Wii Are (For The Most Part) Not Amused.

My wife has continually been on me to get more exercise.
She is an exponent of this.
Even as I am writing now, she is downstairs in the basement, walking her daily mile on the treadmill.
To no avail, she has been encouraging me to do the same.
Or to at least take an occasional walk around the block.
My attitude about this is the same as it has always been-------
How do you keep score?
How do you win?
It's not that I'm so competitive.
It's just that I need something to make it not boring.
I admit to being one of the most sedentary people I know, but I'm not against the concept of exercise if it can only be made to be INTERESTING.

My wife recently attempted to rise to the challenge.
She purchased, and brought home, something called Wii Sports.
What it is, is simulated sports that you play with remote control devices that you hold in your hands while the sporting events appear magically on your TV screen, once you've hooked up the equipment.
I guess that eliminates some of the magic.

Apparently, this is something that is very popular with kids.
You'd think they would be more likely to engage in the real sports outdoors, or at least outside of their homes.
Because they are young enough to actually do well at these sports in real life.

So I opened the Wii Sports box, tried hooking up the equipment, and after several hours of it confounding me, was able to install it correctly.
I was actually eager for Wii Sports to actually provide me with some interesting exercise.
I was hoping for the best.
Because I consider myself too old to actually participate in most of the sports provided for real.
And I was never that good an athlete to begin with.

I looked at the menu of sports offered by Wii.
They consisted of Tennis, Golf, Baseball, Bowling, and Boxing.
I tried them one at a time.

1) Tennis---I figured that this would be a good one because Tennis always involved a lot of movement to cover the court.
I always used to build up a pretty good sweat playing tennis. It was a game that I used to actually be competitive with good players.
But this was doubles.
You weren't required to move much around the court.
And you weren't required to do much with your arm except make little baby swings.
It was very disappointing to say the least.

2) Golf---I was never very good at golf. But in this version, no matter how bad you were in real life, it was very difficult,if not impossible to hit a bad shot.
I've never hit a 240 yard drive in my life.
I never played a round of golf where I didn't top the ball at least half the time.
I never played a round of golf where my putts always went into the hole once they hit the green.
Here all those things happened consistently.
It was surreal golf, and of course, provided me with very little exercise.

3) Baseball----You only had control of the pitcher and the batter, which meant there was no strategy, very little arm movement and virtually no interest in continuing.

4) Bowling----There might have been some skill involved here, but there is not much exercise involved in REAL bowling.
A game that can be played while you are eating pizza.
It also involved very little exercise.

So that's four out of four disappointments.

My only hope left, before we were going to return the entire unit back to Best Buy, was if the Boxing was spectacular.
It certainly had a lot to live up to.
I was not optimistic.

What happened with the Boxing will be discussed next time.

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