Remembering Wii Fit
By: Shawn Laib
Tags: Gaming, Health, Features, Fitness, Videogames

Remembering Wii Fit

The pandemic has created a dearth of workout options. Perhaps the Wii Balance Board would be handy right now?

During the coronavirus pandemic, finding creative ways to get some exercise has been one of the most dynamic struggles. Gyms open and then they close back down. The weather allowed for outdoor activity in the summer, then it put us back indoors for the winter. Yet where there’s a will to stay fit, there’s a way. Still, home equipment and workout space come in short supply for many.

As a gamer, I instantly thought about how Nintendo’s now (in)famous Wii Fit would have been selling like hotcakes if released at the peak of the pandemic. As it is, Ring Fit Adventure, the company’s current workout title for the Switch, was extremely hard to come by back in the spring with relatively no marketing compared to Wii Fit.

The game embodied Nintendo’s innovative and casual game approach as well as any other title on the shelf, and the Wii Balance Board looked like something out of a sci-fi Richard Simmons aerobics clip.

Families had enormous fun with it, and the game sold millions of copies. Still, did it actually help you get any exercise? And did the negative aspects of the experience outweigh the positive ones? Time to dive deep and find out.

The super wonky BMI scale

The most glaringly obvious screw-up Nintendo made in developing this game was the decision to include a body mass index measurement for each player. BMI uses a ratio of height to weight to determine whether someone is underweight, overweight, or obese.

Wii Fit. Source: UK Resistance.

This scale has always been considered just a baseline that should be taken with many grains of salt, as basketball legend LeBron James has a BMI of nearly 27, a number which would push him to the “overweight” category.

Anyway, getting told that you are a tub of lard by Wii Fit was a rite of passage in the gaming community in the late 2000s. For some children, they’ll shrug it off and move on with their day. For others, it was devastating.

Normal-sized kids were being told to drop weight that wasn’t necessary to lose, and the fun that was taking place before the scale took hold of the living room was suddenly absent.

Nintendo was forced by public criticism to apologize for the controversy around their strategy to weigh players, but they never put a warning on the game about it like many parents wanted them to do.

All in all, this is a huge knock against the experience. If Miyamoto and company really wanted to create a realm in which fitness could be accurately simulated in the living room, they needed to come up with a better way to classify your healthy weight or abort that part of the experience completely.

Age diversity in players

As people get older, bones get brittle and joints get sorer than they are supposed to after just getting up off the couch. Fitness for this age group is always a task that requires the perfect balance of exertion and restraint.

One study done by JAMA Facial Plastic Surgery says that facial fractures in adults older than 55 increased by more than 45 percent from 2011 to 2015. It’s clear that older people are encouraged to exercise, but it often comes with a price.

Wii Fit was perfect for grandparents and their little tykes to get a little healthy activity in without hurting themselves or being put into a dangerous situation in terms of exhaustion. The scene described above fits right in with what Nintendo’s marketing strategy has been for eons: appeal to the largest audience possible.

Researcher Ayesha Afridi, among others, found after an experiment with 16 adults averaging 67 years of age that Wii Fit Plus (the original’s sequel) improved dynamic balance and mobility in this control group after six weeks of using the game.

While it may have been fair game to mock the chances of improved fitness for an adult in their 20’s using this experience, it would be foolish to do the same for older groups. These low-risk activities should have been aimed even more at this demographic.

As it is, Nintendo once again was able to entice people to use their products who normally wouldn’t know what a video game does or is capable of doing. Age diversity was a huge boon for Wii Fit.

Wii Fit had a sequel on the Wii U console, aptly titled “Wii Fit U”. Source: Nintendo.

Setting an example for other fitness games

This is the game’s lasting legacy. While it is now outdated over a decade later, Wii Fit set a standard in the industry to strive for fitness and healthy content. As I already mentioned, Nintendo improved upon their own experience with Wii Fit Plus and Ring Fit Adventure.

Other companies followed suit, with Ubisoft’s Xbox One exclusive Shape Up, which used the Kinect, and their multi-console hit series Just Dance. The latter’s use of rhythm and music to get you moving has been a much better strategy for long-term success than Wii Fit’s rigid dedication to replicating a traditional yoga or gym workout.

The fitness genre is an evolving industry. Developers are still trying to get down just the right formula that combines a broad appeal with actual fitness results.

It also calls into question the definition of a video game. Is a simulated workout actually a game? And what needs to be a part of the experience to classify it as such?

Until that fine balance is reached, hardcore gamers will view fitness games as fads and gym nuts won’t take them seriously as real healthy alternatives to the health club.

Wii Fit directly encouraged players to take care of their health. It demonstrated a unique avenue for video games to pursue. Source: Nintendo.

Despite these questions, it’s undeniable that Wii Fit is the main reason that there is any desire for working out with a game showing you the way. Technology has evolved, and Nintendo was a pioneer in these innovative ideas for expanding what a video game can provide.

I’d say this definitely makes the game an overall success despite its technical shortcomings. Guinea pig concepts are always going to be critiqued, but the legacy of Wii Fit should be positive.

Do you remember playing Wii Fit back in the day? If so, tell me some of your best or worst experiences with the title and whether it inspired you to try any other exercise games on your home console. Thanks for reading.