Having already forced us into physical labor waggling the Wii Remote, Nintendo ups the ante with Wii Fit. Expect sweat-soaked Balance Boards to be the controversy of the future as soccer moms and the elderly across America cast their protective-shielded Wii Remote aside for foot-on physical fitness. We tried out Wii Fit during Nintendo's Media Summit in San Francisco last week.
Wii Fit. is to physical fitness what Brain Age is to mental testing. Emphasizing physical activity and awareness, the game measures your Wii Fit Age as a means of judging your overall degree of fitness. Obviously it isn't a comprehensive measure of your health, but it reflects your skill in completing the game's various exercises. Starting out in the Fit Plaza, you can create a profile using any Mii saved on your Wii. Any progress you've made in the game can be tracked in the Fit Plaza, in particular your Wii Fit Age. Detailed graphs and data pertaining to your performance in any of the training exercises can be viewed here.
Training involves four different set of activities: yoga, strength training, aerobics, and balance games. A favorites category lists your most used activities, although you can customize the list to include specific mini-games or exclude others. New activities in each area unlock the more time you spend playing. Regardless of your Wii Fit Age or skill in performing any of the balance games, new activities are only unlocked based on how much time you've spent playing the game. We'd much rather see activities open up based on skill since this system forces extended play. It could take weeks to unlock every activity.
Not every activity was open for play, but we did get a taste of each category. As you'd expect, yoga presents a series of poses that focus on balance and flexibility. In “half-moon,” your objective is to keep your center of gravity within a large yellow circle positioned in the middle of the screen. A red dot signifies where your center of gravity lies and as you move into the half-moon pose (legs straight, upper body tilted to one side), it flutters about the screen. By flexing muscles in your body during the pose, you can influence your center of gravity in order to keep it within acceptable bounds. Other poses work in the same way.
Strength training differs dramatically by tapping into more traditional exercises such as push ups and squats. Spending time completing exercises not only increases the likelihood of unlocking new activities, but also challenges. One such challenge had us competing against a trainer to rack up as many push ups as possible in a given span of time. Instead of standing on the Balance Board, you place your palms flat on its surface and push your body up as you would a normal push up. The only thing missing is a screaming high school gym teacher.
Aerobic activities naturally involve exercises that get your heart rate going. Running, for instance, has you jogging in place with the Wii Remote placed in your pocket. Pushing the Balance Board aside, you slip the Remote into your pocket and jog in place to get your Mii to run along a trail. Other aerobic activities include hula-hoop, which has you swinging your hips to keep the hoop spinning around your Mii, and basic step aerobics.
Rounding out training is an assortment of balance games. Unlike any of the other activities, these play out more like mini-games than actual exercises. Take Penguin Slide as an example: dressed up as a penguin, your Mii must collect as many fish as possible in the allotted time. Shifting your weight on the Balance Board instructs your Mii to slide left or right on the small ice floe. Not only do you need to time the slides to catch fish as they jump up from the water, but you also have to be careful and not slip off the ice into the chilly depths.
