Obituary: Wii Fit
Platform reviewed – Nintendo Wii
An obituary is a review I write for a game I’ve finished playing. Wii Fit, barely released and in our crazed consumer minds, now old news, has dominated my living room for several months this year(and in all honesty, it still does).
A look back at the game and the hardware that has crowned Nintendo’s reign
The utter genius behind Wii Fit is not the cleverly marketed Wii-board, which in essence is something the Japanese gaming goliath could have made in the early nineties, but the way it entices all comers to come and play. The mini-games are none too shabby, but leaping off a ski jump or attempting to balance on a rope across a canyon are hardly the stuff of award winning game design. But when these simple and trivial acts are tied to your BMI (Body Mass Index) and a sense that you’re improving yourself by playing them – the trivial becomes the momentous and the addictive. Wii Fit has truly inspired a new generation of gamers, a cross section that I’m guessing would cause a headache for marketers to define, given how broad it is. Let me put it this way: I love the jogging in Wii Fit. My one and half year old can play the football heading game. My girlfriend is into the more complex fitness elements of the game. Even my mum wants it. Desperately.
I won’t go into Wii Fit’s criminal lack of availability in this country, but assuming you can get hold of one, I wager anyone, no matter what age or gender, can find a use for it, or a member of their family who is simply aching for a chance to try it out.
The Wii-board in our house may have been brushed under the sofa, but one thing is certain, as soon as a relative or a Wii Fit virgin enters the house, it’ll be dusted down and battered under foot.
Find out what Jason is up to on a daily basis on his own blog www.jasonbradbury.com.
