It’s one of those annoying childhood life lessons you never quite forget learning: Standing in the toy aisle of a Toys R Us in San Diego and being told that if I wanted to add that Mego Green Goblin action figure to my collection, I could bloody well save up my own allowance. It means so much more, you see, when you pay for it yourself.

But what’s true of grade-school toy purchases is a lot less applicable to medical research studies. Which is why I find myself greeting the report released last week that games like Wii Fit, Wii Sports and Wii Sports Resort may be giving the kids who play them an active workout with an eye that’s cocked only slightly less askew than Neil Patrick Harris’ expression when he’s about to deliver another sexist one-liner.

Because the study was paid for by Nintendo.

The gamer in me, of course, is pleased to see any medical research that pulls the discussion away from the distressingly simple place it always seems to start and end: video games = mind-rotting couch potato kit. Or the root of all evil and the seventh sign of the apocalypse. I forget, sometimes, especially around the holidays when all those toys-to-avoid lists come out.

On the other hand, I’m also puzzled at the way national media has reported the results of the Nintendo-funded straight up, with nary a note that this is, to a certain degree, marketing self-promotion masquerading as medical science. I’m not disputing the actual findings — I’ve seen Wii Fit work to motivate kids struggling with obesity at UW Health’s pediatric fitness clinic, and I’ve also worked up a decent sweat trying to clock waves of ninjas and sink 3-pointers in Wii Sports Resort

I just wish the research could be broader in scope, because as any gamer could tell you. the truth is that it isn’t just Wii Fit that gets the blood pumping.

An intense circuit of Mario Kart Wii can actually work the muscles in your arms pretty hard. A game like No More Heroes incorporates the same kind of sword-slashing you do in Wii Sports Resort, but with an actual story attached. Then there’s way-off-the beaten path titles like Koroprinpa Marble Madness, one of the last games you’d ever expect to offer a fitness benefit. Try navigating the marble through even a single labyrinthine level using the Wii Balance Board, and you’ll end up working muscles you had forgotten you even had.

These games represent the sensible ways the industry could work together bolster the argument that playing games (in moderation, of course, and complemented by additional physical activity) rather than just bolstering Nintendo’s holiday sales figures. It’s be a nice change from the vibe these studies usually give off — gamers looking like kids who wants to be told it’s okay to scarf three orders of super-sized fries at a single sitting.

And they’re a damn sight better than the some of the borderline ridiculous efforts to tie gaming to fitness. Take a game like EA’s Grand Slam Tennis, a game that helpfully purports to track the number of calories you burn during an average match — not counting the two you lose the first time you jump in surprise at the sound of John McEnroe’s voice, piped through the Wiimote, screeching “YOU CANNOT BE SERIOUS!”

Well, it’s helpful until you see the actual amount, anyway: Six.

Spectacular. I could probably burn about the same amount turning on the console or cracking open a bottle of Mountain Dew. Maybe it should be about winning the French Open instead.

The videogames as fitness tool craze isn’t going away any time soon (thanks, Jenny McCarthy and Jillian Michaels). It’ll gain a lot more credibility if the medical research that supports it actually takes a big-picture view.

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