While I continue to wait for the delivery of my FitBit I picked up Wii Fit Plus last weekend.
Wii Fit Plus is basically an upgrade to the original Wii Fit that came with the balance board: it contains all of the original games and activities, then adds a bunch of new games (Training Plus) and features. It will automatically import all of your data from Wii Fit so you won’t even need your old disc anymore. So, what’s new and cool?
First off, you can now create profiles for babies and pets. Why? Well, I guess if you want to be able to track the weight of those smaller members of your household it can come in handy. Like in Wii Fit, the balance board weighs you first, and then you holding your dog, cat, or baby to calculate the difference. It’s kinda cute to see our dogs in the Wii Fit Plaza.
A new “multi-player” feature is available from the Wii Fit Plaza which allows a bunch of people to alternate playing the mini-games, but none of it counts towards Wii Fit credits. I guess it’s just a way to allow your guests to try out the games without needing to create a profile, get weighed in, etc.
One new feature I was looking forward to was the addition of routines, basically “playlists” of activities that was supposed to streamline performing multiple exercises in a row without all of the pausing and clicking. Unfortunately, you can only add Strength Training and Yoga activities to a routine, not any of the Aerobics or Balance activities. Also, you’re limited to a certain number of reps. For example, instead of having the option to add 5, 10, or 20 push-up and side-plank reps, you can only choose 6 at a time. To work around this you’d have to add multiples of the 6-rep activities in a row:
Once you do have the routine set up, though, it definitely makes performing multiple activities more efficient. You don’t need to keep clicking the A button a bunch of times to move on, you just see a brief checklist and then the next activity starts.
Wii Fit Plus also assigns METs (Metabolic Equivalents) to activities so in addition to showing you the number of minutes you’ve exercised (Wii Fit credits) it will also calculate the number of calories you’ve burned. New options in the Activity Log also let you track your waist size and the number of steps you’ve taken during the day (assuming you have a pedometer to track that data for you … this is where my FitBit will eventually come into play).
The new Training Plus games are a lot of fun too! Cycling, Segway riding, snowball fights, the obstacle course, and many more new additions can really get you back into Wii Fit if you’ve been getting bored with the old activities.
So, if you bought Wii Fit give Wii Fit Plus a try … it’s definitely worth the $20 (or less, if you shop around).
I’m a long-time user of fitness tracker tech: I got my first Fitbit in 2014 (after cancelling my original pre-order in 2009), followed by the Charge 2 and Charge 4. There was a brief time when my daughter had a Charge before she just stopped wearing watches altogether. My wife, on the other hand, went through a Fitbit Flex and Alta before I got her an Apple Watch (Series 3) in back 2018 (which she still has a loves). Honestly, with all of the other Apple devices in our home, I’m surprised it took this long for me to decide to switch and back on Father’s Day (two years after getting my Charge 4), I became the owner of an Apple Watch (Series 7).
