My Wii thinks I’m old

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Nintendo‘s latest video game, Wii Fit, has declared that I have the body of a 47-year-old. Never mind that I’m, well, younger than that.

The new fitness game is part of a burgeoning trend -- video games that claim to be good for you. Taking a knock at the archetype of video gamer as couch potato, the Wii console has pulled players off their behinds to bowl, bat and backhand their way through games using a wireless motion-sensing remote control. ‘By changing the way people interact with a game, developers have unlocked all kinds of new innovations,’ said Ben Sawyer, co-founder of the Games for Health Project. ‘That’s allowed gaming and health to collide in a nice way.’

Wii Fit comes with a device that looks like a cross between an aerobics platform and a sleek bathroom scale that Steve Jobs would have designed. It starts out by asking you to do a series of simple balancing exercises. Then, based on your performance (or, in my case, lack of performance), it calculates a body mass index and Wii Fit ‘age.’

It could have been worse. My body mass index was 22.19, which is an improvement. When I first tried the fitness game back in July at the E3 Media & Business Summit in Santa Monica, it was higher, which meant the Wii thought I was fat. Now, it just thinks I’m out of shape.

The Wii joins the ranks of technologies that don’t think very highly of me. My GPS device thinks I’m clueless -- duh, that’s why I got it in the first place! And my Gmail thinks I’m lonely, which I deduced because it steadfastly serves up ads offering assistance with my love life.

I have a suggestion for Nintendo’s next game: Wii Therapist. At this point, I’d buy it.

-- Alex Pham

Image and photo courtesy of Nintendo.

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