Better Than Reality

I haven't played much on the Wii. Technically, it's Anna's, and it's not that easy to pry her away from it. But the games are still pretty fun to watch.

Santa brought the whole family a Wii Fit for Christmas. Again, I've had very little chance to play on it so far. But I've seen enough to think that I might like to be a Mii, and live in Wii world. They seem to have a lot of fun there, and they're always so happy, even though they have no actual limbs, just floating, disembodied hands and feet. But this could make life a lot simpler in many ways.

My favorite game to watch Anna play so far is the step aerobics game. You just step on and off the platform in rhythm to the music, following the directions on the screen, while the Wii scores you on timing and balance. But that's not the cool part. The cool part is that, looking at the screen, your Mii is doing this exercise on stage, in a huge concert hall, in front of several thousand cheering Miis who are bobbing along in their seats in enthusiastic time. Oh, and you aren't alone up there. There are about twenty Miis - and, what with the networked aspect of the Wii, these are friends and family members of yours, including of course Miis that Anna made of all the cats - on stage with you. And everybody is so into this. Think "Riverdance" here, only, you know, step aerobics. And the audience just goes crazy. I mean, you see them and you think these are people who just paid $200 apiece to see, I don't know, Aerosmith. The longer into the exercise you go, the noisier and more excited the crowd is (though I have yet to see anyone produce a lighter or yell "Freebird!" or fling undergarments at the stage), while you are stepping up and down, on and off your Wii board.

You can also go online and download Miis made by people who have even more free time on their hands than you do, if you can imagine. We have Barack Obama, Bart Simpson, and Chuck Norris. Chuck Norris loooves doing those step aerobics.

Another game has you, as a penguin, on an iceberg, shifting your balance to slide back and forth across the surface of the ice to catch fish, trying not to fall off the edge into the water. Chuck Norris looks sooooo cuuuuuuuuute in a penguin suit!

I took an actual aerobics class once, many years ago. It was a lot harder than the Wii game (this is also true of tennis, bowling, pool, and ping pong, to name a few). And it was not nearly as fun, although I'm not sure the lack of adulation from an ecstatic crowd of onlookers was the missing element. It just isn't that much fun to jump up and down on a plastic platform, trying to keep up with the baffling moves ("grapevine," anyone?) being shouted out to you by a leader who looks a lot better from the back in spandex than you do, while the incessant rhythmic pounding of the steps turns your brain to jello.

I bet the Wii ski jump is a lot more fun too. I've tried this one. So far I always end up as a giant computer-generated snowball at the end, but I'm sure this is a lot more pleasant than what reality would do to me.

Well, if Anna will ever go to bed, I have a new hobby! Hit me up if you have a Wii. We could go bowling.