I haven't talked a whole lot about Wii Fit, which is odd, considering how excited I am about it. I suppose that's because the last game I wrote a lot about was Jenga, and I ended up not even purchasing that one. But no fear with Wii Fit, I've already pre-ordered it from Amazon (and in an unprecedented, for me, move, I paid extra for two-day shipping). Which is a good thing, because it looks like if you didn't pre-order, you ain't getting it. I checked my local Target, and they weren't taking pre-orders. The guy behind the counter said it would be one of those "under-the-radar" games, to which I could only shake my head and have pity for him. Hope he remembers that conversation when he sees the mob at the door on May 19. I don't like dealing with Gamestop if I can help it (though to their credit, they do carry some relatively obscure stuff), and ditto for Circuit City and Best Buy, so I decided to go the Amazon route instead of picking it up on release day.

Anyway, I suppose the takeaway is that Wii Fit is going to be huge. It really taps into the needs of Nintendo's target audience of non-gamers, and fills a real need of the typical gamer (a point well-illustrated in the hilarious video found here), and looks to be a lot of fun. I'm not convinced just how intense of a workout it will deliver; I suspect it will be underwhelming on the cardio front, while I fully expect the yoga component to kick my ass (EA has already announced a more Western-fitness-based game for the balance board). But in any case, at least there's the crazy-Japanese-wackiness factor to consider:

I'll be sure to share my opinions when I actually have the game.

Another hands-on with Wii Fit.

A toes-on look at Wii Fit. Apparently, the official spelling is two words, now WiiFit, as I've been referring to it. In any event, Joystiq's reaction makes me hopeful. They didn't seem too impressed, but they seem to be reviewing it as a game, not a lifestyle tool, or whatever you want to call it. But they do acknowledge this, adding that, "like Brain Age, it's likely a title we'll never really love but still play it over a year after its release."

Now, I played Brain Age yesterday for the first time in awhile, and Dr. Kawashima's head pretended not to know who I was. That hurt. But I do think Wii Fit is something I would use with regularity. I managed to keep up with EyeToy: Kinetic for about two solid months, and that thing simply didn't work: I had to light myself up like a Christmas tree for the camera to see me (every light on in the living room, plus three halogen lamps pointed directly at me), kept bumping into the ceiling fan because I needed every inch of the room to play, and still the camera missed half my gestures, so I always got bad scores. And most of the non-aerobic exercises were just a glorified fitness video, offering no feedback. So what I noticed most in this early evaluation of Wii Fit was a lack of comments about things not working. So I am very excited about this product. If only they could pull off a holiday release, but given their now-baffling inability, eight months in, to make enough Wiis, I'm relatively sure Nintendo couldn't pull that off.