wii fit reviews 01

I’ve had the Wii Fit for a month now, long enough to get over the novelty phase, and I still love it. The point of the Wii Fit isn’t fun, even though some of the balance games are entertaining. This is about fitness. No, it doesn’t give me the same workout as an hour of kickboxing or aerobics at the gym, but it’s convenient and much cheaper than a good treadmill. It also tracks my weight and my exercise. I can even put in other exercises that I do.

I love the yoga, but I’ve always been a yoga buff. Some of the strength training exercises are a little awkward with the board, and it complains at me about weight change if I use hand weights. The hula hoop and the boxing are winners for me. I also like the free step aerobics that provides a beat (that I can speed up or slow down) and tracks my steps while I watch tv. My son downloaded some Miis, and he thinks it’s funny to see me doing step aerobics with Darth Vader, Mickey Mouse, and Charlie Brown.

My sister also bought this for my dad to go with the Wii that the rest of us got him for his 80th birthday. He and my mom have been using it, even though my dad has never had any use for computers or video games. With them Nintendo hasn’t just tapped the casual player audience; they’ve tapped the no-play-ever audience. Kudos.

I look forward to new software using the Wii Fit board. I’ve heard that Jillian Michaels, among others, is developing a program for it, and I’m very interested to see how Jillian will use this to kick our collective butts. All in all, the Wii Fit has a great deal of potential.

But there are some things that I would like to see. How about a calorie tracker? Or ways other than BMI to track progress? I would also like to be able to enter exercises for days other than the current one. I went out of town for five days, and when I got back, I found that I couldn’t enter any of the exercise that I did while I was gone. Since these are all software suggestions, they would be easy to add.