After several months thinking about it, we finally succumbed and bought a Wii Fit last week - it arrived on Saturday morning. It was bought as a belated birthday present to myself, but “for everybody”, because the cost was a little higher than the amount I might spend on myself.
(apologies for the stock photo - I promise to take some suitably hilarious photos of us “in action” soon)
So what do we think of it so far? Perhaps the best way to explain would be to re-live the first few minutes with it.
Opening box - so it’s actually quite heavy - and well built. How do you switch it on? Is it infra red, or wireless ? Ah - must be wireless - there’s a hidden button underneath to handshake it with the Wii base unit…
Waiting for game to load. Yep - I want to be my Mii character. That one. Oh look - it’s a 3D Wii Fit board, and it’s talking to me. It wants to know how tall I am, and my date of birth - and now it wants me to stand on the balance board and keep still. That’s funny - I didn’t realise I stood on my heels quite that much…
Now it wants me to choose a male or female trainer. Hmmm… do I go the sexist route and choose the rather fetching computer graphic young lady, or the admittedly fit looking computer graphic young man? I go with the man to avoid stereotypes, and he says hello without moving his lips. Great trick, that.
After a few minutes lecture about the various activities on offer, the Wii wants to do a fitness test on me. I have to move a bar graph up and down for each foot by leaning around like a drunken maniac. After a few moments blind panic, I realise what it wants me to do, and calm down. Apparently my “Wii Fit Age” is 44. Wonderful. Not a complete disaster though - we won’t mention Brain Training, and the 85 year old debacle.
Having been lectured, made fun of, and presumed a geriatric, I am now allowed to choose all manner of fun games to have a go at. Heading footballs looks promising. Or hoolahoop (several minutes of mayhem follows, cheered on by the girls). Our eldest has by now been asking “can I have a go, can I have a go, can I have a go, can I have a go, when can I have a go, is it my turn yet, can I have a go” at about ten second intervals, so I step away, and let her get on with it.
Being half-sensible, I think the Wii Fit is great fun. Anything that encourages the kids to play a game where they are not sat down is fine by me - and if W and I can get some fun out of it too, then all the better. I appear to be the king of our house at all the muscle activities (riding a bike probably has a lot to do with that), whereas W rules at anything to do with balance. Our three and a half year old got a huge score heading footballs without even looking at the television.
There are a few annoyances though - chief among them being the lack of multi-player events. It would have been nice to take turns with a group of people at some of the more off-the-wall events (Ski Jumping springs to mind).
Footnote - after doing a second fitness test, I recorded a Wii Fit age of 34. Apparently this puts me firmly in the bracket of those who have no need for the machine because we are already good at everything it does (I read this rather bitter comment on another blog). The reason I am fairly fit is BECAUSE I like doing stuff like this, and DONT sit on my backside all night.