Despite just being released in December, Wii Fit already has sold 1.76 million copies in Japan and is the best-selling game of the year ending March 31.

In the ski slalom game, users stand on the board and lean left or right through the gates.

1 of 3 Now, with Wii Fit’s U.S. debut inching ever closer, it’s time for American gamers to start stretching and warming up. But what is Wii Fit? And why is it being seen as the next big product launch from Nintendo?

What makes Wii Fit unique is its electronic balance board that responds to players’ movement and weight.

Built-in sensors track the side-to-side and front-to-back movements of the player to control the actions of the player’s avatar on screen. Unlike other popular video games that emphasize role-playing, stealth, warfare, or the supernatural, Wii Fit stresses aerobics, strength training, and muscle-toning exercises.

Wii Fit will use the Body Mass Index (BMI) as the key metric to monitor your progress toward a healthier lifestyle.

The BMI is a standard measure of body fat supported by the World Health Organization and the National Institute of Health.

It’s based on height, age, and weight, so after you register the first two metrics, you step onto the balance board to record your weight. Don’t worry — the Wii Fit balance board is rated to at least 300 pounds, so step right up.

In addition to establishing your BMI, Wii Fit will also put you through an initial series of activities to test and grade your ability to balance the left and right sides of your body.

Standing on the board and shifting your weight in all directions is essential to almost all of the Wii Fit games and physical activities. It will then assign you a Wii Fit age, another metric the software uses to record the progress toward your fitness goals.

Of course, the entire point of Wii Fit is that you’re going to have to put in consistent, periodic physical effort to stay in shape. To keep you interested and on track, Wii Fit has an impressive list of 40 activities and games that are organized into four main categories: strength training, aerobics, balance games and yoga.

Strength training consists of familiar exercises such as push-ups, lunges, leg extensions, and other activities common to most workouts. You do these by starting with various parts of your body on the balance board depending on the exercise.

With lunges, for example, one leg is on the board and the other is behind you on the floor, so you actually lean into the lunge. Wii Fit analyzes frequency, balance and form.

The aerobics set includes basic cardiovascular activities, such as simple dance step routines, rhythmic boxing workouts and some light jogging, in which you run through a virtual countryside circuit.

There’s also a hula hoop game that’s fairly strenuous –you stand on the balance board and by shifting your weight, try to catch hula hoops on outstretched arms and then keep them all rotating around your hips.

But Wii Fit makes learning the classic forms of yoga look simple. An onscreen avatar teaches you the forms, and lets you know how steady — or unsteady — you actually are.

The balance activities reveal the Wii Fit offerings that are most like traditional video games. There’s a soccer heading game, ski and snowboard slaloms, and even tightrope walking.

The table tilt is a variation on a tilt-board game where you stand on the balance board and lean in all the right directions to guide multiple balls across a maze-like obstacle course.

Recommend shop : http://www.wiifit-nintendo.com

My husband surprised me by bringing home a WiiFit yesterday. This is a guy who has never wanted to work out with me, yet we took turns last night trying our skills a balancing, dodging soccer balls and even Yoga poses. I had so much fun that I woke up this morning at 5AM to play again before getting ready for work. It actually said to me this morning, “my you’re up early.”

If that’s not motivation, I don’t know what is. We live in South Louisiana where the heat index yesterday was 103 with humidity that rivals that of the rainforest. It’s not conducive to outdoor workouts what-so-ever. For less than the cost of a month of gym membership for both of us, we’ve got a great tool that actually makes getting some exercise fun in the indoor comfort of one’s private living room (also eliminates those embarassing Yoga gafs people fear).

It’s not easy, but the challenge is the fun part and opening up a little friendly competition between spouses is a great way to stay motivated and focused on a weightloss goal.

Also, FYI, the pound limit for the US version is 330 lbs. In case the weight limits had folks staying away, apparently Nintendo knows that Americans are a bunch of fatties comparied to other countries.

It’s the best Wii toy we’ve had yet.

If you like exercising or even if you don’t like exercising this is the game for you!  There is a range of different games on the disc including:  yogo, strength training, aerobics, and balance games.  My personal favorite is the ski jump although my kids keep beating me at it.

You can unlock new games by spending time on the balance board and by doing well in a specific event.

The balance board serves a duel purpose as a scale and also measures you BMI.  You get your weight and BMI everyday if you do the Body Test and they even give you a Wii Fit age – which is fun!

You can go at your own pace and you can complete as many lessons as you want.  This is a new and innovative way to implement exercise into your everyday life.  It takes gaming to a new level!

via : SK-You

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.

Wii Fit has several different activities that you can do to achieve your weight goals. Since it said I am slightly overweight, I should focus on the Aerobics activities so that I can shed the pounds. My husband loves to play the hula hoop game and the rest of us think it’s a riot watching him! There is one activity on this game which uses the Wii Balance Board as like a step for step aerobics, that is by far my favorite.

You get a lot of encouragement on Wii Fit. It really does give you the motivation to continue working out as the more you do, the more games and fun activities you unlock. I have never been an exercise person, but this is totally for me! I would normally not pay $90 for a video game but I am happy to say that I have already gotten my money’s worth.

The Balance Board that you use in the game is included. A bonus to this balance board is that you will be able to use it in some games coming out in the future. I know of one compatible game right now, Wii Ski, and I am sure there will be a lot more. I highly recommend that if you love fun mini games or are trying to exercise more in a fun way, Wii Fit is the game for you!

Wii fit

If you really want to lose some weight, go to the gym, or make a comitment to actually work out! Although the game itself can’t make you lose weight, it still may inspire you to work out properly, and can still make you work up a sweat. Why, I even found myself tired at the end of some of the arobic exercises, and I don’t usually get tired with things like that.

The game is divided into four main catagories of exersise

1. Yoga positions
2. Muscle workouts
3. Arobic exersises
4. Balance games

In my opinion, the balance games are the best, not to give you a mini work out or make you tired, but more fun. Definately more fun. At first, before you unlock anything, you have the soccer headings, skieing, ski jump, and that one where you roll the ball through the hole. Most of them are pretty fun, skieing is a good game, probably simulating actual skieing the best that a video game can do.

Anyway, enough of my jabber about my favourites, lets see how each game is. Overall, the balance are really pretty fun, the arobic games are kinda cool too, and the muscle and yoga? less fun but still worh the time. Basically, you need to stand on the wii balance board, in a certain position or do a certain workout, such as do a push up or balance on one leg.

The biggest down fall of wii fit is lack of multiplayer options. But when I say that, I mean that there’s really nothing! And the fact they two people can’t play co-op or vs each otehr similtaneously isn’t a big deal. What if you take turns? That’d be fun! But sadly, nooo. Nothing like that. If you want to do something that’s remotely similar to multiplayer, you’ll need to switch users.

Why not just play in the one account and switch, whilst still in that account? nope, sorry. When you start up an account, because it tests your weight and BMI(body-mass-index) all games are made for that user. If I was to use a really heavy persons account, to make a turn in skieing, I’d have to put so much weigth to that side that I’d pretty much be falling off. And some games don’t respond at all, because my weight is so much different.

Also, one other thing that urks me a little, is when you first start out, how long the coputer ‘talks’ to you. It rambles on and on about the best ways to do it and about active lifestyles, when you really just want to get started!

Overall, wii fit is a pretty fun game, and in my opinion worth the money. It probably won’t help you lose weight, but can make you feel good about yourself or encourage you to work out more, and is great for a bit of fun.

Let’s face it. One of the biggest challenges and hurdles that game companies and their employees face is the fact that many people believe that obsessive gaming can have some MAJOR effects on a person’s health. Due to the lethargic habits that most people tend to develop when they become freakishly obsessed when it comes to gaming, their health takes a huge toll from the lack of physical exercise (and no, exercising through flicking the remote does not qualify as a form of exercise). Well, we can never under estimate gaming moguls (or moguls to generalize) when it comes to sniffing out money.
A multi million (or perhaps billion) dollar industry has emerged because of this lack of exercise our nation has developed. And the gaming industry is no turtle when it comes to the money making from exercise race. No doubt, Wii is leaving its competition way behind.

But… How effective is playing a Wii when it comes to exercise anyway? I mean let’s face it, yeah you do need to move around when you exercise, but does the movements that Wii games require you to do really help you get healthier while playing games at the same time (thus, avoiding those weird looking spandex wearing exercise gurus)?

From IGN.com: “The title features upward of 40 different exercises and mini-games designed to get players moving, including aerobics, strength-training and yoga-based challenges…” This excerpt pertains to the certain (and yet another) hyped up game that Nintendo will release for Wii gamers. The games included are obviously based on what’s in and what’s out on the physical gyms out there today. A woman in a green track suit can even be seen happily jumping while using a Wii, which of course, only made the campaign a little bit cheesier than it already was.

And from medpagetoday.com: “For Project Gotham Racing 3, the mean energy expenditure was 125.5 kJ/kg/min.

For Wii Sports bowling, it was 190.6 kJ/kg/min.

For Wii Sports boxing, it was 198.1 kJ/kg/min.

For Wii Sports tennis, it was 202.5 kJ/kg/min.”

Not much effect there, obviously.

But, some people have argued, it is better than not doing anything at all. Probably, its time that someone also point out that people can still exercise without having to open a game console.