Wii Fit Review

Wii Fit is becoming one of the most popular games for the Nintendo Wii. This game suits all all ages, all genders and importantly all fitness and technical levels. This games suits people who like to dance to those who like to do some serious exercise. Whether it is too hot or cold outside the Wii fit offers the perfect fitness indoors. The Wii Fit includes software for the screen and hardware in the form of a balance board. Read some of the latest news and reviews regarding the Wii Fit below.The Wii Fit, which comes complete with its own special balance board, is one of the new fitness computer games from the Nintendo stable, which already includes virtual games such as tennis, boxing and bowling.

Parents have good reason to be grateful to the Nintendo Wii. Pack them off to their PlayStations or take the old telly-as-babysitter option, and you feel guilty. Not very guilty, admittedly, but a bit. But tell them to play with the Wii for half an hour and you can tell yourself that they’re getting a little exercise (a study in the British Medical Journalsaid as much). It may not be Swallows and Amazons, but it’s better than nothing. The new Wii Fit though, according to Nintendo, is the first it has marketed as a “fitness” game: it has four training categories aimed at improving players’ muscle condition, balance, flexibility and aerobic capacity.
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For those not in the loop, the Nintendo Wii has sold more than 2 million consoles since its launch in Britain in December 2006. It is a hardware/software package that enables you to play games and solve puzzles on a TV screen. If that sounds old hat, you don’t play hunching over a console pressing buttons; you play by actively doing (more or less) what you would if you were you playing the game for real. It’s virtual reality, in other words. Hence, people becoming so engrossed in a game of tennis or a sword fight that they punch through patio doors and such like and end up in hospital.

So if you’re playing golf, for instance, you swing the wireless control as if it were a golf club, and then watch your ball disappear off down the fairway on screen. Or you hurl your bowling ball into a phalanx of skittles. Or you shadow box as your computer-animated self smacks an opponent around a boxing ring.

Does that make any sense? Basically, if it weren’t in front of you, you’d think the Wii was science fiction. It’s the first piece of contemporary kit that’s made me shake my head and say: “Eeeh, what will they think of next?” It makes me feel as my own parents felt when confronted with a video, as an Edwardian felt holding a telephone, as an Elizabethan felt looking through a pane of glass. If it wasn’t such a laugh, the Wii could easily make you feel about 500 years old.

Sophie, a publicist, shows me the new hardware for Wii Fit at her office in Soho. On the floor in front of a giant TV is a pressure-sensitive balance board about the size of weighing scales. In fact, what the new Wii does is to weigh you straight away. Along with your height and age, the computer then works out your body mass index. Mine is 29.36, somewhere between Medically Obese and About To Drop Dead. “It’s not 100 per cent accurate,” Sophie says, tactfully. “Muscle weighs more than fat.” “Thanks,” I say. “I can see why you’re in PR.”

Next, after some rudimentary balance exercises in which I am revealed to be fundamentally lopsided, the machine computes my “Wii age”. It is 65 (my actual age is 43). “Oh dear,” says Sophie. I have to choose a “Mii”, an icon to represent myself on screen. I go for a perky little chap with a side part and pot belly. He introduces himself. In Japanese. The English language version is not available yet, but if its success over there is anything to go by – more than a million copies of the game sold in just over a month – this game won’t be sitting on shop shelves for long.

I select an on-screen tutor, wondering if it’s morally or legally OK to lust after a computer-generated fitness instructor. She greets me with what I take to be a provocative pose. “She’s saying, ‘Hello, you fat bastard’,” the photographer says. “Nah,” I say, “she’s saying she fancies me. You can always tell.” “It’s a good alternative for those people who aren’t, er, that confident about going to the gym,” Sophie offers.

For the next hour I submit myself to a series of sometimes gruelling, sometimes exciting, often humiliating exertions. I try some skiing, first slalom, then a jump. Neither is successful. I turn into a ball and try to roll myself down a hole. I endeavour to keep one hula hoop in motion while attempting to catch others. It’s all about minute transfers of weight, rhythm, fluidity of the pelvis, such as dancing, essentially.

I could feel my abdominal muscles taking the strain, so presumably it was doing some good. Improving core strength and stability is the order of the day. Nintendo is to ask Liverpool John Moores University to research the effects of Wii Fit, but anecdotally, I can confirm that you have to make an effort. Not as you would lifting weights or running, but similar to a beginners’ Pilates class, or some semi-serious stretching.

I try walking a tightrope between skyscrapers
“How did I do?” I ask Sophie. “Well, your Mii just fell to his knees crying, so not good,” she replies. We move on to heading a football, where you have to bend and lean on the balance board to connect with incoming footballs. Occasionally, in a nod to Sir Alex Ferguson’s motivational techniques, a boot rather than a ball will smack you in the face unless you dodge it. My heading wasn’t bad. Then I try walking a tightrope slung between two skyscrapers and came back to earth with a bump. Yoga is next and I’m not bad at standing on one leg.

Finally, we arrive at the macho stuff, thigh bends, press-ups, stuff that requires brute strength rather than any finesse. I need a score and I get one: four stars out of four, polite oriental applause from the tutor. “Well done,” says Sophie as I collapse red-faced into an armchair.

That final discipline was properly difficult. Why not just do the press-ups on their own, without all the electronic wizardry? One answer is that the Wii provides a range of stats, personal targets, graphs and the like, which are a good incentive to keep going once the initial enthusiasm has worn off. Mostly though, all this wizardry simply makes mucking around making a chump of yourself even more fun than it is already, which is fine by me.

The active-play phenomenon started by Wii Sports now spreads to your whole body thanks to Wii Fit and the pressure-sensitive Wii Balance Board, which comes bundled with it. Used together players will experience an extensive array of fun, dynamic and surprisingly challenging activities, including aerobics, yoga, muscle stretches and balance oriented games. The focus of these activities is towards providing a “core” workout, a popular exercise method that emphasizes slower, controlled motions, but it’s the fun approach to fitness of Wii Fit that will keep players hooked on fitness for years to come.

The Wii Fit Balance Board

The primary tenet of Wii Fit is balance. Your centre of balance, the point between your left and right sides when you stand upright, has a lot to do with your health. Those without an even centre of balance will be unnaturally compensating for this imbalance, which causes their posture to become misaligned, increasing the possibility of putting unnecessary strain on their bodies. This is where the Wii Balance Board comes in.

Similar in appearance to a step aerobics board, the Wii Balance Board is much, much more. Easily capable of supporting weights up to a maximum of 300 pounds, it is sturdy and precise, able to measure weight and register pressure accurately when placed on a variety of flat surfaces. This advanced level of sensitivity allows for both the wide range of activities found in the Wii Fit software as well as the board’s amazing ability recognize individual players by their weight alone.

Getting Started: Create a Profile
Before you jump into doing exercises and activities, you’ll start by creating a profile. This is done easily and intuitively by simply choosing a Mii, entering your height and age information, and doing a few quick tests that will serve as a baseline for your new Wii fitness regimen. These tests are:

BMI Check

BMI, or Body Mass Index, is a measure of body fat based on height and weight that is the standard used by agencies such as the World Health Organization and the National Institute of Health. To check your BMI, you’ll enter your height then stand on the Wii Balance Board and let it read your weight.

Wii Fit Age

After you’ve checked your BMI, you’ll do a basic balance test and find out your current Wii Fit Age. This basic balance test measures how well you can control your left and right balance. Based on the results, you’ll be assigned a Wii Fit Age.

Four Categories of Fun

Once you have created your profile it’s time to have some fun. Wii Fit features four main categories of exercises to choose from: Strength Training, Aerobics, Yoga and Balance Games. Wii Fit will guide you through the first three with the help of your own virtual personal trainer, while the balance games offer variety and fun to help keep you engaged and excited about your fitness goals. In addition, as you spend time exercising, you’ll earn Fit Credits that unlock additional exercises and activities within your favourite categories that will allow you to continue to push yourself. See more detail on the four categories below:

Strength Training

Put your strength to the test with muscle-toning exercises like Single Leg Extension, Sideways Leg Lift, Arm and Leg Lift, Single-Arm Stand, Torso Twists, Rowing Squat, Single Leg Twist, Lunge, Push-Up and Side Plank, Jackknife, Plank and Triceps’ Extension. Challenges include Push-Up Challenge, Plank Challenge and Jackknife Challenge.

Aerobics

Get your heart pumping with fun, interactive Aerobic exercises like Hula Hoop, Basic Step, Basic Run, Super Hula Hoop, Advanced Step, 2-P Run, Rhythm Boxing, Free Step and Free Run.

Yoga

Work on your balance and flexibility with Yoga poses and activities like Deep Breathing, Half-Moon, Dance, Cobra, Bridge, Spinal Twist, Shoulder Stand, Warrior, Tree, Sun Salutation, Standing Knee, Palm Tree, Chair, Triangle and Downward-Facing Dog.

Balance Games

Get into the action with fun, balanced-based games like Soccer Heading, Ski Slalom, Ski Jump, Table Tilt, Tightrope Walk, Balance Bubble, Penguin Slide, Snowboard Slalom and Lotus Focus.

Keep Track of Your Progress

Because keeping fit is an ongoing process, Wii Fit also tracks the activities you do the most and puts them into your Favourites category. With this information players can note exercises and activities that they are strong in, as well as others that may need to improve at. Some of the ways players can use this information for are to:

Keep tabs on your daily progress with easy-to-understand graphs and charts. Using your personal profile, you can set goals, view a graph of your BMI results over time, see how many Fit Credits you’ve earned, check your Wii Fit Age and even enter exercise time you’ve done outside of Wii Fit. It’s all about coming back and exercising a little every day, and the personal profile makes tracking your daily progress simple and easy.

Quickly check your Wii Fit Age and BMI without even putting the game in the console by going directly to the Wii Fit Channel.

Allow up to eight family members can create their own profiles in Wii Fit. On the profile-selection screen, everyone in the family can see each other’s recent BMI progress and Fit Credit total. This will allow families to have a friendly competition to exercise and get fit.

Variety, fun and progress tracking; Wii Fit has it all. So, Wii owners if you ready to reclaim your balance and get fit all you need is Wii Fit, a few minutes a day to play and the urge to have fun. Get on board today.