Zumba Fitness Core Preview

I haven't sweated like that since walking last year's E3.

It doesn't take me much anymore to get up in front of a crowd, as long as that's in a controlled environment. In a place like E3, when I don't have full control over my stage, I have to resort to public humiliation to get my audience attracted. Luckily, all I really had to do was try and dance with a smoking' hot Zumba celebrity instructor with abs like a late-night ad (fitting, since they do infomercials at four in the morning) and another gorgeous woman with oddly-short long pants, and voila! Instant audience!



Zumba Fitness Core stands out not only as a super-popular fitness title—I was told it was second in sales in the history of the fitness genre, behind only the Wii Fit with Balance Board—but also that it's on the only mass-market game in history to have a specific focus on its fitness goals. That goal? To give the world abs. There really is a focus on the mid-section, which I experienced firsthand with my lack of dance skills, which only made me push harded when testing the workout myself.

One note of interest is the lack of a score or anything similar; it doesn't matter how close you are to the move being performed, so long as you have some kind of energy and are constantly in a state of movement, you get full credit for the move. The goal isn't to necessarily get everything right, but instead, actually work out in some kind of fun way. Who cares if you got that dance move perfectly straight? You're having fun and working up a sweat, right?  That's what counts!



And that sweat is built around 40+ dance routines taken from over 30 different forms of dance, including some things I didn't know were actual dance styles like "disco", "jazz", and "Celtic bluegrass" (which sounds quite badass, and I don't like bluegrass personally). Each routine wraps around a long playlist of songs, and the mix is roughly half-and-half: half licensed music like Enrique Iglacias and Pitbull, half original tunes created to build up a sweat.  And trust me, it'll get your blood pumping.

I might've been in front of a crowd, but you can get your workout in the privacy of your own home in October of this year.