Phantasy Star: Fringes of Algo

During the past week, I've been constantly switching between Guitar Hero 3, and PSU. Around last Saterday evening, I started to notice a sharp pain in my wrist and small finger almost as though they were going to break. During the time, I was attempting to play Cult of Personality on Hard, so I just assumed that the pain was a side-effect of hitting too many buttons during a short amount of time. But even after the song ended, the pain did not. This wasn't the first time that this had happened, so I did what I always did: flex my wrist a few times and get back to the game. Even after flexing for five minutes, my wrist refused to pop, and I heard my bones shifting the same way my knuckles do when they need to be popped. After an hour passed and the pain was still present, decided I'd take the problem to Dr.Google and see if anyone else had suffered the same problem. To my surprise I found an entire article on this wrist pain, and discovered that it even had a name: "guitar hero-itis".
Here is the article: http://www.comicbookbin.com/guitarhero-itis001.html

I haven't played that game, but this is a great example of the growing need to play games in moderation. I've had similar problems with the Wii, where playing a game that requires a lot of arm or wrist movement can leave me sore or with pains if I play too long.

I never had a real problem with playing games for long periods when I was younger (okay, maybe the occasionally sore thumb). I always used to ignore the cautions about taking breaks every fifteen minutes. These new games use entirely different movements and muscles, though. Now I pay a little more attention to the amount of time I'm playing so I can rest my arm after a while.

Heh I understand how ya feel man, I've played Guitar Hero for a long period of time and my hand kinda cramped up also. But we just gotta remember, its a little plastic guitar, lets not go overboard with it. Now the real muscle damaging game would have to be DDR. My friend came over the other day and me and her played DDR for about 2hrs, now thats some muscle aches right there.

It's time to get the BenGay (r)! Interesting that so many people get it. Like Thoul said, you probably need to take more breaks in between game time.
Me? I've never had bone pain from playing a video game. The only problem that I've had was the one time that my eyes turned red from staring at Grandia II for like, five hours straight. I didn't do that again.

lol. Yeah, I guess I should start resting between songs… But it's so darn hard! It's like (but not equal to) taking a break from Phantasy Star IV after a boss battle!


DISCLAIMER: While both Guitar Hero™ and/or Rock Band™ are nice games, they are not/cannot now or ever be capable of become capable of, or equal to, the level of Phantasy Star ( 1 - 4, Online 1 - 3, Universe 1 & 2) with regards to plot, player-character relation, ingenuity, and classical playability*.

*(un)predictable plot twists, cheesy insults, teenage drama, and annoying voice-overs**.
**Only applicable to PSO and PSU

I tend to have some of these problems at gamer's night where I'm playing Smash Bros. Brawl for...5-7 hours STRAIGHT, depending on when we get kicked out. As I can switch between two control schemes quite fluidly, that of the wiimote/nunchuck and Gamecube controller according to need, I don't get the problem quite as much as each scheme is just enough of a change that I get a bit of a rest from the orientation of the other. Though as I use the shake smash with the former, sometimes my arm can get tired. But switching periodically helps my hands get through those long nights. It also probably helps that I play characters like Ness and Pit, who aren't oriented around attacking as much as possible and are more defensive/methodical/opportunistic, if you will (at least that's how I approach them both to different degrees, it seems to work). My roommate, however, can't play for too long at a time; she plays spazzier characters like Meta Knight and Sheik and is attacking quickly and fiercely pretty much constantly. Plus, depending on how many Wiis are there for brawl, players are rotating in and out, so I can get breaks with that as well. Regardless, though, 5-7 of brawl is tiring on the hands and the eyes. But so fun.

As for Guitar Hero...I haven't played it at all. It's always at gamer's night (as is Rock Band, which I've done singing for before), and I should try it sometime. But this can be problematic for me, because I always bring down my Wii and needless to say, I'm a little protective of it and I don't like being away from it for very long...especially now that someone borrowed my PS2 controller and never returned it at the last one.

I guess every game/system can cause these problems in different ways.

Vibrations can get to me sometimes, too. For a while, I used to get wrist pains from PS2 games that cause a lot of vibration in the controller. I remember there was one game - I'm not sure which, but maybe Grandia III - that has a vibration sequence that went for three or four minutes straight. I've started turning off vibration in most games I play now.