Wii Fit first look: Wii Fit fits the Wii mold

New York (NY) - After taking Nintendo’s innovative fitness game for a dry run, I’m optimistic about the path it could open up for the Wii.

At an event held by Nintendo yesterday in New York City, we got a chance to score some more hands-on time with some of Nintendo’s upcoming titles and made sure we put Wii Fit through its paces, at least for its initial preview build.

The Balance Board, a brand new controller, was in the spotlight for our demo. The first thing the game asked me was to stand on the board completely balanced. After being a bit taken aback at how terrible my normal posture appeared to be, the game was configured and ready to go.

The headbutt exercise, which was seen during the on-stage presentation of the game at E3, was definitely the most fun. It’s similar to the "dodging" exercise in Wii Sports boxing, but instead of controlling your character with hand movements, you’re doing it based on the weight you apply to each foot.

I also tried out a ski jumping mini-game that had me kneeling down for the descent and then quickly stand up at the jump point, all the while keeping my center of balance squarely in the middle.

Without a doubt the most humiliating game I tried was the hula hoop. In that, I had to shake my hips as forcefully as possible, which I guess has a direct effect on how my feet are positioned. As the resident non-athlete at TG Daily, this challenge proved difficult for me, but it’s just the kind of thing I’d like to work at and get better, especially when I’m not being watched by a handful of Nintendo PR people.

According to Nintendo of America’s PR director Kelli Horner, there are no other confirmed titles in the works for the new controller, but there is excitement about it from third-party publishers. It should be easy enough for developers to incorporate it should they want to.

It feels a little bit "non-Wii" without any sort of touch-sensitive point-and-shoot controls, but it’s certainly something that adds to the Wii pallette, proving that a Wii game doesn’t really have to fit a rigid control scheme.

Nintendo’s corporate PR director Beth Llewelyn told us at E3 that fitness was not really an idea for Nintendo in the planning stages of the Wii. She said it was because of consumer response that it decided to go down this avenue. If this is any indication on how Nintendo plans to push this console ahead in the years to come, I hope the Wii community can fuel some other great new ideas for the platform as it continues to mature and evolve.