Weight Loss with Wii Fitness Games and Nutrisystem

It’s beginning to look at lot like Christmas…shopping season, that is. I had to do a double-take when I saw a Macy’s commercial today that was playing Christmas music!

With the economy still not looking great, expect a lot of deals this holiday season as retailers try to get a share of your wallet. And expect the smarter retailers to promote great deals early on, so you spend your money with them first before you look at spending it anywhere else.

Amazon is always one of those smart ones. And if you’re looking for the perfect holiday present for a family, they’ve got a great deal for you. From now until November 6, buy two games from a selected list of Wii games, and they’ll throw in a third one for free. Here’s the information:

Amazon’s Buy 2 Get 1 Free Deal

There are a lot of great games here, some of them which I’ve given stellar reviews to on this site. These include Just Dance 2, Active Life Explorer, Gold’s Gym Dance Workout, Wii Sports Resort, Wii Fit Plus, Dance on Broadway, EA Sports Active, and Active Life Outdoor Challenge. Buy two as holiday gifts (there are less than 55 days till Xmas, after all), and then keep one for yourself! The Buy 2 Get 1 deals are usually the best that they offer all season long, so pounce on this while you get a chance.

HOT OFF THE PRESSES: I just posted my review of Just Dance 2.  Hint: it’s good!

Just Dance 2 is the long-awaited sequel to Just Dance, the game that introduced “real dance moves” to video games is coming next week.

Amazon has a pretty neat set of specials that come when you order the game. Order now and you’ll get:

• Delivery on October 12 (the day of release) for a nominal fee.
• $10 to spend on a future video game purchase
• Just Dance 2 sunglasses. Yeah, they’re chintzy, but that’s how you have to dress when you play this game

The first line in their marketing claims that they’ve improved motion tracking accuracy, which of course was my biggest beef with the first version. Of course, I’ll be trying it out and I’ll let you know exactly what I think of it.

If you happen to have an Amazon Visa Card, here’s a deal that you might want to jump on. Buy any Amazon Gift Certificate (up to a total of $2000), and Amazon will give you 5% back. This is in addition to the 3 points (3%) you get from using the Visa card!

Details can be found at this link: Amazon Gift Card Special

You can buy them as gifts, but of course you can also buy them for yourself–it’s like getting an instant 8% discount off anything you buy at Amazon. Plus, Amazon’s sure to have some special promotions as the holidays approach which of course you’ll be able to pay for with your gift cards.

With all the upcoming Wii Fitness games set to arrive in the next few weeks, it’ll be good to be prepared. Interestingly, almost every title on the Top 10 list will be getting a remake of some kind. Given their past success, my early money is on EA Sports Active 2, The Biggest Loser Challenge, Active Life: Explorer with Mat, Dance Dance Revolution, and Just Dance 2 as being possible new entrants into the coveted list. But of course check back here for fair and accurate reviews as the games are released!

GameFlyannounced today that every day throughout the month of September everyone who signs up for a pre-paid GameFly membership will automatically be entered in a sweepstakes to win free rentals for a year.

As I’ve written in the past, I love GameFly. With all the upcoming Wii Fitness games in the next few months, it’s a great way for me to try the games first before I buy it and/or share a review. I have a shelf full of games which I bought and which are just sitting collecting dust after I played them once or twice.

If you’ve been on the fence, no better time than the present to start!

If you haven’t been to Amazon today, check out the Gold Box:

They’ll have a couple Wii games for sale throughout the day with slashed prices, and at least a few will be games on our Top 10. As usual, they’ve used cryptic clues for most of the on-sale items, but here are my guesses for what they are:

Some of these will go almost instantly, so get on while the getting’s good!

If you’ve been using your Wii for exercise, one of the things you find is that you go through a lot of batteries. Just a few workouts swinging the Wii remote or stepping on the Balance Board will run your batteries dry very quickly.

Not only is it bad for the environment to be tossing all those Duracells and Energizers away every couple of weeks, it’s not all that great for your wallet either.

Personally, I haven’t bought an alkaline battery in the store for years. Instead, I got these Eneloops by Sanyo. If you’ve been disappointed by rechargeable batteries in the past, whether because they don’t last long or because they completely die very quickly, it’s time to give rechargeables a second look.

These batteries are different for a couple reasons. First, when you buy them they already come fully charged, just like regular batteries. Just pop them into your Wii and you’re good to go for as many hours as you could expect with regular batteries.

The magic happens when they run out. You just pop them into a recharger, and in a few hours you’ve got a brand new set. For me, I’ve charged and recharged my Eneloops so many times I’ve lost count, and yet they still keep a full charge. I actually keep two sets for each Wiimote, one to use in the Wiimote, and the other fully charged so I can swap them out. They say you can charge them up to 1500 times (3 years) before they start losing a charge–multiply that by the price you pay for batteries and you’ll realize how much money you’ll save. They even use arrays of solar panels to charge the batteries to full capacity at the factory before they ship–talk about being green!

The performance is actually superior to alkaline batteries and standard NiMH batteries.

Amazon sells the eneloop 4 Pack AA NiMH Pre-Charged Rechargeable Batteries as a set of four batteries.

You’ll need to purchase a charger as well, which you can get if you buy the Eneloop Power Pack with Battery Charger and batteries from Amazon (also available at your local CostCo). If you really want to go high-tech with the charger, consider a charger like the La Crosse Technology BC-9009 AlphaPower Battery Charger. (Although while this charger comes with batteries, I still prefer the eneloops).

Every once in a blue moon, Amazon has an all-Wii, all-day sale in the Amazon Gold Box.

For today and today only, Konami’s Dance Dance Revolution Hottest Party 3 is both the Gold Box item and the Amazon Video Game Deal of the Day. It’s available at the unheard-of price of $34.99.

Dance Dance Revolution is, of course, one of the perennial top 5 in our list of top Wii Fitness Games. Even with other companies putting out lots of new fitness games nowadays, there are still few Wii workouts as effective as jumping up and down on that dance mat.

Keep an eye for other Gold Box items throughout the day!

Ubisoft’s Your Shape is available for sale at Amazon.com for only $19.99. If you don’t have it, I’d say pounce on it while you can. The price makes it worth it if for no other reason than to get the USB camera (which you can use with your Windows PC as well as your Wii).

The game itself? Well, as I mentioned in a previous review (and my Amazon review, which you can see as the third one on the page) was honestly not the greatest game in the world. The workouts are great, but Ubisoft overreached a bit in thinking they could make a USB camera work as a precise Wii game controller (never mind that Microsoft is pouring millions and millions into making Project Natal do the same thing for Xbox).

Worse, if you read through reviews of this game, you’ll see lots of glowing reviews which were clearly fake, written by Ubisoft shills. Which is a shame, because Ubisoft is just hurting themselves and their own products’ credibility with practices like that. If they took the money they’re paying these people and put it into making more great games like Just Dance, they’d find that people would buy the games in record numbers without having to resort to misrepresentation. 

In any case, this game was an unmitigated ripoff at $69.99, its price when it came out. At $19.99, it’s a nice deal. Get it while you can!

Today (and today only), The Biggest Loser for Wii is Amazon’s Video Game Deal of the Day. What this means is you can get it for the low price of $28.99.

Read my review of the Biggest Loser for Wii here. All in all, a decent enough game to mix things up in your Wii workout, especially for under $30.

There’s a great deal going on for the original EA Sports Active at the EA Store.

The game is currently on sale for $43.54 at the EA Store.

It comes with the original EA Sports Active game, the leg strap, and the resistance band. You can read my original review of EA Sports Active here.

You can use coupon code PAXEAST842 to reduce the price an additional $20, for a total price of $23.54.

If you’ve been on the fence about this one, and need to start exercising before Fall of 2010, you won’t find a better deal for this one. But hurry, I have the feeling this one won’t last long…