18. Ninja Warrior

The license: Start with the obstacle course from Nickelodeon's Double Dare. Take away some of the sloppiness, make the challenges a thousand times harder, add a constantly screaming Japanese announcer and you have something approaching Japan's Ninja Warrior.

One hundred competitors face off against four stages of increasingly tough and ridiculous physical challenges that test balance, strength, agility and, above all, endurance.

The show (which is called Sasuke in Japan, and is one of the spinoffs of the Muscle Ranking competition) has become a cult hit for American "video game" network G4, ensuring that literally hundreds of unemployed and/or shut-in gaming fans will recognize the property when they see it in the game aisle.

The game: Ninja Warrior's highly physical action seems tailor made for a Dance Dance Revolution-style mat (or perhaps Wii Fit's Balance Board). Tasks could alternate between those that test timing to those that test pure physicality (jumping, running speed, etc.).

Upper body motions could be captured through the Wii Remote and nunchuk or cameras on the PS3 and Xbox 360, with a similar mix of timing and "wave it as fast as possible" tasks (think Mario and Sonic at the Olympic Games).

Sure, players could cheat pretty easily by jumping off the mat, or "toolboxing" the controllers, but really, they'd only cheating themselves.

The developer: Since the Wii's launch, Ubisoft has shown a great willingness to make games that take advantage of the system's unique controller.

They also showed a weakness for wacky mini-games with the Rayman: Raving Rabbids series. A Ninja Warrior game could combine these proclivities to great effect.