Wii Fit Plus (Balance Board Not Included)

I'm an enthusiastic fan of Wii Fit - it is a fun way to get limber and in shape. Wii Fit Plus is an add-on for Wii Fit and adds a bunch of new games and activities into the mix! Plus you can weigh your pets! First, you definitely need Wii Fit to play the Wii FIt Plus games. This adds on to the basic Wii Fit set. So make sure you have Wii Fit - or that you buy a bundle of some sort - to be able to enjoy Wii Fit Plus. Make sure you have a balance board, as well as both a Wii controller and nunchuck. You'll need all of these to enjoy all the games. The Wii Fit Plus, first, adds in pets! You can enter a cute little avatar for your cat or dog. It won't let pets train, but it does track their weight. How you do this is you (the human) have it measure you - then you hold the pet in your arms and it measures you plus the pet. This is a great way to keep track of your pet's weight over time and to know if something is changing! For humans, there are lots of great new features. First, you can play a variety of multiplayer games. This lets you challenge each other to all sorts of fun. In my home I tend to be the only Wii Fit player, so I was more interested in the new games. I love the Kung Fu one, where you do various moves in time with the rhythm. I'm also a big fan of the segue game, steering your rolling two-wheeled scooter around the course with body movements. There's a juggling game, a snowball fight game, and a nice running game. An area I use quite a lot is the "routines" area. This lets you design a series of activities and have them just run non stop in a row. So let's say in the yoga area I enjoy tree pose, then palm, then sun salutation, then tree pose and then sun salutation again. You define that series of activities and then start it off. The game seamlessly steps you through those poses, one after another, and when you're done you get credit for all the time! It's perfect! I can't say enough good things about Wii Fit Plus. I love the yoga, how you can make the perfect routine for YOU, to meet your interests and the time you can spend. I love many of the new games. I find it really helpful to track my pet's health easily in the system. Is there a down side? I would love more customization. I would love yoga on a beach, for example, or in a forest. It can't be that hard for them to toss in new backgrounds. I would love new background music - or let us add in our own. I also think you should be able to choose your timer. Right now they have a "piggie" which I find a little inappropriate. Again it'd be easy for them to let you customize that, and really help out a lot. Maybe those things will come into play in Wii Fit 2!

I love the Wii Fit balance board and the original Wii Fit games, yoga, and fitness activities. So, I was VERY happy when an expanded game disc Wii Fit Plus came out. And even happier that ALL the old activities are present plus many new ones. Plus it has additional features like the ability to create your own workout. PROS: --$20 affordable retail --Includes all the old games/exercies plus the new ones so you don't to use 1 disc for some games and another for the new games. AWESOME!! --Everything is unlocked. Great since before Yoga would unlock a game, a game would unlock a strength exercise, etc. which could be rough for kids to get all the games unlocked if they were unable to do lunges or yoga. I feel all games should always be unlocked...at least at a starter level. --Allows you to make and store a workout that combines multiple exercises so you could do all the yoga and not have to keep stopping to select from the menu. Some complain you can't combined anything from any section, but, who wants to mix balance games and yoga poses? I think this was primarily added to enable and continuous yoga workout or stretching workout and that sufficient. --All the balance games on this, and especially the new ones are GREAT, fun, and easy to figure out, before you know it, you've been working out for and hour or more. --The Yoga poses actually give feedback on your balance, the only Yoga disc that really does this. EA Active & EA Active More Workouts contain no yoga. My Fitness Coach mere calls out poses and rushes through them with no instruction, horrible if you don't know the poses or how to transition to them. And Wii Yoga is supposedly really horrble, I don't have it, but, the reviews are awful. So, it amazes me that this game, the 1ft for the Wii actually helps you use yoga to improve balance and strength in a great way. --No jarring motions so this can be used by all people of all ages, all conditions, and even with injuries. Building better balance and posture is something everyone can work on even if they have bad backs or bad knees to gently improve over time unlike too many Wii workouts built primarily on jumping and running in place which can be very jarring if you have back or knee problems. CONS: --Nothing except I wish it had even more Yoga to choose from, this is a great way to use and learn Yoga. Based on glowing reviews and high expectations, I bought EA Sports Active & EA Sports ActiveMore Workouts and My Fitness Coach, and they were all horrible. I ended up selling them they were so bad. But, this I use again and again and enjoy it. Will sweat pour off of you, maybe not, but, it's a great add on to a physical lifestyle that is fun, can be played with other family members, and every calorie burned is progress you wouldn't make sitting on the sofa.

My favorite feature of Wii Fit Plus is that it finally got my girlfriend playing. Despite my own use of the Wii Fit for months now, she'd always just maintained she didn't like video games and refused, yet she just spent over an hour playing balance games and flapping her arms around. I think part of the credit goes to how much easier it is to switch Miis in this version -- rather than having to almost entirely exit the program, Plus makes it easy to switch Miis back and forth while playing; "here, you want to try?" became a matter of two button presses rather than ten, and that was enough. I think several of the new balance games also were more appealing to her -- more challenging and more entertaining than the games she'd seen me play before. Even discounting that, though, this game definitely contains enough improvements to be well worth the $20. There are three new "Yoga" and three new "Strength" exercises; I personally found the new "yoga" positions excellent stretches and the new "strength" ones less worthwhile, but your mileage may vary. I greatly appreciate the ability to see a measurement of how many calories each exercise is burning; as an ice cream fan, it's pretty amusing (and informative) to be told exactly how much farther I have to go to burn off that hot fudge sundae (425 cal.), and I wonder how many people will be surprised to find out how their exercise correlates to their activity (no more "well, I ran for five minutes, so that means I get a triple-patty cheeseburger (770 cal)". The interface is more streamlined, and I appreciate the "go directly to Wii Fit Plus" doorway on the startup screen, and the quick stats check at the beginning. The preconfigured workout routines are little more than a few minute's worth for each goal, and most people will probably reconfigure their own workouts; thankfully, the Plus gives the option to do that (although only Yoga and Strength exercises can be fit into the user-planned workouts, not balance games or the new Training Plus games, and rearranging your workout list is a little cumbersome).This isn't a huge change, but it's convenient, and an improvement. Other reviews go into a game-by-game breakdown of each minigame, so I won't cover that here. Suffice to say, there are a lot of them, and I expect that these additions will revive my Wii Fit usage for the next month or two at least, which I consider worth the $20. I especially appreciated that there were more games that emphasized upper-body workouts -- flapping my arms like a chicken isn't just fun, it's also mild-but-decent shoulder exercise, and I like having more upper-body options. I did notice one apparent bug; the Rhythm Kung Fu game seemed slightly "off", sometimes registering a "perfect" for multi-part moves when I had only completed the first movement. This is a minor issue, and I imagine it will be fixed soon enough (if it isn't a problem unique to my own experience), but if it is a general bug it might be a reason to wait, especially if your Wii cannot download Nintendo's patches. Now I just have to get her to let me play it again!

I'm glad to see Nintendo is keeping the Wii Fit software up to date, and they did add some fun things, but they really needed to cater this more to exercise. After all,this was geared to improving health and fitness, so they should be targeting this to the main audience: middle aged people who want to lose weight and be more fit. Sure they added the great feature of being able to design a fitness routine, but they did not add any exercises that are meant for middle aged people. Most of the strength exercises are too difficult for middle aged people to do, requiring you to get up and down off the floor or balance on one leg. And the most useful exercises for losing weight and improving cardio, the aerobics portion of the game, did not have any new or improved additions! (Would it have been too much to see a few new step routines?) Overall I like the new features (calorie counters, etc.) and it is an improvement to the original, but I would like the developers to please remember to add useful exercises to this software in the future instead of just adding balance games that look cute but do little to improve health and weight.

Wii Fit Plus, that is! I couldn't wait to try this new title because I enjoy and use the first one so much. When you start it up, the Plus goes and gets all your info and stats from the older version and brings them right into the game, so you can continue right where you left off, but with lots of new games and features. This is well worth the $20 just for the 15 new games. There are lots of nice new features with this Wii Fit Plus. I always wished I could set up routines instead of having to move from one menu to the next after each exercise, or that there were ready made routines that I could follow involving several exercises. With the Plus this is possible. You start in the locker room and select from Wii Fit Plus Routines, My Routine, or the Favorites menu. You go to another screen to decide what parts of your body or what type of goals you want to pursue and the difficulty level and length of time. Then the system will set up a routine designed just for you and your goals. I think it's much more efficient to go through exercises this way. You can also compare how you did each day and how much you're improving. There's a multiplayer mode so that more than one person can play, but you do have to take turns. Still, it's nice to not have to 'log out' each time a different person wants to play. Another new feature is that you can add babies or pets to the Plus. I have a big fat long haired 'mini' dachshund that was too embarrassed to be weighed today, but that pupper is going to get weighed tomorrow! They don't get to do body tests or play any games, but you can keep track of their weight and record it in their stats. Useful? Well, maybe not so much but big points for the cuteness factor. I love the games because it's such a great way to get exercise without even realizing it and the 15 new ones in this title are just as good as the old if not better than the first edition. Want to learn to walk and chew gum at the same time? One of these games will have you balancing on a big red and white striped ball (your Wii Fit board) while juggling smaller balls thrown to you by your assistants. Or how about Rhythm Parade where you march and raise and lower your hands on cue and in time with the music? Tilt City has you using your Wiimote turned sideways and the balance board to maneuver dropping balls into one of three color coordinated pails. It's easy at first, but when several different colored balls start dropping at once, it's a challenge. I love the balance games and if you're a fan of the balance board game with the little balls in the first game, there's one here that uses some different colored slots to "pop" the balls up over small obstacles and into the hole. You control their movement by leaning in different directions on the balance board. There are also 3 new yoga activities and 3 new strength training activities. That's not to say that some of the games don't improve strength and muscles. There is one game where you flap your arms like wings to fly from one target post to another over water to get points on each one. This is one where you want to draw all the curtains because you'll look completely ridiculous standing there on your balance board wildly flapping your arms like some kind of a crazy bird. But you won't believe how tired your arm muscles feel afterward and you don't even notice while you're busy flying from one target to another. There's another game, Island Cycling, where you step on the balance board to simulate pedaling a bike, trying to pass Wii flags where you accumulate points. You steer with the Wiimote held sideways. I was surprised how sore my calves were afterward, trying to control the speed of the bike. When you can get exercise while doing something that's challenging and fun without even realizing that you're exercising, that's a successful game. That's why I bought the Wii to begin with and this game takes full advantage of the balance board and all the interactive features. Can I walk and chew gum at the same time after playing these games? Well, maybe not yet but I can bust big blue and white balloons by running into them with my Segway on a beach and get almost halfway through the course inside a big ol' bubble in Balance Bubble Plus. Great job, Nintendo! Two thumbs up!

I really loved the original Wii Fit game so I decided to buy Wii Fit Plus. I am slightly disappointed because it's still the same game, just with more added to it. I guess the title does give that away but I was expecting a little more. Although, it's still a great game and I highly recommend it to anyone who wants working out to be fun. In addition to what came with the first Wii Fit, there are 3 new yoga poses, 3 new strength training moves, the option to weigh babies and pets, customizable workouts, recommended workouts based on your wants, and the new Wii Fit Plus training games. A new feature is the calorie counter. Each exercise awards you so many burned calories and keeps a running total for you. The game also tells you how "difficult" a routine is on the menu before you start it. The more difficult a choice is, the higher the number will be listed for it. However, there are no new aerobics exercises (on the aerobics menu) and there are no new balance games (on the balance menu). I appreciate that all my data from the original game transferred over so I was not staring a new profile. The game also has the feature to tell you what routines are your "favorites" (based on how often you have done them), the most recent routines you have done, and ones you have rarely or never tried. The new training games are fun and I spent twice as long working out today so I could try them all. If anyone does not have Wii Fit, just buy this version because it's the same game with added material.

I bought the Wii Fit game over a year ago and my friends and family have loved everything that had to offer. But after a year, the games and routines were getting slightly boring. This new edition is everything the old version was and so much more, for the same price. After buying this you can throw out (or donate) your older version. What impresses me about this version is its user friendliness when it comes to creating a workout for yourself. Formerly you had to do each individual exercise and go through an assessment of how you did for each activity (in yoga, aerobics and strength training), now you can create a series of exercises and move from one to the other without the assessment, and without having to press "A" ten times between each. This is NOT a substitute for a gym membership by any means, but there are very challenging things to provide a healthy alternative or addition to weight-bearing exercises. My most favorite part of the new version is the 15 new activities under the heading "Training Plus"----worth the purchase price alone! So far the most addictive for me are Bird's Eye-Bull's Eye where you are a bird flying to targets you must land on till you get to a ship; "Snowball Fight" where you are able to send endless snowballs at the other people who are doing the same to you; and "Obstacle course" which is the equivalent of being one of the Mario Brothers in the original game from Nintendo, because you are walking and jumping on moving planks, dodging wrecking balls and logs, etc. My 74 year old mother is having a ball with these games too. I'm happy it's getting her off her chair and using her mind-body coordination skills, and that she's enjoying herself with each challenge. I would honestly say Wii Fit Plus is for ALL ages. It seems as if fans of the first version had sent in suggestions for creating an updated version and Nintendo listened and incorporated them into their new product. Great job Nintendo!

I'm assuming that anyone viewing this is buying just Wii Fit Plus, without the board, and so am evaluating this as an upgrade to the original. I was so excited to get this upgrade as I was a fan of the Wii Fit from the time it came out, but it's since been put in the closet in favor of other exercise games (my current favorite being the Gold's Gym Shape Boxing). So I had high hopes for this, particularly after getting the awesome Wii Sports Resort. But I'm not as thrilled with this as other users. Since the pluses have been pretty well covered by others, I'll just mention my gripes with the game (I definitely like the improvements, but those are well advertised and mentioned numerous times by other reviewers so will just save you the hassle of reading all about them again). First, it gives you 15 new games but they all appear on their own screen, rather than incorporated into the balance and aerobic games panels so you have to kind of remember which are which (and I guess some aren't really either). Couldn't they have just spent a little time reorganizing things rather than this obviously "added on" kind of screen? I also continue to be frustrated with the lack of accuracy. Things like the math game where you have to bump your hips in certain directions, it constantly is reading me incorrectly, which particularly in that game really messes things up. Likewise trying to aim in the snowball fight was an exercise in getting a Wii remote to work properly. The games that require stepping onto the board in time with the music continue to baffle me, I've yet to determine what will get it to register good scores on these no matter how perfectly I seem to be on the beat. Kids in particular it often has trouble with (we are guessing this is due to their considerably lighter weight), and when we've played with other people, they always seem to have issues with some action or another. They'll suddenly stop running or jumping in the middle of the obstacle course for instance, and much swearing will ensue. It's not for lack of practice, the game just behaves really flaky. I've played other similar games (like the aforementioned shape boxing) that are not nearly as bad at registering my movements, and so this continues to frustrate me. After having experienced how much better it can be in Sports Resort with the motion plus, I just had to keep reminding myself it's not all about getting higher scores, but getting some exercise. Hard for my competitive nature though, when things keep going so off kilter. The new games are a mixed bag for me. There are a few I enjoy, most underwhelmed me considerably. I really wanted to see a lot more stuff that is *exercise* in this version, but seems most of the aerobic type games involve running in place on the board (the flapping game being the exception). This is a big issue for me as I had a bad knee and cannot run for long on such a hard, high-impact surface. Otherwise, it seems a lot of the new games are more balance games, that really aren't much, if any, exercise. Bumping your hips to do math and throwing snowballs is all very fun, but I have plenty of other Wii games to have fun with. Some of the games we really like...they just aren't much exercise (Tilt City and Juggling for instance). Granted the Wii Fit has always been only light exercise, but I really hoped to get more that really got me moving....in different kinds of ways. I also would have liked to see more of the games just with extended times, so you aren't constantly exercising for 2-4 minutes and then stopping to start the game again. Would it really have been that hard to do another, longer level for the stepping or boxing or even the newer games like skateboarding? This continues to be a major issue with the Wii Fit, and doesn't seem like it would have been that hard to address. On the flip side, I wonder about some of these games and how appropriate they are to do for any amount of time. When I've played the chicken game at more advanced levels for instance, I often have shoulder pain from all the flapping...not a real normal arm motion for most people. The game can pressure you into pushing to do these motions at higher speeds that is appropriate, so use caution particularly with children...or us older folks that don't know when to quit either! It's also not hard on some of these games to get running fast enough to lose track of your place on the board and misstep on the edge. Overall, when compared with other exercise programs out there now, it just really doesn't have that much for even a half-decent aerobic workout, and I've since come to appreciate games that don't require dragging out the Wii Fit board, and that I can do on a yoga mat and/or with shoes on to reduce the impact issues, and that do the exercise(s) at a strictly controlled speed and intensity to reduce chance of injury. Another issue for me was that the custom workouts only use the strength and yoga training. Due to the physical issues I have (and limited space), very few of these are doable for me, so the balance and aerobic exercises are what I want to do most of the time. Likewise with the kids I know, these are what they want to spend their time on. I was so frustrated to find that I am still having to spend 50% of my time navigating around and don't have a way to line up a bunch of games and just play them straight through like I was expecting. Considering the issue with the short length of the games, this is a real issue that should have not been overlooked. Another thing that drives us a little batty is all the screens you have to click through with each new player. We do *love* the new feature to switch to another Mii and play as a guest, but when you do this, it won't unlock new levels for that player, or track their Fit credits. There really needs to be a SKIP feature for all those screens that none of us read anyway. The Fit Plus seems to have even more of them. Overall, I am glad to have some new games to play with it, and for anyone that is new to the Wii Fit, it's got a lot of worthwhile improvements over the original such that there's no reason to buy the original over this one. And if you still regularly use your Wii Fit, there's enough improvements and new features and games that you will definitely want to consider getting this. For those of us that have gotten tired of it and moved onto other, better exercise programs I don't think this is going to bring enough to the table to get that board out of the closet for long. The new games are fun and being able to create your own list of yoga and strength exercises is a nice touch and may keep you entertained for a short while, but overall I was disappointed with the lack of growth in terms of this providing a decent everyday workout. But for $20 or less, it still may be worth considering, not necessarily as an exercise program, but for a batch of pretty fun games. I would still love to see a Fit Plus Plus that addresses some of these issues though. It also would be nice to see a Wii Fit Kids that has games of easier skill level for younger children. A lot of these games are pretty challenging for kids to get through even at Beginner level (heck, even the adults needed a LOT of attempts to conquer the beginner obstacle course levels). It also tends to give "overweight" messages to kids that are of perfectly normal weights for their age...not a message that they need in this overly-image sensitive time!