family! Designed for the sports fan in you, enjoy six interactive sports games ranging from Tennis, Boxing, Baseball, Bowling, Table Tennis, and Golf right on your TV screen! The iSports Interactive TV Plug-N-Play Game includes baseball bat, tennis racket and table tennis attachments that make you feel like you are in the real game! The iSports Interactive TV Plug-N-Play Game includes two wireless remotes so that you compete against each other. You and your friends and family can now enjoy hours of fun while getting a workout at the same time!

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King of the World (Nova Audio Books) Review

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(More customer reviews)Remnick is smart enough not to contribute just another Ali biography to the shelves, and instead focuses his efforts on Ali 1960 - 1965...from his post-Olympic days through to the second fight with Liston. These are the years when Ali became Ali...the champ at the height of his powers.
But there's a special bonus in this book - a good portion of it deals with Sonny Liston. You talk about your seminal 20th Century characters. They don't get any more interesting than this guy: the abused son of a sharecropper, long stretches of imprisonment, a fight career directed by mob interests, a violent death. In short, a writer's dream. Remnick brings Liston together with Floyd Patterson (and you'll never find a greater constrast) and walks you through these two battles before turning his attention to Ali. Thus, you get a full portrait of Liston prior to encountering the force of nature that was then Cassius Clay.
The effect is a curious sympathy that you have for Liston as he enters the maelstrom developing around Ali. In most retellings, Liston is cast as the personification of evil. Remnick made me see him in a different light.
My advice for a great Ali study program:
1. Watch 'When We Were Kings' [Best documentary ever]
2. Read 'The Fight' by Norman Mailer
3. Read 'King of the World'
4. Buy any book featuring Howard Bingham's photography of Ali.

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The Devil and Sonny Liston Review

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(More customer reviews)Sonny Liston was one of the real bad boys of boxing, although the term "bad boy" is undersized, like the gloves Liston had to wear until he could afford a custom-made pair to cover his massive fists. One of the baddest of bad men, then, one of the three truly fearsome heavyweights of the last fifty years, a brutal ring warrior who dispatched his opponents with ease until his career was clipped by Cassius Clay under what many view as suspect circumstances. Subsequently overshadowed, his reputation has been revised recently and a growing minority now view him as the greatest heavyweight of all. Nick Tosches' biography is certainly aptly timed.
Liston's early life was mysterious. His birth date is unknown, but was apparently some time between 1928 and 1932. His father, Tobe, was born four years after the abolition of slavery in the almost unfathomably distant year of 1870. Next to nothing is known of Sonny's childhood, but it was evidently hard. He came to St Louis as a young man who couldn't read or write and followed the all-too-well-trodden path of petty crime, prison and boxing. He turned out to have outstanding ability, including tremendous punching power. Opponents described his blows as paralyzing or excruciatingly painful. By the late 50's he was a leading heavyweight contender. He finally got his championship shot against Floyd Paterson, whom he demolished in two fights in a total time of four and a half minutes.
Liston's career by this point had been severely tarnished. He was managed by the Mob, drank heavily, had run-ins with the police, even during his tenure as champion, and apparently settled his way out of being charged with sexual assault. In February, 1964 his 18-month reign as champion ended when he refused to rise from his stool at the start of the seventh round against Cassius Clay, claiming that his left arm was numb and thereby becoming the first champion since 1919 to go out sitting down. In the rematch Liston was knocked out by one punch in the first round. The fight film (surely the second-most scrutinized strip of film from the 60s) has failed to satisfy fans that a blow of any force was delivered. But real or not, the "Phantom Punch" didn't just stop Liston, it ended his career. An attempt to get into movies was a complete failure (although his commercial spot for Braniff Airlines, co-starring Andy Warhol, sounds memorable). Sonny mounted a comeback bid in the late 60's but it was derailed when he was KOd by Leotis Martin (although the fight also ended Martin's career, as he suffered a detached retina).In his last fight, in 1970 (100 years after the birth of his father), Sonny banged up Chuck Wepner. His shady life ended in shady circumstances. He was found dead at home by his wife in January, 1971. As he had already been dead several days, however, the precise date of death is unknown. The cause of death, likewise, could not be established with certainty.
While Liston and his times are fascinating - not least Liston's role as the godfather of all subsequent bad-ass African-American sports and music celebrities - their treatment by Tosches is decidedly pedestrian. There is little about boxing, with almost no description of any of Liston's fights and little about the overall scene or the other leading contenders. Tosches' main focus is on organized crime. Unfortunately, most of this material is second-rate. Apart from the problem of a relative lack of documentation, the would-be Mob historian writing of decades-old events is also confronted by the fact that many of the principals are dead, while the survivors may be afflicted by (genuine) memory loss and were all habitual liars to begin with anyway. Tosches wastes space with transcribed filler from various public inquiries (does anyone really want to read about Blinky Palermo or Barney Baker taking the fifth a dozen times?). But he fails to tackle the big question of the narrative - were the fights against Ali fixed? Tosches has his opinions, but adds no new evidence. Nor does he address the obvious fact that the motive for a fix was highly problematic. Allegedly, Liston's owners deliberately gave up a valuable, high-prestige and revenue-generating property - the heavyweight championship. For what - so they could bet on a fix at 8-1? And then how did they get Sonny to take a dive? While it might be rational to throw a fight in pursuit of a title shot, as Jake LaMotta admitted to having done, the championship itself is what fighter live, train and suffer for, the rewards are enormous and the alternatives bleak, as most fighters have neither skills nor interests outside the ring. The notion that a fighter would throw away the title, his lifetime goal, simply to satisfy his manager's machinations requires a little explanation. And even if the first fight was rigged, why not recapture the crown in the second, where the 8-5 odds offered a much less lucrative payoff? The evident dive against Ali notwithstanding, the fix theory raises as many questions as it answers.
Tosches' investigation of Liston's death is similarly inconclusive. Tosches states at the outset that Liston was murdered, but later admits that there is no evidence to support this; nor is there much evidence for any other cause, such as drug overdose.
Tosches success is in drawing his subject as a man who never escaped servitude, who could handle himself in the ring but not in life, but who, for all his bad side also maintained a kind of dignity. At the same time, the portrait of Liston is sketchy and unsatisfying. The main research effort having been wasted on minor Mob figures, and the writing style being classic blowhard, this is a book with some shortcomings. But its subject is a remarkable figure, and the photos are good, especially the cover and the last one. Bad as he was, Sonny Liston deserves a better biography.

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The Ultimate Guide To Weight Training for Boxing (The Ultimate Guide to Weight Training for Sports, 6) (The Ultimate Guide to Weight Training for Sports, ... Guide to Weight Training for Sports, 6) Review

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(More customer reviews)As an amateur boxer, this book has greatly assisted my strength and conditioning. I've applied the key essentials and am already seeing improvements in speed, endurance, and strength. This book focuses on improving speed and strength without becoming fatigued easily. As a bonus, tips are provided to help prevent injuries and build technique over just becoming bulky. When you build muscle mass, you become fatigued faster. Now if you work out the right way (like this book provides) you can build the same strength you would with muscle mass.

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The Ultimate Guide to Weight Training for Boxing is the most comprehensive and up-to-date boxing-specific training guide in the world today. It contains descriptions and photographs of over 80 of the most effective weight training, flexibility, and abdominal exercises used by athletes worldwide. This book features year-round boxing-specific weight-training programs guaranteed to improve your performance and get you results.No other boxing book to date has been so well designed, so easy to use, and so committed to weight training. This book supplies you with a year-round workout program designed to increase punching speed and power in your jabs, hooks, and uppercuts. Following this program will raise your stamina and endurance which will result in extraordinary footwork that will have you dancing around opponents and hitting them with sharp combinations until the final bell.Both beginners and advanced athletes and weight trainers can follow this book and utilize its programs. From recreational to professional, thousands of athletes all over the world are already benefiting from this book and its techniques, and now you can too!As an added bonus, this book also contains links to free record keeping charts which normally sell separately for $20.

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