Wii Fit
Nintendo Wii
Game type: Non- / Exer- / Mini-
$89.99
Nintendo first offered to lend a hand to the imperfect masses with Brain Age: Train Your Brain in Minutes a Day for the DS, touting it as an entertaining way to strengthen, tone and exercise your mind-muscle. Though the effectiveness of using video games to make…brain…smarter remains the subject of debate, Nintendo and the immensely popular Brain Age ushered in an era of self-improvement gaming. In the ensuing years, games have offered to help you do everything but quit your gaming habit.
But poll Americans on whether they’d rather be intelligent or thin and most of them would enthusiastically text message the latter to the “American Idol” producers. For these people, with ample money and calories to burn, Nintendo created Wii Fit. Offering a collection of genuine aerobic and strength-training exercises, yoga instruction, and good, old-fashioned, mindless mini-games, Wii Fit ‘s greatest achievement may be its detailed, visual solution to tracking weight loss (and gain).
Wii Fit is packaged with a Balance Board, a pad which resembles a bathroom scale and functions in a similar way. The Balance Board can track minute shifts in weight distribution on its surface, allowing it, for instance, to track your center of balance while you contort into a yoga pose. It serves its purpose in this passive manner, but when you actively try input commands, such as controlling a skier slaloming down a slope, the pad quickly becomes an unwieldy, if novel, substitute for a joystick. The same lesson being slowly learned by Wii developers applies here: Just because you can waggle a Wii Remote instead of pushing a button, doesn’t mean you should.
Nevertheless, _Wii Fit_’s strength isn’t in its games, but its ability to engage unfit gamers in a way they can relate to and, aside from the sizeable cost of a Wii console plus the game, it’s not so bad for non-gamers looking for a hip way to tone up either.
Until Wii Fit, so-called exer-games were part of a functional fitness routine in the same way that Cookie Crisp is part of a complete breakfast. In some ways, this is still true: hula-hooping in place is just not a very effective means of burning calories and, like all of Wii Fit ’s aerobic exercises, are no match for jogging, walking or just getting the heck out of the house. It is easy to see how Wii Fit could be an effective fitness supplement though since the yoga really will make you sweat and strength training will leave you aching.
Wii-Fit features the same stripped-down feel as Wii Sports – a bit generic, but never hideous. The main problems with the presentation are on the audio side of things. You can’t input your own workout tunes, and the music and lines your trainer delivers can be grating when heard in constant repetition. Since the game expects you to spend a good amount of time with it daily, it’s a shame that there’s such a lack of sights and sounds.
Can Wii Fit turn a generation of pudgy couch potatoes into well-toned couch potatoes? Dragging out the balance board (which consumes batteries like a LAN-party-goer with a case of Game Fuel) for fancy pushups and yoga poses you can do on your own with the TV off doesn’t provide much of an impetus to power train… but seeing your Mii billow out after a weight test may cause you to think twice about your hard-earned girth. And seeing how your weight fluctuates over weeks and months may just have you reconsidering that second pizza. It’s this visual connection with your gut that can make all the difference when really shedding the pounds, and this alone makes Wii Fit worth it.
What’s new?
The latest fitness craze combines the best elements of Jazzercise and those suction cups that shock man-boobs into shape.
When does the fun end?
One gripe surfacing with most Wii Fit users is the inability to quickly link together exercises. On the bright side, forcing you to return to the main menu between exercises may give you a much needed breather.
What else could I be playing?
Dance Dance Revolution may be the latest dodgeball, but Wii Fit fills its own niche. But not for long! Imitations are sure to descend upon unsuspecting consumers before they can gesture, “bring me a second pizza!â€
To compose this review, RGF! and a cadre of competitive fitness buffs used Wii Fit almost daily for two and a half weeks. All exercises and mini-games were unlocked and attempted at least once, except two insane yoga poses.
