Title: Wii Fit
Platforms: Wii
Publisher: Nintendo
Developer: Nintendo
ESRB Rating: E for Everyone

If you listen to health experts and all their medical savvy and mumbo jumbo, they'll tell you that Americans are lazy. We live on fast food. We drink too much coffee and carbonated drinks. Most of us are overweight or obese. We're addicted to TV and the Internet and spend too much time playing video games. Not only is the latter keeping us pinned to our chairs and couches, but they're eating away at our positive morals and turning our kids into ruthless killers. We've listened to this garbage for far too long, but the truth of the matter is that they're probably right on a general scale. We need our entertainment, but we need our physical activities even more.

While its intentions are certainly admirable, Nintendo's method to get you off the couch is flawed when it comes to Wii Fit. Actually, when you get right down to it, gamers will probably wonder if they can take Wii Fit seriously given its approach to Body Mass Index and weight categories. Still, you have to tip your hat to Nintendo for innovation; not only in the Wii console itself but also in the way the company re-approached the consumer with a healthy way to play games. Get off the couch. Play. Exercise. Interact. Without a doubt, Wii Fit reaches the gamer within, whether old or new, and offers a healthy dose of fun while fine-tuning your balance, dexterity and overall fitness.

However, somewhere along the way this software review somehow became a hardware review. The balance board took center stage much like the Nintendo Wii would be the center of attention if someone were to request a review of Wii Sports. Without the Balance Board, Wii Fit would thus become another Yourself!Fitness: just a stale software instructor.

The Balance Board device features four sensors, one located at each corner, called Strain Gauge Force Sensors. These sensors measure the amount of force applied to the metal Duralumin (commonly used in the airline industry) skeleton. As the metal bends from the top and bottom, the strain gauge bends along with the metal, and the attached sensors pick up on how much force is being applied. According to the manufacturer, if you apply 100 kg of force to the metal, it would bend only 0.1mm, which is virtually invisible to the naked eye. Apparently, the sensors are precise enough to detect weight differences up to 500 g, and the same technology is used to weigh industrial equipment such as 18-wheeler trucks and airplanes. Finally, the board uses four AA batteries and works best on hard surfaces and thin carpet.

For this review, the Balance Board sat on a thin carpet using the accompanying feet extensions. While the measurement of weight seemed to be spot on, the board proved unreliable in a few circumstances, such as when it did not register a step or a shift in balance. Chances are, the board itself - larger than a bathroom scale measuring 20" wide and 12 1/2" high - wasn't large enough to accommodate a 12" foot. This probably wasn't a design flaw per se, but rather a "safe" estimate spanning the size of the average woman's foot.

Despite the accompanying hardware, Wii Fit has had its share of controversy, and therein lies the product's huge setback: the Body Mass Index. Using the Balance Board, Wii Fit determines your BMI by weight, height and age. What it does not request of the user is his/her general frame size and current BMI (you can't even choose a simple "body type"). With that said, a man measuring 6'1" feet in height and weighing 225 pounds is considered obese whether he's carrying jelly rolls above the belt or rippling with bulging muscles and chiseled abs.

Body Mass Index isn't an exact science and it's one of the few drawbacks for Wii Fit and the Balance Board.

Not too long ago a man's step-daughter set up her account and quickly discovered that the Wii Fit believed that she was obese despite her actual physical size. While Wii Fit works well as an expensive scale, it fails miserably in determining where you are physically, and to explain that observation further, I will use myself as an example.

So let's start off with the Wii Fit Age classification. This borrows heavily from the Brain Age games on the Nintendo DS, determining the "age" of your brain in relation to your actual age. The Brain Age description serves as a comparison of where you are mentally and where you should be mentally. Wii Fit Age works in the same way although the results cannot be accurate simply because of your body's current state. Just because you stayed up all night doesn't mean you're off balanced on a day-to-day basis.

Wii Fit determines your age by taking in your weight, height, actual age and then two balance tests; these vary from test to test although the more frequent ones consists of balancing on one foot or shifting your weight left and right to keep the levels within the blue. But because I smelled something suspicious, I decided to test the test. According to Wii Fit, my body fluctuated a great deal in less than 24 hours. On the first attempt, Wii Fit determined that my body "age" was four years older than my actual age. On the next day, it determined that my body "age" was four years "younger." That's a seven-year difference after doing absolutely nothing different. Hell, I even ate pizza for supper!

So what does this mean? Wii Fit can't determine your real physique without factoring in current stamina and what you've eaten since the last test. My 14-year-old son, a skater by day and owl by night, ended up with a "Wii Fit Age" of 23 despite being extremely active. My 10-year-old daughter had a body "age" of 25. "Oh dear," it told her. "That's a difference of +15 years. Your body is much weaker than it should be." Whatever.

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