Wii Fit Plus First Thoughts Review

Review Overview

Wii Fit Plus was released yesterday, October 5th 2009 for the Nintendo Wii with little fan-fare. This game is best considered to be an expansion pack for the original Wii Fit game. New Wii Balance Boards will come with Wii Fit Plus, and for those players who already own Wii Fit can purchase Wii Fit Plus for approximately $20.00 from Amazon.com, or their local video game store. Wii Fit Plus will import all existing data from Wii Fit and allow you to use all of the same excercises and play the same games, so you won’t need your Wii Fit disc anymore – you’ll just use Wii Fit Plus.

New Features

While Wii Fit Plus includes all of the same features as the Wii Fit, it also includes a number of additional features not previously available. There is now a My WiiFit Plus section which gives you the ability to configure a custom workout, view the calories in many foods, and set personal goals. There are also 3 new Yoga positions and 3 new Strength Training exerciseswith3 Strength Training Challenges. There are no new Balance Games, but there are 15 Training Plus games and exercises! While I haven’t tried them all yet, I was very impressed with the selection.

The weigh-in and fitness test features are relatively unchanged. You could always weigh in pets, babies, and other objects but now there is an ability to register you baby or pet as a player. This is a neat feature, but the only problem is that it takes up one of your player slots so if you have a lot of friends who use your Wii Fit you may not have room because the player limit is still 8 players.

Calories Burned

One of my biggest complaints about the Wii Fit game was that you couldn’t view your calories burned, but now the exercises and games show you the calories burned after completing them. The calories burned are calculated by the METs of the exercise, your weight, and the length of the exercise. METs are a standardized unit of measuring the number of calories burned, each exercise has a METs value assigned to it which lets Wii Fit Plus calculate your total calories burned. The calories are then tracked in your Wii Fit bank so you can see the total calories burned for the day as well.

Obstacle Course

The first game I tried out on the Wii Fit Plus was Obstacle Course, found under the new Training Plus section. In this fun game you have to walk between moving platforms, jump over obstacles, and run past wrecking balls. On my first attempt through the obstacle course I made it to the second stage and didn’t think walking on the Balance Board could possibly be a good workout. I tried it a couple more times and made it to the third board and found that all of the jumping was actually making my legs pretty tired. After 4 attempts Wii Fit Plus reported that I’d burned about 50 calories and it felt like it.

I can’t wait to try out some more of the games and explore all of the new features. When I setup my first workout routine I’ll be sure to post an update. For the $20 it cost this game was well worth it, or if you like to shop around for the cheapest price, Amazon.com currently has a discount on Wii Fit Plus.

Wii Fit Plus – $19.49