30 May 2008 Friday

Day 9 with the Wii Balance Board / Wii Fit; Day 1 with Wii Ware

I’ve had the Wii Balance Board / Wii Fit for ~9 days now.
It’s happiness.
It’s well made for what it is, and the Balance Board really delivers what it promises.
The Wii Fit definitely won’t impressive people who are already fitness enthusiasts (though they should still appreciate some of the balance games) but it really does a great job of introducing and walking through various exercises, and especially great for tracking progress and thus encouraging activity and results. I was a bit skeptical of their emphasis on “posture” and “balance” before I tried it, but it really is a very good angle, and really makes a difference in your approach, outlook, results.

I recently unlocked “free step”, which is humorously simple but smart — the sound moves to your wiimote speakers and the balance board counts your steps as you move in rhythm, but then you’re free for the 10-20 minutes to channel surf and watch TV.. the wiimote will discreetly give you the beat (you can adjust the speed up or down, and choose to hear tones, taps, or a count) and periodically update you — “400 steps.. you’re going to be tired tonight!” and will give you feedback if you’re way off rhythm.
I probably won’t take much advantage, but I think it’s a logical feature to offer.

The Wii balance games are good. Snowboarding is harder than skiing, but I’m pretty sure I’m just really exercising incorrect form because I’ve never really snowboarded (icy steps at FV house don’t really count.. that was really fun though). I’m really excited to see what other titles come out to utilize the Balance Board. It’s nifty. Like a Segway.

While I was waiting for my dinner to digest before playing on the Balance Board, I checked out Wii Ware (in the Wii Shopping channel) and downloaded Dr. Mario Online Rx.
I remember loving this game and being so good at it way back in the day. Well, I still love the game, but I am so bad at it now! I don’t know what happened! gah.
Will be nice to try online/versus mode — when I don’t suck so much.

Next Wii Ware game I’m getting will be Lost Winds. It looks really really happy (pretty, and ideal controlling); I understand it’s a short game, but I really don’t have time for an epic anyway, so yay.
Really shouldn’t be spending so much time on video games, but I kind of like the bit of indulgence.

I like the Wii Ware. I like having the game in the system so that I don’t have to switch out and load discs each time for a new game. And the games, while not even nearly epics like Mario Galaxy or Zelda, are solid and time-consuming plenty!
I am a bit concerned about the eventual running out of memory space on the system to house firmware updates and other software/games.. but I’m trusting/hoping Nintendo will figure something out, and I’m mostly comfortably far away from running out of space in the near future.