Wii Fit

I own a Wii so I buy everything that people tell me is fun, so I bought this and like everything else I've bought for the Wii it wasn't actually fun but it makes me feel cool to tell people how fun it is. I also like to defend the Wii and Nintendo as they are a very poor and downtrodden company, the real UNDERDOG of videogames.

I love the Wii Fit, which I've had for about a month. I do still force myself to go to the gym for 45 -60 minutes of cardio at least 3 days a week, have been for a couple of years now, but I hate it. I bought the Wii Fit to try the strength and yoga programs. However, my kids and I (ages 43 and 8 & 9)discovered the balance games first, and we're addicted. I've never been able to make myself do more than a week or so of abdominal exercises, but with these balance games, I have finally started to see results! I am a working mother with kids involved in time consuming activities, so I hit the Wii promising I'll do 10 minutes and so far, I've never been able to stop under 20 minutes, usually I get to 30 minutes. The ski jump and slalom, the table tilt, the bubble and tightrope are all so much fun. Then I unlocked the penguin-I am an educated woman, never thought I would be motivated by disappointing my mii, but when my penguin-suited mii looks dejectedly at the snow, well, it makes me want to try again-and again. I take the Wii Fit tips seriously, have changed the way I walk accordingly, and between this improvement in my posture and the strengthening of my core muscles, my back pains have been all but eliminated (OK, occasionally I sleep wrong requiring an advil, but no longer the all day ache). I am thrilled with this purchase! UNFORTUNATELY, my Wii system had a malfunction, and I am forced to ship the actual Wii to the factory for repair. I am really missing my workout, way more than my kids (who are truly more upset about not having Guitar Hero and Lego's Batman to play than the Wii Fit). I can't wait to get back on track.

I won't go over the Wii Fit functions as they have been covered. I will say I am a soon to be 56 year old who is moderately fit. I love the Wii Fit it does challenge me, I have now logged over 60 days and feel great.

The Wii fit balance games are fun, but most of the exercises aren't very useful
(unless you're very out of shape)
also many of the exercises like sit ups or running will penalize you for things out of your control...
(like for example not putting your feet on the wii board evenly when returning your feet from a crunch)

as an exercise machine- kinda crap
as a game- quiet fun - not as good as wii sports... but hoping more games will use it otherwise kinda a was of $$$s

This is the default software package that comes with the Wii balance board (WBB). From the technology point of view, the WBB is nothing more than a big electronic scale with wireless communication built in. The only data it is capable of sensing are the pressing forces at the four corners, exactly like any $14 scale one can buy from Walmart, although regular scales display only the sum of the forces while the WBB sends all four numbers to Wii.

Once the installation is complete and Wii Fit starts to run, however, the brilliance of this idea becomes apparent. It is, in fact, not a video game. It is a combination of many gym exercises set in a ground-breaking, interactive multimedia environment. Suddenly, the $90 price tag no longer seems expensive once the comparison shifts from $60 game packages to gym memberships that runs in the hundreds or even thousands of dollars per year.

When I first saw the list of the exercises, I thought they were way too easy, fit for old ladies and couch potatoes only. Once I tried them myself, I realized that one could make them a lot more challenging simply by adhering to the proper forms strictly. Wii Fit therefore provides a fun-filled decent work-out for a surprisingly broad range of users.

As innovative as Wii Fit is, I don't think it deserves 5 stars because of the serious limitation imposed by its rudimentary sensor schema. After all, the only input for the CPU is how the user is balancing on the WBB. This is not a problem for Yoga or Strength Training, but in the Balance Games, cheating is easy and the game play gets tedious really fast. Like I said before, this is not a video game but a fun way to exercise at home. If the user understands this fact, he will find the machine doing a very good job.