Now I know you are all waiting with gasping breath for the release of Wii Fit - which recently got pushed back two more days for some reason (to May 21, for those of you not following). At an MSRP of nearly $90, it seems like quite a hefty price for the video game equivalent of an exercise bike crossed with a stepper, but it does have plenty of potential.

Well, today I had my first opportunity to give it a try, and though it’s weird as hell to control at first, even in my limited trial time I could definitely see some inklings of fun and, perhaps more importantly, the potential for some quality exercise. I tried my hand (or feet, if you will) at the ski slalom and soccer heading events, then watched others make fools out of themselves to the hula hoop and tightrope walking activities. The Nintendo vendor kept trying to get some poor sap to try the pushup-yoga routine thingy, but he wasn’t having much luck finding such a sucker. The board is extremely sensitive to your shifting weight, but the events - at least on the easy mode which we were playing - give you a chance to get your feet underneath you by starting the events off slowly; for example, the slalom began with very wide turns and flags spaced far apart, then progressed to tighter, more closely divided gates to ski through. There’s definitely a learning curve, but it seems like a ton of fun to engage in.

Overall, I’m excited. Of course, this was a vendor event for the store I work at, so the message we were being told was, “This is going to sell lots of units and lots of systems! Yay money!” But through it all, I kept my gamer poise and just imagined the fun I’ll be having and the weight I’ll be losing (I hope!) come May 21.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 6th, 2008 at 5:32 pm and is filed under Gaming News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.