Before I went to America, somehow I got Dena to go through with ordering Wii Fit Plus. Actually, my mother paid for it. My mother stopped paying for Dena's gym membership for one reason or another, and Dena argued that she ought to pay for Wii Fit as a kind of replacement. That my mother is easily convinced of things is not news to me, but I had to push Dena a little bit to get her to try. Wii Fit is not a game I'd ever consider buying myself, first because I don't want to be seen buying an exercising tool and secondly because it's awfully expensive. But if my mother was going to pay for it, I knew I'd get a nice amount of entertainment out of it given that it is a Nintendo game. So a $10 rebate I'd gotten from Amazon from my earlier purchases was my contribution toward the $90 price.
Now that I've had the chance to play it, I can confirm that it's really good. Much better than I was expecting, really. The thing about Nintendo (and Miyamoto in particular, who helped design this) is that they do understand what makes for a good game. So they could make a game about washing dishes, and somehow it would end up fun. Here they've made a game about exercising, and I've never liked the whole mentality of exercising and obsessing about health but if it's in a Nintendo game somehow it's fun. I've been regularly playing it in the mornings. I do the body test, which checks your weight and tests your balance. And then sometimes I go on to do the yoga poses and even strength-building exercises. It really depends on how likely it is that someone will walk in on me, because that could be pretty embarrassing. I'm just playing a game, but an onlooker might think I was exercising!
Now, Dena has not played Wii Fit. Not at all. I waited a week for her to play it, because I thought if she played it first she'd feel more like it was her game. And then maybe she'd get comfortable using the Wii, because "her game" is on it, and then maybe she'd branch out and play other games, like New Super Mario Bros. Wii. I single out that game in particular (which I bought in America) because I've seen that it's way more fun in multiplayer than in single-player, but I very rarely have anyone to play it in multiplayer with. I only know it's fun because sometimes our cousins' cousin (sibling of the ones I was with in Illinois) comes over, and he's not a gamer but he's willing to play this game and it's so much fun playing with him. Anyway, I hoped this could be a gateway game for Dena. I know, I've said in the past that I wouldn't get my hopes up about things like that. But this is exercise! And yoga! And weighing yourself! And feeling bad about your weight! This is her kind of game! If there was ever a chance to get her into games, this is it.
There was never a chance, apparently. After a week of waiting for her to play Wii Fit, I finally played it myself. I pretended I just wanted to enjoy it for myself, but really I was doing it specifically while she was there but not in the room so that she might walk in and get jealous and want to play it herself. It basically worked. After I played some of the minigames, she wanted to try it herself. And she did play it for a half-hour or so, not the exercises but just the minigames. She has not touched the Wii since.
I'm enjoying Wii Fit. It's not a perfect game by any means, but it is a remarkable game nonetheless. Through it, Nintendo has managed to get millions of people who don't consider themselves gamers to have fun playing games. Why couldn't my sister be one of them?
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