So, you've decided to use your Wii for a good workout. With all the Wii games out there, which are the ones which will get your heart pumping and the calories burning? We pick out the very best Wii Exercise Games and review them here. Updated for Christmas 2012!
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If you're anything like me, over the years you've joined gyms and paid for months of membership you never used. Or, you've bought expensive gym equipment which ends up being very expensive coat racks. Or, you wait for the cold weather to pass so you can go outside and exercise, and then you suddenly realize it's too hot to go out. And you've heard stories of people who get addicted to endorphins and can't exercise enough. Well, I'm not one of those people.
From the days of Pong and Space Invaders, our society has been addicted to video games. This is where the genius of using the Wii for exercise lies. They say that you achieve weight loss and healthy heart with 30 minutes a day of aerobic exercise three times a week.For those of you who can't stay 5 minutes on a treadmill without getting bored to tears, you may be surprised that with some of these games, that half hour will speed by quickly, and your heart will be pumping and you'll be perspiring just as much as if you'd stayed on the treadmill.
Below, I've listed the best Wii games for exercise. I've given them two ratings: the first rating is workout intensity (focusing mainly on aerobic exercise). The second rating is "fun". Note that the second rating is just as important as the first, because the more fun the game is, the more you'll play it and the less you'll remember that you're actually exercising.
Also, check out the Best of the Rest List: Wii Workout Games that were once in the top 10, but have since been bumped. They're still great games to give you a variety in your exercises, and you may even be able to find a great deal on them. You might also want to check out our list of Wii Fitness Games To Avoid and our list of Upcoming Wii Fitness Games.
Do you know of another Wii game that fits on the list? Or, do you want to share the story of how you use the Wii as your workout? Add your comments below!
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Just Dance 4
It's an excellent sequel to Just Dance 3, Just Dance 2, and the original Just Dance. The control inaccuracy that plagued the first volume is all but gone now. This, plus a large number of great new modern songs, new choreography, and unlimited possibilities with downloadable content, make Just Dance 4 as fun as ever. Plus, with the improved "Just Sweat" mode, you can get running stats on your workout and receive lot of incentives to keep coming back for more. I've said it before and I'll say it again--the best kind of fitness game is one that's so fun that you don't realize you're exercising. Just Dance once again falls in this category.
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EA Sports Active 2
I'm putting EA Sports Active NFL Training Camp
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ExerBeat
There are a good selection of different kinds of exercises, ranging from aerobics to boxing to yoga, not to mention a few fun games. See the blog for a full review of Exerbeat.
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Zumba Fitness Core
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Dance Dance Revolution II
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The Biggest Loser Challenge
The program is definitely much more comprehensive than the first version. You get a huge number of new exercises (I counted 117 in all) ranging from Yoga to Core to Boxing to Cardio and Calisthenics. Unlike the previous encarnation of this game, you can choose Bob, Jillian, or both of them to be your virtual trainer. One of the neat new features is that you can design your on-screen to look like you. He/she will have your body shape when you begin the program, and as you slim down, so will it. You also have the ability to add a resistance band or an exercise ball to your workout.
They've also added new challenge games, based on the TV show: Slipstream, Boom or Bust, Light Cycles, Sprint and Slide, and Punch Clock. As in the first game, you’re not actually doing the actual movements of your on-screen character, but you’re doing an exercise routine, following a small image of Bob or Jillian. The more accurately you do the exercise, the better your on-screen character will perform in the activity. Like the TV show, you go through rounds of competition. It’s a fun way to add a little variety to your exercises. There’s also a “Health and Lifestyle” option which lets you view recipes, get tips and advice from trainers and former contestants (these are also randomly displayed for you throughout the game), and calculate your Biggest Loser Know Your Number “KYN” HeathScore.
If you're a fan of the show and don't want to shell out the money for EA Sports, this is definitely the choice for you. It provides a very solid and complete exercise routine which you can use to lose weight.
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Active Life Outdoor Adventure by Namco Bandai has enjoyed a long stay on this list. While their follow-up title Active Life Extreme Challenge was a little bit of a disappointment, they have come back strong with Active Life Explorer
They all use the special Active Life plastic mat, which you plug into the top of your Wii. The games are extremely well produced: you really do feel like you're inside an Indiana Jones movie as you try to do things like stop a runaway train or you escape from a dungeon with your arms full of treasure and mummies chasing you. Even though the moves for the games are all similar to each other (all tend to use a combination of running in place, jumping, and using your feet to match patterns), the storylines and application of those moves are so creatively done that no two games feel the same. Where this game shines is when you race against another opponent, each sharing a half of the mat.
Overall, I'd say this is a great game you can play over and over again for exercise, either by yourself or with your family. See the blog for a full review of Active Life Explorer, including videos and detailed descriptions of all the minigames.
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In many ways, Get Fit with Mel B
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As Wii fitness games improve, Wii Fit Plus is starting to show a bit of its age. It was a pioneer in its day for its introduction of the Wii balance board and whole body motion gaming. There are a lot of very fun activities in the game, and there are good options that can to give you a serious workout, but it seems that there are very few that do both. Still if you're the type who hates exercising and needs a really, really fun time to incent you to work out, Wii Fit Plus is clearly still up there with the best. And the game is getting for the balance board alone, because as much as people talk about Playstation Move and Kinect, at the moment either of those systems can calculate your weight for you like the Wii can.
You can read a full review of Wii Fit Plus on the blog. Here are some of the highlights:
The first thing to note is that Wii Fit Plus is not a "sequel" to the original Wii Fit, but rather it contains all the content of the original Wii Fit and adds a number of improvements (for a write-up of the original Wii Fit, see the "Best of the Rest" list). In other words, if you don't have Wii Fit already, you can skip it, buy Wii Fit Plus with the Balance Board
The first improvement, clearly influenced by EA Sports Active, is that instead of choosing individual strength and yoga exercises ad-hoc, you can choose from a number of pre-configured workout routines, or create your own routine from the list of activities.
The activities are still broken out by category: Yoga, Strength Training, Aerobics, and Balance Games. All of these are identical to the old Wii Fit, except that there there are a 6 new Yoga and Strength training exercises which add some more variety and challenge to those categories.
The biggest improvement in Wii Fit Plus is the addition of 15 "Training Plus" activities. Here are the best of the best new ones:
Rhythm Kung-Fu (Workout intensity: 3 of 5, Fun 5 of 5): This is the first game that put a huge smile on my face. Using your Wiimote, the Nunchuk, and the Balance Board, you have to strike different "kung fu" poses in rhythm to delightfully cheesy kung-fu movie music. It's essentially a game of "Simon Says", where you mimic the moves of a groups of Miis standing behind you (and if you have family or friend Miis on your system, you'll see some familiar faces). Another game that perhaps doesn't provide the most strenuous workout at first, but one you'll be playing over and over again to try to beat your high score (you're judged based on your timing).
Bird's-Eye Bull's-Eye, a.k.a. Flying Chicken (Workout intensity: 5 of 5, Fun 5 of 5): This is the one you probably heard about, and it (along with Obstacle Course) is the winner. Your Mii dons a chicken outfit and has to fly from target to target. How do you fly? By flapping your arms. Seriously. You can either flap your arms with your hands extended, or do a "chicken dance" type movement by bending your elbows. Either way, the Balance Board will amazingly detect how strongly, quickly, or slowly you're flapping. Like a real bird, you flap faster to get better control, and you flap slower to soar great distances. You control where you're moving by leaning on the Balance Board. It is, I kid you not, the closest you will ever come to flying like a bird. It's a great upper body workout that you'll do again and again.
Obstacle Course (Workout intensity: 5 of 5, Fun 5 of 5): This is the game I was most looking forward too, and I was not disappointed. The way it's been described is that it's like Super Mario Bros, only you are playing the part of Mario running through a 3-D obstacle course. You run in place on the Balance Board to make your character move forward and you straighten your knees to make him jump. In the process, you'll be navigating around huge swinging wrecking balls, moving sidewalks, and falling logs. Something important to remember is that to jump, you need to bend and straighten your legs. The game will reset if it detects you actually jumping on the board, a measure Nintendo put in place to prevent damage to your board.
Rhythm Parade (Workout intensity: 4 of 5, Fun 5 of 5): This was another one to put a huge smile on my face. You're basically a drum major, marching in place to the sound of a beat. Like rhythm games like Helix and Samba Di Amigo, you move your Wii-mote and Nunchuk to match on-screen cues. The better you match, the bigger your marching band becomes (and again, you'll see familiar faces join in the band if you have custom Miis). Like other Wii rhythm games of this ilk, I'm not sure how accurate the Wii and Nunchuk are (there are times I'm sure I move it on time but it doesn't register on the screen), but the game is pretty forgiving.
Once great improvement of Wii Fit Plus is that it uses METs (which stands for Metabolic EquivalenTs) to tell you how many calories you're burning, a vast improvement over the meaningless "Fit Credits" of the old Wii Fit. Another big improvement is with the Balance Board: with the old Wii Fit, each time you started a new routine, you'd need to wait for the Balance Board to calibrate.Wii Fit Plus is a bit more intelligent, in that it'll sense whether the weight has changed and give the option to recalibrate only if it has.
There is also the ability to measure a child or pet. This is a gimmick, of course, but a totally fun one if you have the aforementioned child or pet to measure. :)
It's a fun and creative title that overall still stands the test of time. Highly recommended.
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67 million Americans walk regularly for exercise, whether walking on a treadmill, taking step classes at a gym, or just walking outside. While all the other game companies are tripping over themselves trying to putting out yet another aerobic game or boxing game, Konami did something clever and decided to focus on this audience.
The result was Walk It Out. 
You step on either your Wii Balance Board or a Dance Dance Revolution dance pad (you can also use a Wii remote and nunchuk to exercise your arms instead of your legs) to a countinuous musical soundtrack consisting of some familiar songs, some generic songs, all of which are energetic and peppy. Your goal is to step on the beat, and if you do so you earn a "credit" which can be used to unlock parts of your virtual world, from scenery to new music to new routes on the map.There are so many things to unlock that it'd take months to unlock everything. But the thrill of “earning” your points and then spending them to create your own little world really does make the time go by quicker and more enjoyable than if you were just walking on a treadmill staring into space.
Konami did a good job of taking "addictive" elements from video games (collecting points, cashing them in, building your interactive world) and applying them to exercise. I rated this workout as "intensive" not because it'll make you pant and sweat, but because it's so fun and addictive that you'll be on it for hours at a time without even realizing it.
It's always better to step out of the house and get some fresh air, of course, but in those cold winter nights or late at night when it's dark outside and you feel like taking a walk, Walk It Out's world is not a bad place to visit from time to time either!
You can read a full review of Walk It Out here.
Like this list? Can you think of any games I missed, or do you know of new games coming out? Do you have your own Wii Workout experience you'd like to share? Add a comment here to share with the world!
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Chris