We've been focusing on our health a lot as a family in the last year or so, with better eating habits, regular exercise and (of course) we quit smoking some 3 years ago. We've owned a PS2 for years but we have been holding back on any other entertainment equipment...how many ways do you need to blow up cartoon characters any way? But, as most of you already know, the Wii is a bit different in it's focus...yes it has shoot-em-up, bang-bang games as well, it even comes with a neat attachment to make the remote seem more like a gun, but it is the focus on fitness that interested us.
The Wii Fit game comes with a balance board and so it has a number of exercises and games that are about full-body balance and strength. There are yoga exercises, strength exercises, aerobic exercises and balance exercises. We have already started some very healthy competition across the board and if there are any issues at all, it is only that we are spending a crazy about of time on it. It does a really great job of combining fun along with exercise; now if it would only shut the hell up and allow us to get on with the job of exercising something other than my thumb hitting the stupid "A" button, I'll be even happier!
The interesting thing is how much it does pull the family together in play .. Wii Sports (baseball, golf, bowling, tennis, & boxing) is great! Much more like the sports they pretend to be than I ever expected. That being said, how we play is very generational and the difference in scores are not just a reflection of aged reflexes. When I play Wii Tennis, I play tennis; I hit the ball as if it were a real ball and I was holding a real racket. That differs greatly from my children who, for the most part, move the controller in a way that makes their "Mii" swing a racket.The end result is the same in both cases, we hit and return the ball, but the difference is actually quite striking as well.
I'll stay with tennis as an example, but the truth is that this analysis holds for most sports games. When it comes to 1-on-1 play, their use of the controller (along with their better reflexes overall) makes it very difficult to beat them; to do so I have to rely on skill of the return and not on my ability to sustain a volley at high speed. It isn't just reflexes here, it is my deliberate arm movements at work to slow me down as well. I simply can't keep up with the physical activity but my children do 1/4 of the work (or less) because all they do is use their wrists to quickly swing their racket back and forth -- for them it is almost all reflexes. I still manage to win my share of games, though, and I kill them at the skills competition.
Actually, this last part really frustrates my budding teenager, Avery. He can't seem to understand why he can beat me at 1-on-1 play, more often than not in fact, but lose so badly at the skills. I've tried to explain to him that I actually know how to play tennis, I took lessons when I was about his age and while I am certainly no Andre Agassi but I do remember what a twist of the wrist does and how to place a ball in a particular part of the court. I only need to learn how to make this wonderful device called a Wii Remote do what I want and, as it turns out, often I can produce much better results with the Wii Remote than I can in the real world.
At 13 Avery just doesn't seem to understand just how important these skills are, he focuses on the games and while he has improved a lot, it takes him considerably more time to learn than I.
But I digress, the real point is how much fun we have had as a family using this device and how much of that fun has been physically oriented. I understand better now why so many cultures have instituted dance as a part of their regular activities; being physically active together is very enjoyable (as we've known for a while) but being able to do that in the comfort of our own home i truly a game changer!