Thanks to GSW columnist JamesD for pointing us to an interesting Flash 'serious game' that's also just a little bit of a rip-off of a famous Sega title - but hey, since it teaches you to eat healthily at school, it must be OK, right?

James says (hope he doesn't mind the quote!): "[The game is] Snack Dash, brought to you by the UK's Department for Education and Skills. It's basically Sonic the Hedgehog (down to the minute details - you can spin while running, and you drop collected items just like Sonic) coupled with Metal Slug 3's fat mode - eat too much and you can't run anymore unless you do pushups."

He also notes sagely: "It makes a nice followup to the Gamasutra article on ripping off Japan [here's the GSW follow-up on that!], but given the high profile of the franchise it seems pretty foolish. Plays pretty well for Flash, though!" That it does! Seems a little odd that the developers went to all that trouble and didn't try to vary the gameplay really at all - I guess that's one way to get guaranteed playability, though?