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Bosworth
Magazine Archives
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Why Does the Nintendo Wii
Keep Trying to Make Me Exercise?
By Matt Lavin
During health class in high school, I once had to make a list of all my
hobbies and tally how many of them required exercise. The whole point
of the activity was to generate a numerical score that told the
participant how much exercise he or she got on a regular basis.
“Playing tennis” earned me a several points, while
“walking in the woods” earned me only a few. Oddly
enough, “playing golf” caused me to lose points off
a different activity.
Despite a series of obvious problems with this listing exercise, the
one thing I remember having no problem with was the fact that
“playing Nintendo” didn’t count as
exercise. Sitting in front of the TV for hours at a time literally
twiddling your thumbs might earn you points on a “drool
production” survey, but not on an exercise tabulation
activity.
And then there was the Nintendo Wii. Released in fall 2006, the Wii had
the heady task of competing with the Playstation 3 and the Xbox 360.
So, what distinguishes the Wii from game systems before it? It keeps
trying to make me exercise.
That’s right, exercise. In order to play most games for the
Wii, you have to use a controller that looks more like a remote control
than anything else. When you play a golf game with the Wii, you swing
the remote like a golf club. When you play a bowling game, you bowl the
remote. And you guessed it, when you play Barry Bonds baseball, you use
the remote control to inject steroids into your own ass.
According to one “Wall Street Journal” report:
“The new console has been wildly successful, selling out at
stores and winning high marks from critics and game buffs. But as
players spend more time with the Wii, some are noticing that hours
waving the game's controller around can add up to fairly intense
exertion -- resulting in aches and pains common in more familiar forms
of exercise. They're reporting aching backs, sore shoulders -- even
something some have dubbed ‘Wii elbow.’”
I’m not exactly sure why the Nintendo Wii keep trying to make
me get off the couch and do something, but I know I don’t
like it. Video games are designed so that people like me can slowly
move toward our inevitable death without having to move around a lot.
What presumption from the Nintendo Wii!
The obvious question is, “what’s next?”
If the Nintendo Wii can get away with giving me an unwanted workout,
what new low will the next game system stoop to? Will the Sony
Playstation’s next model require me to eat real spinach when
I play Popeye 4.0? Will next Xbox provide me with thinly disguised
marriage counseling? Will the next Nintendo teach me the meaning of
charity and good faith?
Hell, I certainly hope not. |
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