Wii Fit

People - we're a funny old bunch. Pay us to do something we previously enjoyed and we'll convince ourselves that we don't enjoy it as much as we used to. Present us with something in the form of a challenge however, and we'll jump at the chance to do things we would never voluntarily have considered.

Take Nintendo's Brain Age series for example - people doing logic puzzles for fun so that an algorithm can cheerfully inform them that they have the mental reflexes of a pensioner doesn't sound like a winning formula, but it sells by the bucket load. Enter therefore Wii Fit - a Brain Age for your whole body.

Wii Fit is the latest brainchild of Nintendo's favourite son Shigeru Miyamoto, and is essentially an exercise game, or to be more precise a collection of exercise mini-games. The game is shipped, and indeed only works in conjunction with the "Wii Balance Board" a new peripheral in the rather unusual and unassuming guise of a pair of bathroom scales.

The basic idea is that players stand on the Balance Board which is designed to measure centre of balance and body mass. Having done so there are two basic options - Body Test and Training. The Body Test function uses these two measurements along with two quick balance tests to produce a "Wii Fit Age" ranging from 2-99. The BMI, weight and age data are then tracked for each user over a period of time.

On a side note it is worth mentioning one excellent and well thought out feature - the "Wii Fit Channel" which can be installed to the Wii Menu and allows for quick access to a Body Test and your test and training results without the need for the Wii Fit disc. This makes daily tests instantly accessible and adds real value to the Balance Board.

As far as training goes there are 40 different activities spread over 4 different sections; Yoga, Muscle Workouts, Aerobic Exercises and Balance Games. The Yoga and Muscle Workout sections are the more serious sections, with the Aerobic Exercises and Balance Games being more light-hearted and on the whole less taxing.

The main difficulty that Wii Fit faces is that it falls somewhat between two stools, not knowing whether it wants to be a game or a serious training aid. The lobby and body test interfaces use Miis, as do the Balance Games and Aerobic Exercises section both of which are presented with senses of fun and humour.

The Yoga and Muscle Workouts sections however are presented by rather businesslike personal trainers and set in a rather anonymous and soulless gym environment which seem to suggest that Nintendo want the system to be taken seriously at least in part. Despite this however, from the point of view of getting a serious workout from a Wii Fit session there is one major flaw with the control system.

Before and after each activity, navigation through the menu system is via the Wii Remote. Given that there is no option to stack activities into a longer play list this means that every 2-3 minutes your session is broken up by brief periods of inactivity while you move around the system making for a fairly stop-start experience.

On top of this, in traditional game style when you first start playing only a limited number of activities are available. Time spent on any of these activities earns "Fit Cash" and once enough of this is accrued a new activity is unlocked. Unfortunately you can't choose which activities to unlock, and there seems to be no correlation between what you've been doing and what is unlocked next, so 20 minutes spent doing Yoga might free up a new Balance Game and a new Muscle Workout meaning you have very little control over your overall progress through the activities on offer.

Miyamoto apparently wanted Wii Fit to be "a way to help get families exercising together" and was inspired at least in part by his own daily life and the experience of his family exercising together. This seems like a very laudable goal, and would probably work well in a family environment with each family member testing themselves daily and coming together to work out and have fun. However, in the more adult based gaming culture of the West, it is unclear whether there is a real place for Wii Fit other than as a briefly entertaining diversion, which is something the Wii already has plenty of.