Wii Fit Hands-on Preview

Not a hands on, but a feet-on! Ha. See what we did there. No? Ah well, can’t please everyone. Nintendo, though, is certainly aiming to please lots of people with its upcoming Wii Fit game, which comes with a pressure sensitive board. That’s right, a pressure sensitive board. Surf’s up.

I have to admit, when I first heard about Wii Fit I was sceptical. This, I thought, is clearly aimed at casual Wii-owners. Not even gamers as such, more adults, probably mostly female, who wouldn’t mind doing a bit of yoga while standing on a white board connected to a game console. What’s in it for me? Having spent half an hour or so with a Japanese version of the game at the appropriately named Energy Clinic in London, I have to say that I’m starting to warm to Nintendo’s latest casual game phenomenon.

Strangely enough, the first game I played on Wii Fit was the only one that doesn’t actually use the Wii Balance Board. It was a simple jogging game, which involves putting the Wii remote in your pocket. It then registers you running on the spot. The faster you run, the quicker your Mii will go. It’s a race of sorts, since you’re jogging in a park with another Mii, but it always waits for you if you slow down. Now I’m not the fittest of people, so I got knackered quite quickly. Either my running technique wasn’t up to scratch, or the Wii-mote wasn’t conveying the effort I was putting in accurately, but I really had to pump my legs hard to build up a decent speed. Perhaps I was holding back though, a little embarrassed to be running on the spot like a headless chicken in the immediate vicinity of lots of other game journalists.

Second, I tried a football related game that involved standing on the Wii Balance Board. Here, you need to bend your legs and switch your weight from side to side so that your Mii heads footballs thrown at you by your fellow team mates. I found this surprisingly difficult to do quickly. You really need to bend your knees a great deal to be able to switch your weight quickly enough to head the balls and avoid the various things your team mates chuck at you to make things interesting, including football boots and that Japanese favourite, the panda. Again, I was very embarrassed to do this in front of so many people, and by the end of the game my forehead was dripping with sweat, but it was decent enough fun.

Lastly, I tried the skiing game. This proved to be the most difficult, but most fun game I had the chance to sample. You ski downhill, and again have to switch your weight from left to right to make your Mii swerve between flags positioned throughout the descent. So, once again you have to bend your knees. But with this you need to think about your forward and backward balance as well. To the right of the screen is a bar with a small dot showing how you’re balanced. There’s is a blue strip which represents the ideal weight position, and it was quite a struggle to keep my weight positioned forward on the balance board while switching it from left to right to make all the flags. This might have been a subconscious fear of falling forward into the Energy Clinic’s pebble moat though. And, again, a bit of embarrassment, but I really enjoyed it. So much so, that I demanded a second run to try to get to the top of the leader board. I failed, missing one flag on the way down. Bah.

So how interested should we be by Wii Fit? As a game, it’s pretty pointless of course. But that’s not what it’s trying to be. Graphically, Wii Fit has the same art design and level of quality as Wii Sports, so will be instantly familiar to people who have only played Wii Sports on the console. So you’re only going to be interested in Wii Fit if you actually fancy using your Wii to get fit. This will be a wholly personal choice. For me, I quite fancy it. We’re told you’ll be able to tailor your own daily fitness regime with the game, involving press ups and even yoga positions. But most interesting for me is the concentration on knee movements in the mini games I played. Having recently undergone knee reconstruction surgery for a serious knee injury picked up while playing football, I think Wii Fit could really help with my physio. Everyone will have their own reason, of course, but Wii Fit certainly looks like the best game to actually help you lose weight or get fitter. Certainly better than Wii Sports anyway.

In many ways it’s an ingenious idea from Nintendo, and fits perfectly with their new, all conquering healthy video game philosophy. I suspect it will sell millions when it’s released in the UK next year, especially if the publisher gets some high profile celebrities to market it, as it has done with Wii Sports and its Brain Training series of games. Like it or loath it, Nintendo has revolutionised the gaming landscape and these types of games are here to stay. If Wii Sports was the warm up, then Wii Fit looks like being the workout.