Review: Nintendo Wii & Wii Fit
It has been in my plans for a few months now to buy a Nintendo Wii for the house. Dylan has always had fun while playing it at friends houses and I have to admit it is fun even as an adult. Yesterday I went out and bought the Wii which of course led to buying accessories and games for it as well. My fiancée Claire wanted the Wii Fit which is a board you can use to play games but also as a fitness tool. I added that to the list along with a couple games and the Wii Fit Personal Trainer game. In the end everything came to a total close to $600 which added up really quick.
The first thing Dylan did when he got home was to play the Wii. He choose some kid games and while watching him play I thought they were ok but not great. I had bought the snowboarding game and wanted to give it a shot. I do have to admit that using the Wii Fit to snowboard was a new experience for me. I have not been snowboarding in years but used to go all the time when I lived in Vermont. Snowboarding on the Wii Fit takes some getting used to as when you put more weight on your heels or the balls of your feet by your toes it makes you turn. It does take a moment to get used to it but after a short period of time I was able to control the character.
Games sure have changed over the years. I remember playing the original Mario Brothers game on the regular 8 bit Nintendo system. If you have not seen it yet check out my post Super Mario with JavaScript. It is not the full game but the fact that you can play a game like this in JavaScript is cool.
Getting back on topic the Wii Fit is nice overall however I think they could do one thing to make it better. They need to make the board a bit larger. When I stand on it the board is slightly wider than my feet which is fine for playing games like snowboarding. However when you get into doing the Personal Trainer game I tend to find it a bit small. In the training they have you running in place and other exercises that make it difficult to keep your feet on the small board. I constantly find myself stepping off the board or falling off because my foot got too close to the edge. If they made the board even 4 inches larger on the width and length it would make the overall experience better.
Most of the games for the Wii feature cartoon-ish characters and I have not been able to try any real games with graphics like you would see on the Playstation 3 but that is something I will do soon. The Wii is a very nice fitness tool but it is also a lot of fun playing with the family. Another nice feature of the Wii is that it is free to play games online with other people. The Play-station 3 is free to play on-line as well however I think you have to pay to play the Xbox on-line. Leave it to Microsoft to charge for everything they can.
