Nintendo was kind enough to give us some one-on-one time with a handful of games today, including the newly-announced Wii Fit—making mainstream waves even as we write this.
The Ski Jumping exercise was like most ski jumping games: they're fun yet useless; with Wii Fit, you actually get to physically experience it. It starts simple: You crouch down and force your center of balance to the north section of the pad. Once you've hit the red area on the ramp, you stand up as quickly as you can, controlling which direction your jumper actually ends up going by keeping your balance the entire time. The further you go, the better you score.
A Labyrinth-esque game was also present in the demo, controlled by shifting your center of gravity to sink spheres with pictures of Mii's from your system on them. As you progress through the levels (in the E3 demo, 45 seconds per level), more and more spheres are added to the course. At the start, most courses have lips on the side to help keep your spheres from falling off the course, but in later levels, those lips disappear and you'll need to shift your balance carefully to sink all the spheres in time.
Finally, you could also test your skills hitting soccer balls with your head while dodging flying panda heads, soccer cleats, and other non-soccer-ball objects that hurtle towards your head. This one was slightly more difficult, even though it may look easy. You always have the tendency to regain your balance once you've shifted your weight, so it was difficult to always hit the mark and dodge accordingly.
To wind down, we tried a little stretching. Stand on the mat and stretch like the girl on the screen, watching the corner of the screen to tell you when to breathe in and breathe out. The corner of the screen was a pretty bad place to put the breathing instructions, actually; it was hard to focus on them while relaxing and holding the pose. A ranking was handed out based on one's balance.
We're pleasantly surprised with Wii Fit—we weren't expecting to enjoy it as much as we did, but much like the Wii Remote, participating in the activities seemed completely natural. It's definitely on our watch lists—for whenever it is that it releases.
The Ski Jumping exercise was like most ski jumping games: they're fun yet useless; with Wii Fit, you actually get to physically experience it. It starts simple: You crouch down and force your center of balance to the north section of the pad. Once you've hit the red area on the ramp, you stand up as quickly as you can, controlling which direction your jumper actually ends up going by keeping your balance the entire time. The further you go, the better you score.
A Labyrinth-esque game was also present in the demo, controlled by shifting your center of gravity to sink spheres with pictures of Mii's from your system on them. As you progress through the levels (in the E3 demo, 45 seconds per level), more and more spheres are added to the course. At the start, most courses have lips on the side to help keep your spheres from falling off the course, but in later levels, those lips disappear and you'll need to shift your balance carefully to sink all the spheres in time.
Finally, you could also test your skills hitting soccer balls with your head while dodging flying panda heads, soccer cleats, and other non-soccer-ball objects that hurtle towards your head. This one was slightly more difficult, even though it may look easy. You always have the tendency to regain your balance once you've shifted your weight, so it was difficult to always hit the mark and dodge accordingly.
To wind down, we tried a little stretching. Stand on the mat and stretch like the girl on the screen, watching the corner of the screen to tell you when to breathe in and breathe out. The corner of the screen was a pretty bad place to put the breathing instructions, actually; it was hard to focus on them while relaxing and holding the pose. A ranking was handed out based on one's balance.
We're pleasantly surprised with Wii Fit—we weren't expecting to enjoy it as much as we did, but much like the Wii Remote, participating in the activities seemed completely natural. It's definitely on our watch lists—for whenever it is that it releases.