Weight Loss with Wii Fitness Games and Nutrisystem

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Review of Exerbeat for Wii

Exerbeat by
Platform: Wii
Rated:E
4.5 stars – “Fun exercise game with video gaming elements that keep you coming back.”
by ,
Written on July 14, 2011

Sorry, I know a lot of you were asking me to review ExerBeat for the Wii. I’d actually been promised by Nick at Namco Bandai back on May 31st that he’d send me a copy of the game to review. Unfortunately, seems that Nick has fallen off the face of the earth after repeated attempts to contact him (Nick, if you’re reading this, call me, I won’t bite!! :P ).

Anyway, I decided to rent the game from GameFly. Here’s my review.

ExerBeat is a new exercise title by Namco Bandai, the same folks who brought you We Cheer and the Active Life series. In many ways, it epitomizes the state of exercise games on the Wii—lots of fun, decent exercise, but hit-or-miss motion tracking.

You start out by selecting your Mii. Good start—too many game companies other than Nintendo don’t embrace the Mii, I’m glad that Namco does.

A chubby yellow-and-orange music note named “Rhythm” greets you. It asks your year of birth, so older folks like me have to go through the ignominious process of scrolling and scrolling until you find your year. Then, it asks to confirm your birthday, which it will pull from your Mii profile. It then asks you to input your weight (it doesn’t offer option to check weight with a balance board–even though it detects the balance board, I can’t find any activity that actually uses it). Finally, it asks for your dominant hand (great for lefties who feel a little left out with so many games asking you to hold the remote in your right hand).

The Music Note tells you that you’ll move your body to the rhythm in all sorts of fun and challenging exercise routines.  It lets you watch a tutorial.

If you’ve played Wii exercise games before, the routine is pretty standard. You need to watch an on-screen instructor and mimic her moves as if you’re standing in a mirror. You have the option of working out with one Wii remote or two. I definitely recommend both. (Later, you’ll also have the option of working out with someone else, with both of you holding two remotes, and you’ll eventually unlock a “Video Mode” option which allows you to just work out without the Wii remotes).

The tutorial is a simple set of warm-up aerobic exercises. You’ll see arrows on the screen indicating how your hands should move, and if you match the movement precisely you’ll feel your Wii-mote “rumble”.

The first thing I watched for, of course, how accurate the motion controls are. I found in the aerobic exercises, the controls were very frustrating. I would be doing the aerobic exercise perfectly, but at best the system would recognize only 60% of my moves. Worse, the perky aerobics instructor would annoyingly tell me I was doing it wrong when I wasn’t.

As with other Wii games, you need to do a little trial and error to learn how to get good scores—in order to score the highest scores you basically need to “feel the music”, anticipate the moves, and make sweeping, exaggerated movements rather than trying to just mimic what you see on the screen. Later, I found that fast-moving activities like dancing and aerobics were spotty in the motion detection, while more controlled activities like karate and boxing were spot on—among the best I’ve seen on any Wii game. So the accuracy is literally either hit or miss depending which activity you’re playing.

After the tutorial, you’re sent to a calendar, the main screen. From here, you can watch the tutorial again, edit your profile, or click “Exercises” to start exercising.. As you complete more exercises, more options will appear on the screen, such as the ability to view a graph of your progress, play “Today’s Challenge”, or set a time goal for how much you’ll exercise during the week.

The Exercise menu is broken into a couple categories. As you select each category, you’ll see colored icons representing different 5-10 minute workout routines in each category; each button will give the length of the workout and the intensity (on a scale from one to five flames).

Click on an icon, and you’ll be told how many METs you’ll expend. The way METs work, 1 MET means you’re resting, and as you add METs it means you’re burning more calories. You’ll also get an explanation of which part of the body you’ll be working out with the exercise, and how it’ll help your overall health.

As you complete each workout, you’ll earn “rhythm points” for performing the exercise accurately (again, subject to the Wii’s accuracy).

After your first workout you’ll be taken to Around the World mode, where you can “travel around the world” based on how much you’ve exercised. Your workout time + your “rhythm points” (which you’ll accumulate when you do exercises accurately) translate to the number of miles you can travel in your “around the world” journey. As you travel the world and master exercises, you’ll unlock new exercises, unlock pieces of the map (the Eiffel Tower popped up when I “walked” to France), and even read trivia about the different countries you’ll be visiting. It’s a clever way to use gaming concepts to get you “goal oriented”, much like Walk It Out made you want to walk and walk just to unlock new things.

Here are the different types of “exercises to the beat” that you can do:

Dance Exercise:

  • Aerobics – These are typical aerobic exercises with you stepping and moving your arms to the instructions of an annoyingly stereotypical perky blonde female trainer in a spandex outfit.
  • Hip Hop – As a generic hip-hop beat plays in the background, a rather muscular and enthusiastic cartoon depiction of an African-American gentleman leads you through arm movements which I’m not exactly sure are really authentic “hip hop” moves. (By now, I’m realizing the developers of the game weren’t exactly trying to be politically correct).

  • Latin Dance – In this set of exercises, a cartoon depiction of a Latino woman with ripped abs and a lot of her hips showing teaches you Latin dance moves. Well, again, even though the music and the names of the dance steps sound like real Latin dances, as with “hip hop” you’re really just moving your arms back and forth and from side to side. Don’t expect Zumba here—you’re not really learning real dance moves. But you do get a decent workout.

Martial Arts

  • Boxercising – A very enthusiastic blonde guy teaches you boxing moves. As I said, unlike the aerobics and dance exercises, the motion control in these exercises was spot on, much better than any other boxing game, including Gold’s Gym Cardio Boxing.

  • Karate – Ah, I was waiting for the stereotypical Asian guy. This guy comes straight out of a kung fu movie. As with most of the other exercises, you won’t learn real karate from here—you’re just flailing your arms to match the beat in a way that sort of looks like karate moves. You can think of this as Wii Cheer that’s a little less girly. Still, as with the boxing the motion controls are very good here.
  • Karate Forms – Forms are moves combined together that are used on a karate opponent. Here, you’ll have a bunch of karate moves strung together. Our Asian friend is back in this one.

Body Conditioning

  • Yoga / Pilates – You guessed it—here a high-pitched Asian woman leads you through the exercises. Again, you’re not going to get true hard-core Yoga and Pilates instruction here, but the motions and positions are close enough to give you a pretty good simulation. The one thing I found a bit awkward is that for some of the exercises you need to twist your head to be able to view the screens, but the more you do the exercises the more you’ll memorize the moves and be able to do them based on the voice prompts alone.

  • Stretching – A brunette leads you through basic stretching exercises using your feet and arms.

Party Fitness

These are simulations of activities which you can play alone or with a friend. As with the activities above, motion tracking tends to be hit or miss.

  • Swimming – An interesting game where you simulate different swimming strokes with your Wii remotes. You start at the Beginner level, and unlock Intermediate and Advanced levels. A good effort, but poor motion tracking makes this one frustrating to use. After a lot of trial and error, I was able to get a modicum of success by trying to match my movements to the music, but ultimately it was pretty unsatisfying.
  • Dance Fever – This is more like “We Cheer” than “Just Dance”. Wave your arms to the beat and earn points. You won’t learn any dance moves from this one, but the motion control is arguably better than previous dance games such as We Cheer and Samba Di Amigo (although still not perfect).
  • Pizza Toss – Just when you thought the ethnic stereotypes were over, here’s a happy Italian guy in a chef’s hat twirling pizzas. No, the motions are not really accurate pizza tossing motions, but again, it’s yet another fun motion tracking game.

  • Wall Smasher – This is a pretty fun boxing game where you follow on-screen motions to smash down walls.
  • Pirate Attack – I’ll let you see this one for yourself.

There are other modes you unlock:

  • Weekly Challenge will let you set your exercise time goal for the week and track your progress.
  • Today’s Challenge - Each day, you’ll be able to accept a new “Challenge”, essentially three exercises strung together and a target percentage of accuracy to meet. It’s a great idea, but again the inaccuracy of the aerobics exercises has a frustrating tendency to drag your score down.
  • My Exercises – Unlocked after you reach Rome, this setting will allow you to mix and match your favorite exercises to put together your own custom workout routine.

Overall, I was pretty impressed by Exerbeat. For a pretty low price ($19.06 at Amazon as of the time of this writing) you get a very comprehensive set of very fun workouts. And I love the use of video game elements to keep you motivated and interested in the game as you traverse the world. Most Wii fitness games can be divided into two groups: pure exercise games which give a good workout but which you get tired of easily (EA Sports Active 2, The Biggest Loser), and game which are fun and provide some exercise, but not enough to really call a real workout (Just Dance 2, Active Life Explorer). Walk It Out and Exerbeat are two games which really seem to do both. And with multi-player support, it makes exercise even more fun as you put yourself against a friend or family member.

The game is of course not without its flaws. Lack of motion controls can be frustrating, and if you’re particularly sensitive about political correctness, you may be taken a bit aback by some of the ethic stereotypes (although I’m sure no offense was intended–they merely wanted to present different races and colors in the spirit of “travelling the world”).

That said, I highly recommend this game and give it a solid 4.5 stars. For the first time in a long, long time, it has also earned a new place on the Top 10 List.

Posted by steve in Wii Fitness Game Reviews 5 Comments →

Review of Fit in Six for Wii

Comprehensive set of exercises, but otherwise not a stellar offering from Ubisoft mainly due to lack of motion tracking. – by Nutwiisystem,

May 23, 2011


2/5 stars

Ubisoft has had an interesting history with exercise video games.

The first exercise game they released, My Fitness Coach, was a true pioneer in exergaming. Many of its features, while considered rudimentary today, were ground breaking things that had never been done before. It was a best-seller, for good reason. In many ways it set the foundation for the introduction of Wii Fit and the huge interest in exergaming to follow.

After this, Ubisoft came out with a long list of duds. My Fitness Coach 2 was a decent title, but horribly marketed. Your Shape with Jenny McCarthy was a disaster (Ubisoft somewhat redeemed itself by developing Your Shape: Fitness Evolved for the Xbox Kinect, which more or less realizes the dream begun with the original Your Shape). Ironically, Ubisoft’s greatest success in exergaming was not an exercise game at all. It was Just Dance, which got people shaking their booties and doing the mashed potato all over the country.

Fit in Six is Ubisoft’s newest entry into the “pure exercise gaming” world.

You start out the game by inputting your name, height, weight, and sex. There doesn’t seem to be an option for a balance board to measure your weight. One thing I found very, very annoying was that in order to input my age and weight I had to click…and click…and click…and click the arrow buttons (the default age is 25 and the default weight is 132, let’s just say I’m not close to either of those). Not a happy start.

The next screen says “Find Your Balance” and then shows a green bar, a blue bar, a lot of numbers, and five colored icons on the bottom of the screen. What I found ridiculous about this is that there is no kind of explanation or even a help screen about what this means. The icons and colors are hardly intuitive. It would have helped if they’d simply put a hover-over to explain what this all means and how I’d be using this in the game. Again, not a promising start.

On the next screen, I can choose my goal. They are:

  • Healthy Back (8 mins)
  • Better Foot Stability (7 mins)
  • Core Centering (7 mins)
  • Core Conditioning (5 mins)
  • Flat Belly (5 mins)
  • Easy Lifting (9 mins)
  • As Quick as a Flash (9 mins)
  • Pure Power Kicking (9 mins)
  • Rocking Abs (8 mins)
  • Slim Waist (8 mins)
  • Stretch Your Back (9 mins)
  • Superset Workout (9 mins)
You start the workout, and it basically consists of a string of standard exercise routines (such as stretches, crunches, and so on).
The on-screen trainer is a drawn figure that’s more cartoony than photorealistic, something I’ve grown used to with the Wii’s limited graphics. The trainer shows you the move to do on-screen. While the animation of the trainer is pretty accurate in demonstrating the technique to you, bottom line, it takes a lot of time to figure out how to do the “mirror” version. I would have liked to see the ability to examine and rotate the character’s motions more carefully (which existed even on last-generation Jillian Michaels games).
Interestingly, Ubisoft does let you hook up a USB Webcam (such as the one that came with Your Shape) to the Wii. But all this does is show a video of yourself in the corner of the screen. I didn’t find this useful in the least, in fact I found it distracting (if they wanted to make it more useful, they would have at least made it a split screen and made your video image the exact same size as the on-screen trainer’s).  There is no attempt at doing any kind of motion tracking with the camera, probably a good decision after horrific attempts to do so with games like Your Shape and Racquet Sports.
Not only is there no motion tracking with the camera, the game doesn’t even attempt to use the Wii controls at all to check accuracy or progress. This makes it just like an exercise video. To be honest, I’m torn as to whether this was a good idea. On the one hand, it’s nice not to have to deal with the kinds of inaccuracies from Ubisoft’s previous exercise games (which were fraught with false positives and the on-screen trainer shouting platitudes to you even when you don’t do the exercise right). It seems like they’ve given up trying to figure out motion controls, which is a shame.
As with all video games, it’s tough to do exercises on the floor and watch the screen at the same time. To some extent, you need to do the exercises over and over until you memorize them. The voice prompts of the on-screen trainer are pretty good, telling you when to move, when to breathe, when to relax, and what parts should be moving.
At the end of each workout, you can rate them. There’s no online integration or anything–rating an exercise just lets you keep track of which exercises you like.
One thing that Fit In Six does very comprehensively is offer “Classes”. Again, these are basically basic exercise routines strung together to form a “fitness class” the kind you might find in a gym. Here’s a list of all the classes you can choose from:
Upper Body
  • Sculpted Back (20 mins)
  • Flexible Upper Back (13 mins)
  • Open Chest (15 mins)
  • Sexy Shoulders (9 mins)
  • Sexy Shoulders Pro (14 mins)
  • Strong Triceps (9 mins)
  • Strong Triceps Pro (12 mins)
Core Body
  • Healthy Back (8 mins)
  • Healthy Back Pro (22 mins)
  • Flat Belly (5 mins)
  • Six Pack Starter (10 mins)
  • Six Pack Pro (19 mins)
  • Slim Waist (8 mins)
  • Slim Waist Pro (13 mins)
  • Strong Back (10 mins)
  • Strong Back Pro (21 mins)
Lower Body
  • Beach Workout (21 mins)
  • Beach Workout Pro (26 mins)
  • Shapely Hips (17 mins)
  • Head to Toe Sculpting (30 mins)
  • Glutes Lifting (12 mins)
  • No Muscle Untouched (29 mins)
  • Toned Waist (15 mins)
  • Tight Tush (6 mins)
  • Tight Tush Pro (15 mins)
Fit For Life
  • Baby Carriage (13 mins)
  • Better Foot Stability (7 mins)
  • Carry Heavy Tote Bags (11 mins)
  • Climb Stairs Like a Teen (10 mins)
  • Easy Sit Up and Down (13 mins)
  • Easy Lifting (9 mins)
  • As Quick as a Flash (9 mins)
  • Standing Office Workout (13 mins)
  • Stiletto Workout (10 mins)
Cardio
  • Cardio Warm-up 1 (3 mins)
  • Cardio Warm up 2 (4 mins)
  • Cardio Warm up 3 (5 mins)
  • Fat Burning (11 mins)
  • Fat Burning Pro (20 mins)
  • Fit for Soccer (5 mins)
  • Fit for Soccer Pro (15 mins)
  • Marathon Master (7 mins)
  • Marathon Master Pro (13 mins)

Boot Camp
  • Boot Camp Warm Up 1 (4 mins)
  • Boot Camp Warm Up 2 (4 mins)
  • Boot Camp Warm up 3 (3 mins)
  • Core Conditioning (5 mins)
  • Core Conditioning Pro (12 mins)
  • Intense Arm Workout (12 mins)
  • Power Pushup (11 mins)
  • Powerful Torso Pro (12 mins)
  • Rocking Abs (8 mins)
Kick Boxing
  • Action Circuit (12 mins)
  • Fight and Defend (9 mins)
  • Burning Rist (10 mins)
  • Kickboxing Basics (9 mins)
  • Kickboxing Warm Up 1 (3 mins)
  • Kickboxing Warm Up 2 (5 mins)
  • Kickboxing Warm up 3 (6 mins)
  • Pure Power Kicking (9 mins)
  • Pure Power Punching (9 mins)
Cardio Dance
  • Challenge Your Heart Rate (14 mins)
  • Cardio Dance Basics (11 mins)
  • Energy Empowerment (18 mins)
  • Energy Burner (15 mins)
  • Cardio Dance Challenge (16 mins)
  • Cardio Dance Warm Up 1 (2 mins)
  • Cardio Dance Warm Up 2 (3 mins)
  • Cardio Dance Warm Up 3 (3 mins)
  • Lust for Life (12 mins)
  • Willpower Activator (14 mins)
Pilates
  • Balanced Body (26 mins)
  • Core Centering (7 mins)
  • Energy Flow (12 mins)
  • Improved Flexibility (10 mins)
  • Pilates Complete (35 mins)
  • Pilates Power (25 mins)
  • Strong Core Pro (19 mins)
  • Stretch Your Back (9 mins)
Latin Dance
  • Back to Holiday (12 mins)
  • Caribbean Device (9 mins)
  • Hot Summer (16 mins)
  • Latin Dance Party (20 mins)
  • Latin Dance Warm Up 1 (3 mins)
  • Latin Dance Warm Up 2 (3 mins)
  • Latin Dance Warm Up 3 (5 mins)
  • Latin Love (13 mins)
  • Mambo Night (12 mins)
  • Rhythm ‘N’ Dance (10 mins)

Dance Moves
  • Session 1: Skate (7 mins)
  • Session 2: Stop (5 mins)
  • Session 3: Side ‘N’ Cross Jump (6 mins)
  • Session 4: Two-Step (6 mins)
  • Session 5: Cross Walk (5 mins)
  • Session 6: Set Up ‘N’ Wiper (7 mins)
  • Session 7: Skate ‘N’ Stomp (8 mins)
  • Session 8: Jumping Steps (7 mins)
  • Session 9: Flying Steps (7 mins)
  • Session 10: Compilation (13 mins)

There’s also a section called “Challenges”, which lets you choose from balance, cardio, core body, flexibility, lower body, upper body (it took me a while to realize that these are the “In Six” referred to in the game’s title).
Again, without motion tracking, the Challenges were a bit weak. The game presents a challenge to you, and it’s up to you to do it and to tell the system whether you did it or not. So you’re basically on the “honor system”.

Overall Fit In Six has an impressive, almost staggering number of workout routines. They’re demonstrated pretty effectively by the on-screen trainer. If you’re just looking for a glorified exercise video that has a comprehensive set of workouts for you to try, this is not a bad choice for you.
The problem is that Fit In Six adds absolutely nothing new to the world of Wii exercise games. In fact, it seems to borrow liberally from other games. The Latin dance exercises seems a lot like Zumba Fitness. The fact that individual exercises that can be put together are around 7-13 minutes seems to borrow from 10 Minute Solutions. Even the dance routines seem reminiscent of Ubisoft’s own Gold’s Gym Dance Workout.
The worst thing Ubisoft did, of course, is remove motion tracking altogether from a Wii game. Companies like EA Sports have successfully proven that effective motion tracking can be done, but Ubisoft almost seems to have given up. I do believe that there will be more Wii games that push the platform forward in fitness gaming. This is not one of them.
Rating: 2 of 5 stars.

Posted by steve in Wii Fitness Game Reviews 3 Comments →

Review of Top Spin 4 for Wii

In fairness to 2K Sports, Top Spin 4 for the Wii isn’t an “exercise game” per se, so it’s a little hard to compare it to workout games like EA Sports Active or The Biggest Loser.
One thing the things I’ve been looking for a very long time is a tennis game that really starts to simulate what it’s like to play real tennis. Early games like Wii Sports Tennis and Virtua Tennis were just a wag-fests, of course. When EA Sports Grand Slam Tennis came out, that was a much more realistic simulation, and it came a little closer to simulating real tennis moves. I played that game so much that I ended up getting tendonitis (which thankfully cleared up after a few weeks).
Top Spin 4 can be considered in the class of “third generation tennis game”. The graphics are the most realistic they’ve ever been on the Wii, and the simulations of tennis shots are very realistic.
As far as its value as an “exercise game”, it seems that 2K Sports has opted to focus less on that, and more on just building something between realistic tennis game and an old controller-based tennis game.
Running on the court is done through use of the Wii nunchuk joystick. And aiming your shot is not done by angling your arm, but rather by quickly moving the nunchuk joystick with your thumb.
Specialized shots like drop shots and lobs are done with buttons. There are only three strokes which are done by making sweeping motions with the Wii remote–and even those are not terribly reliable.
One extremely bizarre thing you’re asked to do is to “hold your remote like a real tennis racket”, with the buttons to the side. Not only does this make pressing the buttons awkward, it doesn’t seem to help the accuracy of the shot. You can have some fun with the beginner or intermediate levels, but the advanced level becomes an exercise in frustration.
There are some nice touches for tennis fans. All of the major tennis stars have licensed their name and images to 2K Sports, and their distinctive shots and skills are clear. You can hire coaches and buy tennis gear with points you earn. And you can play on some of the world’s greatest clay, grass, and hard courts. You can define the number of sets and matches to play, or even start the game on a tiebreak.
If you’re an avid tennis fan and love the simulation aspect of the game, you can get some decent exercise by adding on Riiflex Weights. But otherwise, this is one you can pass on.
3 of 5 stars.

Posted by steve in Wii Fitness Game Reviews 1 Comment →

Review of Michael Jackson: The Experience for the Wii

Back in November 2010, Ubisoft released a game called Michael Jackson The Experience for the Wii. I bought my copy back then, but since I’ve been so engrossed in my EA Sports Active-ing, I let this one kind of sit on the shelf. Since then, it’s gotten an impressive 457 (and counting) reviews on Amazon. And unlike with previous Ubisoft games like Your Shape, where Ubisoft shills left laughably obvious fake glowing reviews for that disaster of a game, this time most of the reviews actually seem legitimate. Hopefully Ubisoft is finally getting the message that it’s a lot more efficient to actually give people good quality stuff rather than fooling them into buying junk.

Whatever you think of Michael Jackson’s life and death and the tabloid nonsense that surrounded him all his life, one thing was very clear. The man had a lot of talent, from his childhood to his last days on earth. And his impact on music and the music business was tremendous.

The simplest way to describe Michael Jackson The Experience is that it’s like Just Dance 2, but made up completely of Michael Jackson’s songs. When I heard that Ubisoft was coming out with this game, I rolled my eyes. Was this another attempt at just taking the wildly successful Just Dance series and beating it into the ground by flooding the market with imitation after imitation.

After playing the game a few times, I realize that this is much, much more than simply another variation of Just Dance. Yes, it works like Just Dance in that you hold a single Wii remote in your right hand and mimic the moves of a dancer on-screen. And thankfully, the accuracy is on par with Just Dance 2 (as I wrote in my review of that game, while the accuracy is still not perfect, if you practice the moves enough you’ll find your score gets better).

But this title adds a few more things that Just Dance 2 nor any of its other sequels did not have.

1) There’s a menu option called “Dance School”. These are videos of actual choreographers and dance instructors who have actually work withed Michael Jackson himself. They have an in-depth knowledge of Michael Jackson’s signature moves, and they do an excellent job of breaking them down for you. Plus, they even give advice on proper conditioning and stretching to make those moves. You start out with simple tutorial videos, but as you dance more and more, different lessons are “unlocked” for you. The more advanced lessons actually go through some of Michael Jackson’s actual dance routines in his videos and tell you exactly how to do them.

2) Of course, the bulk of the game is to, no pun intended, “Just Dance”. Unlike the Dance on Broadway title, the dance moves you see here aren’t dumbed down interpretations of Michael Jackson songs–they’re the actual choreographed moves from the music videos. You can get a decent score just by matching the movements of your right hand, but for the full experience (and the best score), you need to learn the actual choreographed routine. The best way to do this is to play the game over and over again and each time focus on a different body part (for example, focusing on arm movements first, leg movements second, and putting them all together). Or, like I said, most of the most popular routines are broken down in the Dance School videos.

Trying out a few of these gave me a newfound appreciation for how athleticly conditioned Michael Jackson must have been. Even when I matched the movements only 50-70%, I was still out of breath. Each dance is categorized by difficulty (easy, medium, hard). One very cool feature of the game is that for some songs, you can play as Michael Jackson or as a backup dancer, each with varying degrees of difficulty. The game also supports multiplayer, so on some songs multiple people can dance at once to simulate your own Michael Jackson video!

Here are a list of the tracks on the game:

  • Working’ Day And Night (Off The Wall – 1979)
  • Beat It (Thriller – 1982)
  • Billie Jean (Thriller – 1982)
  • The Girl Is Mine (Thriller – 1982)
  • Thriller (Thriller – 1982)
  • Wanna Be Startin’ Something (Thriller – 1982)
  • Bad (Bad – 1987)
  • Dirty Diana (Bad – 1987)
  • Leave Me Alone (Bad – 1987)
  • Smooth Criminal (Bad – 1987)
  • Speed Demon (Bad – 1987)
  • Street Walker (Bad Special Edition – 2001)
  • The Way You Make Me Feel (Bad – 1987)
  • Black Or White (Dangerous – 1991)
    Heal the World (Dangerous – 1991)
  • In the Closet (Dangerous – 1991)
  • Remember The Time (Dangerous – 1991)
  • Who is It (Dangerous – 1991)
  • Will You Be There (Dangerous – 1991)
  • Earth Song (History – 1995)
  • They Don’t Care About Us (History – 1995)
  • Ghosts (Blood on the Dance Floor – 1997)
  • Money (Blood on the Dance Floor – 1997)
  • Don’t Stop ‘Til You Get Enough (Off the Wall – 1979)
  • Rock With You (Off The Wall – 1979)
  • Sunset Driver (Ultimate Collection – 2004)

Overall, Michael Jackson The Experience is a great game which you can add to your workout regimen–if you’ve always wanted to dance like Michael did in his music videos, now’s your chance! And the great thing about it, after you’ve learned all the moves, they’re yours to keep.

4.5 of 5 stars.

Posted by steve in Wii Fitness Game Reviews 1 Comment →

Review of Shawn Johnson Gymnastics for the Wii


Shawn Johnson Gymnastics for the Wii
Reviewed by Nutwiisystem on January 8, 2011 .
Summary: Not a workout game per se, but a surprisingly enjoyable and realistic simulation of competitive gymnastics.

The bulk of the market for Wii fitness games are female. Being male, it sometimes gets just a tad awkward for me to review some of these fitness games. Trying to emulate an 11 year old girl dancing to Dance Sensation was an excrutiating experience where I had to make sure the room was clear and all the blinds were closed before I could start. I had a similar experience when I reviewed We Cheer 2 and had to pretend to be a blue-haired tween cheerleader. Oh, the things we do for our art. And no, I didn’t have a ton of fun perfecting the moves to Miley Cyrus’s “Girls Night Out”. No, really, I didn’t…ahem.

Moving on, I decided to review the new game Shawn Johnson Gymnastics for the Wii. There are actually a lot of similarities between this game and the two I mentioned above. All three are obviously designed for little girls, I’d say between ages 7 and 13. In all three games, the on-screen animated characters you control do “authentic” dance steps, cheerleading routines, and gymnastic moves respectively. But in all three of the games, the player is controlling the action just by following on-screen cues with their Wii remote and/or their balance board.The game starts out with a greeting from an animated Shawn Johnson. The animated character really doesn’t look too much like the real thing. She’s not quite real, not quite a cartoon, with a shiny face that looks a bit like a creepy talking egg (as you know, the real Shawn Johnson is a very lovely young lady, so some artist at Zoo Games really needs to be smacked). But it is her real voice welcoming you to the game, which puts a smile on your face and helps your maintain your suspension of disbelief.

The first step, as with most games like this, is to design your player. Your character has to be a girl, and you can choose basic things like hair style, hair color, and clothes.

There are a series of “tutorials” which teach you how to play the game. As in real gymnastics, you have several events to choose from. You can do practice the vault, a floor routine, the balance beam, the uneven bars, or compulsories, which are a combination of all of them.
Throughout the tutorial, Shawn will instruct you on actual terminology and strategies relating to gymnastics, like a real gymnastics coach.

But of course you don’t really do gymnastics moves. The way it works is, every specific “move” done by the on-screen gymnast’s is represented by a specific series of controller moves, whether it’s mashing a series of buttons, moving or flicking the Wii remote, moving the nunchuk joystick, or (if you’ve enabled the balance board) appling pressure using your feet to match on-screen cues. The faster you react to the cues, the better your score is. Miss a cue, and your on-screen character stumbles.

Once you’ve gotten the hang of the moves, you can proceed to the competitions. You compete against seven other virtual gymnasts, and the competition can get intense–just like in the Olympics or the World Championships, you need to keep an eye on your score and everyone else’s score, and both you and your competition will be stronger at some events and weaker in others.


Me rocking the compulsories

Like in real gymnastics, in compulsories your routine is defined for you, while for free exercises you can build your own routines by stringing together a series of moves. . As a real gymnast does, you can create routines of varying degrees of difficulty depending on your skill level and the score you need to win a competition. And as a real gymnast, you can “memorize” the sequences over time, which will help you improve your score.

You move through the competition by designing progressively more complex routines (in terms of both the on-line gymnast as well as your working of the controllers) and winning competitions. Each competition you will unlock other levels as well as rewards like new moves, trophies, new outfits, and photos and videos of Shawn Johnson.


Creating an uneven bars routine

As with Dance Sensation, I wouldn’t say this is a workout game by any stretch of the imagination, even though in some circles it’s being touted as one. As Dance Sensation was a “dance simulation”, I’d say that this is a “gymnastics simulator”. You really don’t get the physical workout you’d get with real gymnastics, but you do learn a lot about what it’s like being a gymnast. The realism of going through competitions and creating routines is phenomenal. You can see that Ms. Johnson really played a big part in creating the game.

Unfortunately, the developers at Zoo Games could have played their part a little better. As I said, the graphics are definitely average-to-subpar for a Wii game. The controller responsiveness was decent for the most part, except for certain moves where you had to move your Wii remote. At times I’d do it right, but the system would completely miss it, making my poor on-screen character fall on her face. The system tries to tell you hints like “if a move is not registering, don’t keep doing it, but try it a little differently” or “don’t make large moves, just make compact moves”, but other games seem to handle motion control without making the user compensate for it. There are also some user interface glitches with the menus and navigation that there’s really no excuse for in this day and age.

To sum up, while I wouldn’t recommend this as an exercise game, if there’s a young girl in your life who loves gymnastics, I would highly recommend it as a fun and engaging way for her to learn about gymnastics and experience what it’s like to be a gymnast, especially as we get closer to London 2012.

I also applaud Shawn Johnson for her business acumen, and I hope this game does well for her. After she achieved so much success in Beijing in 2008, I’m impressed by the way she has continued to be a real role model for young people at a time where there seem to be fewer and fewer of them. Instead of hearing stories about her in getting arrested for DUI or smoking bongs or whatnot, you see her winning Dancing with the Stars and doing a ton of charity work. Here’s wishing her luck for her comeback in 2012!

Rating:
4 of 5

Posted by steve in Wii Fitness Game Reviews No Comments →

Review of Zumba Fitness for Wii

Update 11/2011: For those of you curious about the issue of overzealous lawyers trying to shut down my YouTube account, I contacted the lawyers via email and got no response; later, I challenged the DMCA takedown order and again they failed to respond, meaning my YouTube account has been restored to good standing. Thanks to everyone for your good wishes and support in the comments!

I’ve since posted a review of Zumba Fitness 2 for Wii, which was released last week. I’m happy to say that a lot of the issues I reported below with the original version have been resolved. So I wholeheartedly recommend it if you’re a Zumba fanatic. Let’s just hope the overzealous counselors accept my endorsement with a little more grace this time!

Original post follows:

For almost a year now, many of you have been asking about Zumba Fitness for the Wii. And as we approach Christmas, it’s easily the second most-searched for title on this site (next to EA Sports Active 2).

For those of you who don’t know, Zumba is a fitness craze started by dancer Beto (choreographer for Shakira, among others) back in the 1990s. Since then, it’s swept the world. Zumba classes are given in more than 90,000 fitness centers worldwide, and over 10 million people have tried it. In fact, one just opened up just around the corner from my apartment!

Zumba is a simple concept. Standard aerobics exercises become repetitive and stale. But , you can latin dance moves and have fun? I’m happy to say I finally received my review copy, and have put the game through the motions, so to speak.

You start out by putting the belt on. It’s not the most solidly constructed belt in the world, but it gets the job done. You fit it around your waist (it looks like it’ll accomodate anyone with as much as a 40-50 inch waist), and secure it with velcro. There’s a pocket in the front in wich you put your Wii remote, vertical and facing forward (you need to take the protective plastic cover off before and after putting it in the pocket, which is a bit annoying, but luckily I had a used Wii remote I wasn’t using, so I just used that).

The starting menu is simple–you use the arrow buttons on the Wii remote to choose from the options (I’m guessing they chose not to use cursors knowing that people would be wearing the belt while navigating the menus).

The options are: Create / Edit Player, Play, Workout Calendar, and Extras. You can start dancing single routines immediately, but in order to access most features, you’ll need to create a player.

The player creation is pretty quick. You enter your name, and select your difficulty level (easy, medium, hard). There’s a bit of sloppy programming, in that there’s never confirmation that you’ve successfully created a player (you get sent back to the “Create” button), but when you go back to the Main menu, you’ll see a bunch of new options open to you: Tutorials, Zumba Party, and Zumba Class.

Tutorials

The Tutorials are broken into several parts. Learn the Steps lets you learn a wide range of Zumba steps, including:

- Calypso (Basic)
- Calypso (Single Single Double Pump)
- Calypso (Basic with a Travel)
- Cumbia (Basic)
- Cumbia (Machete Step)
- Cumbia (Sleepy Leg)
- Merengue (March)
- Merengue (Que Te Mueve)
- Merengue (Pump)
- Reggaeton
- Reggaeton (Bounce)
- Reggaeton (Single Single Double Basic)
- Salsa (Travel)
- Salsa (Forward and Back)
- Salsa (Cuban)

The tutorials were pretty weak. The graphics weren’t very impressive, but that’s understandable given the limitations of the Wii (it’s tough to get high quality full-motion video on the Wii, which is required for learning Zumba, so they made the instructor a glowing silhouette). The real weakness of the tutorials was that you really weren’t “taught” anything. It’s up to you to figure out what the on-screen instructor is doing and to mimic her moves. The biggest annoyance is, no matter what move you make in response to the on-screen instructor, the system will tell you “great!” and then move you on to the next step. You can see what I mean with this Salsa Tutorial:

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I’m guessing that the developers who made this game heard all the negative comments about games like Just Dance not picking up moves correctly, so they went too far in the other direction and decided that it’d accept ALL moves. I would much preferred to have had the instructor showly break down the moves, step by step, and let me decide if I understand them and want to move to the next step, rather than ingratiate me by telling me I did great when I didn’t.

So ironically, in order for me to use the tutorials effectively, I had to take the Wii remote out of the belt. I started the tutorial, and mirrored the moves of the on-screen instructor until I learned the move. Then, when I was ready for the next move, I’d pick up the Wii remote, waggle it a little. At that point, the game would tell me “great” and go to the next move. This worked well for me with the Reggaeton tutorial:

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Ridiculously oversensitive Wii remote aside, as far as the tutorials themselves they were pretty good. They broke each dance move into different steps which start with basic movements and get progressively complex. I felt that as long as I used my approach, I was able to learn a lot of the basic Zumba steps.

Zumba Party and Zumba Class

It took me a while to figure out the difference between “Zumba Party” and “Zumba Class”. From what I could figure out, they’re pretty much the same, except that Zumba Party is a more compressed series of 10 levels (which you unlock one by one by completing it). These are the levels for Zumba Party:

- Beginner 20 minute Class 1
- Beginner 20 minute Class 2
- Intermediate 20 minute Class 1
- Intermediate 20 minute Class 2
- Intermediate 45 minute Class 1
- Intermediate 45 minute Class 2
- Expert 20 minute Class 1
- Expert 20 minute Class 2
- Expert 45 minute Class 1
- Expert 45 minute Class 2
- Zumbathon

Zumba Class, on the other hand, consists of many more levels.

- Beginner 20 minute Class 1
- Beginner 20 minute Class 2
- Intermediate 20 minute Class 1
- Intermediate 20 minute Class 2
- Intermediate 20 minute Class 3
- Intermediate 45 minute Class 1
- Intermediate 45 minute Class 2
- Intermediate 45 minute Class 3
- Intermediate 45 minute Class 4
- Intermediate 45 minute Class 5
- Intermediate 45 minute Class 6
- Expert 20 minute Class 1
- Expert 20 minute Class 2
- Expert 20 minute Class 3
- Expert 45 minute Class 1
- Expert 45 minute Class 2
- Expert 45 minute Class 3
- Expert 45 minute Class 4
- Expert 45 minute Class 5
- Zumbathon

In each “class”, you’re basically go through a series of Zumba workouts, one after another, until you hit about 30 minutes. As you hit the right moves (or rather, as the system interprets you hitting the right moves), your on-screen character will turn green and you’ll see a progress bar on the bottom fill up. Successfully finish a class, and the next one will unlock.

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The difficulty levels are a little confusing. You can choose Beginner, Intermediate, and Advanced when you set up your character. But in addition to this, you can unlock Night Club, Factory, Rooftop, and Stadium levels. And in addition to this, you can select Beginner, Intermediate, and Expert Classes.

Having said all this, Zumba is such a fun way to exercise that the idiosyncrasies of the game can’t stop it from being fun. My recommendation would be that if you haven’t learned Zumba yet, you probably won’t master it from this game–in that case your best bet is still to go to a class with instructors who can give you real feedback. Also, just as with Just Dance, you need to set your expectations properly. This game will NOT capture your motions 100%. As long as you can live with that, you’re in for a ball.

On the other hand, if you’re an avid Zumba dancer, this game will definitely help you hone your skills and get you in shape on those days when you can’t make it to the gym or can’t afford going every day. As of December 2010, I see that Zumba is sold out all over the Web, which is a great sign that the game is a winner.


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