So this Wii Fit thing. What’s that all about then?

I picked one up from the Nintendo World store in Rockefeller Center on launch day, and after using it nine of the nearly fourteen days since bringing it home (four days missed due to being lazy, one to pulling some part of my foot out of whack in a Speed Racer-related incident), I think I have enough experience with the thing to talk about it with some sort of authority. While this might not necessarily be true, the dull, persistent ache in my legs feels that way, and who am I to argue?

First thoughts upon setting up the Balance Board and dropping the game disc into my Wii? It’s a very strange thing to be called fat by a videogame. I’m not nearly so self-deluding as to claim I’m not overweight, but until stepping on the Balance Board and having it work out my BMI, I had no idea just how overweight I was (not entirely surprising, as the last time I saw a scale was over a year ago). It was an extremely sobering moment, and more than a little disheartening. Had the arrow racing up the meter as it calculated my weight gone up just a hair more into the next color, I would have been tempted to throw the thing back in its box and give up. Game designers always talk about wanting to create games that make the player cry, but only Nintendo could come up with one capable of being seriously depressing.

The opening selection of exercises and activities offer a nice sample of what you’ll be doing with the system, giving you a handful of yoga, strength training, aerobics, and balancing activities to try. As you go through them, the game keeps track of how much time you spend exercising (actually exercising, that is – time spent navigating through the menus isn’t counted), unlocking new activities or more reps of existing ones as you go. It’s classic Nintendo, with exercises unlocking quickly at the beginning to reel you in and then coming farther and farther between to string you along. I’ve unlocked at least one new thing every day so far, though, which is a nice reward and enticement to keep going on.

And there’s the key word, for those playing along at home: Wii Fit’s greatest success, at least for me, is the way it makes exercise into a game. While nobody’s going to claim that going through a bunch of yoga poses each day is akin to collecting stars in Mario Galaxy, the over-arching metagame at work in Wii Fit is quite similar. The more you use the system, the more new things you unlock and earn. Stay consistent by working out every day, and you earn more little unlockables for your efforts. Each activity comes complete with a scoreboard, allowing you to compare today’s efforts against your past scores and anybody else using the system. Nintendo have long since mastered the “just one more level” hook, using it in pretty much all their games to entice god knows how many all night play sessions from players. Wii Fit is no exception, using the impressive tech of the Balance Board and a variety of different ways of marking personal progression to show you the sort of subtle, almost imperceptible progress you’ll start making after just a few days of exercise. For somebody like me, with a long running aversion to working out and a penchant for getting frustrated first and asking questions later, it’s just what I need to keep coming back each morning.

I’m currently spending about forty-five minutes with Wii Fit each morning, which is just enough time to run through a dozen or so yoga and strength exercises before going on a twelve-minute run (I could and probably will do a entirely separate post on the running side of Wii Fit later). This week I’m going to try shaking things up by alternating exercises every other day – maybe yoga and strength training one day, and one of the longer running programs the next. We’ll see what works. In the meantime, the important thing is I want to keep coming back each morning. While there’s no telling what other developers will do with it, Nintendo have crafted a nearly perfect tool with Wii Fit and the Balance Board, providing not only an introduction to basic fitness practices but just the right amount of encouragement to stick with it. Part of me might miss being able to look at a meal without wondering what it will do to my Fitness Age the next morning, but I’m convinced it’ll be worth it in the long run.

Filed under: talk about games