COLUMN: Don't Bury My Mii on the Lone Prairie

By Tobin Barnes
Recently, we got the Wii console.

I know. Not exactly in the vanguard, are we? It’s been around for a while, and it’s taken off like wildfire.

Saw it advertised, but never physically ran into it until we were at Chuck’s house Christmas Day. Chuck had spouses throwing punches at each other with the Wii boxing game. Husbands and wives worked up a sweat going for knock-out punches.

It immediately appealed to us. Not necessarily throwing digital haymakers at each other, but the getting-up-and-doing-something aspect of the Wii system.

Prior to that, I’d never been much of a video game player. Seemed like a lot of sitting around twiddling your fingers, getting lost in a fog of fantasy, and becoming totally unaware of real life (which, of course, may be the point).

Seemed like video game players were meat for the zombie zone. Better things to do with my time, I harrumphed.

But Wii is different. You don’t just sit there when you do Wii stuff. You get up and move around. You become active. The heart gets pumping and the lungs work harder.
In other words, you’re kind of exercising. And who couldn’t use some of that.

Wii won’t get you ready for the Olympics, but it will get you in gear a heck of a lot more than you probably are now. And that’s a good thing.

I guess Wii kinda stands for “Weee!” as in fun, as well as “We” as in one to four people can participate at a time. Our Wii console came with Wii Sports: tennis, baseball, golf, boxing, and bowling. I’ve really gotten into the boxing and tennis games, which are surprisingly involving.

You don’t actually get punched in the boxing game, thank goodness, but you do feel your fists swishing through the air. And in the tennis game, it feels like you’re really hitting the ball backhand and forehand, going for winners down the line. Plus, you don’t have to run around picking up the balls. So far, I haven’t spent much time with the baseball, golf, and bowling games, but I intend to.

Before you get going with these games, it’s fun to create your own “Mii character” to represent you in the boxing ring and tennis court, etc. Putting together your Mii self is easy and intuitive. I gave mine grey hair, glasses, and a mustache, just like “Mii,” and he wears a black cap.

We also got the Wii Fit software and its accessory, which is a plastic balance/sensor board. Wii Fit is a tool to help you get in better shape by having you do aerobic, balance, strength, and yoga activities. Many of the activities are game oriented, which help keep you involved and coming back for more.

Wii Fits starts out by having you get up on the board for measurements like weight and BMI (body mass index). I immediately found out that the designers had neglected to program flattery into the Wii Fit. After taking my measurements, it hurriedly transformed my sleek little Mii character into a dumpy, chubby little porker.

Now normally, I can fool myself in front of a mirror by sucking it in a little. Not so with my Mii reflection running around on the Wii-projected TV screen. The hallucination of fitness has been rudely and summarily erased—especially when the board makes a little “Ohhh!” sound every time I get on it, like “Take it easy on me, Mr. Beefy.”

Next, it put me through some balance tests, then crunched all the accumulated figures and announced with a false fanfare that I had the body of a 64-year-old.

All this would be pretty gosh-darned demoralizing if it weren’t for the fun and interest involved in trying to improve these numbers on subsequent “body tests” that Wii encourages you to take thereafter.

Fortunately, there have been improvements since that first time, particularly as to my Wii age, which has gone down considerably.

And that’s a good thing. For a while there, I thought they’d put my chubby little Mii character into a casket and lower it into the digital ground of a Wii cemetery.