Digital Trends

Nintendo Wii Fit July 21st, 2008 | by Mike Kobrin

The Exercises

The game comes with four types of exercise: Yoga, strength training, aerobics, and balance. The game automatically populates a Favorites with your most frequently played games and exercises. You get credits for each exercise you complete, which go towards your time total for the day and unlock new exercises, games, or difficulty levels.

Progress Chart Screenshot

Yoga
The Yoga poses start off very simple and easy, with deep breathing and some very light stretches. You're supposed to time your breaths to coincide with an expanding and contracting circle on-screen, and the exercises are very short. Even though we'd had plenty of yoga classes over the years, the Wii told us our balance could use some work, especially given the board's high sensitivity. Tree pose and the sun salutation may be easy on a mat, but when your balance is being tracked and displayed on-screen, it puts a little pressure on you to improve.

Exercises go at quick good pace, but you can always watch a demo of a pose before trying it yourself. Each time you rack up enough points by keeping your balance during exercises, you unlock either a new pose or a greater number of repetitions. Some poses look fairly daunting, like the shoulder stand (the last pose to unlock), but they're still within reach of most healthy people.

Yoga Screenshot

Strength Training 
These included various types of push-ups, plank poses, squats, and leg lifts, geared towards improving core strength and muscle tone. Some of the exercises can be quite difficult and may require working up to if you're a couch potato, but we didn't have too much trouble completing any of the items.

Like with the yoga poses, your score is generally determined by how well you keep your balance. You can push yourself by choosing more reps as you unlock them.

Aerobics
If you're looking to sweat, this is the section for you. Jogging, Hula Hoop, Rhythm Boxing, and Richard Simmons-esque step exercises will keep you breathing pretty heavy. The jogging doesn't use the Balance Board; you just stick the Wiimote in a pocket or hold it in your hand, and the game interpolates your "running" by tracking how much the remote moves. Of the bunch, we found Hula Hoop most addictive.

Hula Hoop Screenshot

Balance Games
With genuinely enjoyable games like Snowboarding, Skiing, and Tightrope Walking, we think the balance games section is the most fun. There's even a bizarre game where you're a man dressed as a penguin trying to balance yourself on an ice float and catching fish that happen to jump up on it.

The balance games challenge you to shift your weight subtly from one foot to the other, and they're a lot tougher than they seem at first. But these are the games that most users will find themselves playing again and again just for the fun, not necessarily for the exercise. And along with the yoga poses, they're the best practice for improving your sense of balance and strengthening your core muscles.

Conclusion

The Balance Board is one of the coolest game controllers we've used, and it has lots of potential for applications beyond Wii Fit's current crop of exercises and games. We'd love to see extension packs for Wii Fit with new games like surfing and ice skating. We'd also like to see more multiplayer opportunities enabled by pairing multiple boards with the Wii simultaneously.

The exercises and fitness tracking/monitoring tools are there if you want them, and we were able to reach our goal of losing 5 pounds in three weeks, but if you're serious about getting in shape you''ll get faster results by going out and running, swimming, or cycling. The balance games and aerobic activities are fun for everyone and are worth the price alone; the fact that you're improving your body (however subtly) is a big bonus.

Don't get us wrong, we still love our Grand Theft Auto, Motor Storm, and Halo 2, but the Wii Fit hits us somewhere those games don't. Maybe it's in the legs and abs.

Pros:

• Improves sense of balance
• Easy setup and cute interface
• Good mix of fun and exercise
• Challenging and goal-oriented

Cons:

• Occasionally made us feel bad about ourselves
• You can't set up a customized workout
• Questionable fitness evaluation abilities
• Only one board can be synced with a Wii at a time