If there’s one thing I was missing from sitting on my ass and playing video games, it’s standing up and flailing my limbs around like I have carpenter ants in my shorts while playing video games.

I’ve been playing video games since I was drinking Squeeze-Its, sitting on shag carpeting and playing “Bible Adventures” on a relative’s NES. Pro-tip: If you chuck Baby Moses in the water and finish the level anyway, you technically still win.

Things have changed since then. The controllers have gone from having two buttons, to having far too many buttons, to requiring you to swing the controller around wildly to get any reaction at all.

Now the controller has been replaced entirely with my pale, misshapen body.

There was a time when we could all sit immobile on the couch in the basement and stare at the old cathode ray tube for hours, and then ask questions like, “What time is it?” and “Did I remember to eat today?”

Nintendo Wii

Then the Nintendo Wii was released, a motion control system aimed at a wider audience, including people who wear diapers while eating Gerber creamed bananas and people who wear diapers while eating Metamucil.

As soon as everyone stopped making penis jokes for a moment and calmed down enough to try it, they were shocked at what we discovered. A game where you have to stand? And swing your arms like a windmilling Pete Townshend? And there’s this scale thing that knows precisely how fat I am? It was simultaneously humiliating, physically exhausting and potentially life threatening, since a mishandled Wii remote can fire through your television like a hurricane launching a fencepost through a tree.

And Nintendo proceeded to sell forty kajillion of them.

These days, no one even flinches at questions like, “Want to come over and play with my Wii?”

Even your Grandma has heard of the Wii. She plays it weekly at her retirement village, where whoever wins at Wii Bowling gets a coupon for extra pudding.

Rival game makers Sony and Nintendo saw the Nintendo Wii and said, “What? What is that? Why don’t we have that?”

Playstation Move

Sony immediately began to produce their competing product, the Playstation Move, which was released to the public last month. The Move was designed to appeal to the sort of gamers who shunned the Wii for being too childish. So they made the controller look like a lollipop.

It’s easy to make comparisons between the Move and the Wii controller. But the Move is different in crucial ways. For example:

1. It has a Sony logo on it.

2. Uh.

By the time the Move was released, the Wii had a stagnate collection of shooting, boxing and dancing games. Recognizing this, Sony responded by releasing a fresh stable of new jams, including “The Shoot,” “The Fight” and a brand new “Dance Dance Revolution” game.

Xbox Kinect

At the same time, Microsoft readied their own salvo of games for the Xbox Kinect, released this week. The Kinect is an add-on for the Xbox 360 that presupposes, “Minority Report was a cool movie! Why do we even have controllers? Let’s just wave our arms around like Tom Cruise!”

By eliminating the controller entirely, the Kinect aims to immerse players completely in the games experience. Allegedly, you’ll be able to lose yourself in experience of white-water rafting, right up until you realize that you’re sitting on your couch flailing your arms like invisible elves are hovering around you.

If you thought the Wii was dangerous to innocent bystanders, wait until you backhand your little sister trying to “bust a move” like Young MC while playing “Dance Central.”

YouTube is currently preparing for a deluge of clips titled “Kinect FAIL.”

The Kinect also features the ability to watch movies and navigate your desktop using only the sound of your voice.

No word so far on whether the Kinect has preventative measures for when your roommate inevitably runs in and yells, “Xbox off!” in the middle of a marathon “Mad Men” viewing session.

Both the Kinect and the Move have a game where you can pet an invisible dog and look at your TV to see what it would be like if your imaginary friend were real.

The Next Big Thing

Since the prevailing logic in the game industry is to abandon controllers in favor of the human body, I assume the next big thing is to abandon our bodies and become beings of pure thought.

I’ve heard some rumors that the Playstation 7 is not going to be compatible with all life-support nutri-pods.

So go ahead and play those sweaty, repetitive motion control games. I’ll be resting comfortably in my time-worn ass groove on my ancient sofa, playing “Bible Adventures” in the basement. Pass me a Squeeze-It.