So Ali and I bought a Wii a few weeks ago — this thing is absolutely amazing! It comes with Wii Sports, which has golf, bowling, tennis, boxing, and baseball.

So if you haven’t heard, the thing works via natural movement using an accelerometer and motion sensors. When playing sports, you actually perform the movement you would just as if it were real. This last sentence just popped a reference to War Games into my head:

David: Is it a game… or is it real?
Joshua: What’s the difference?
David: Oh wow.

This dialog is very apropos. With the Wii, what is the difference?

One of the biggest benefits of the natural motion thing is that Ali is on a somewhat level playing field with me. In the past she has shunned games because she isn’t very good at them. She never played games much growing up, and frankly playing with someone who has a lot more experience and is much better than you — well, it sucks. With the Wii though, we are both about as good as each other, and that has made playing games with me fun for her. In fact, up until this week I could not beat her at boxing. It’s fun for her; it’s fun for me; we are having a great time with this thing.

With Wii Sports, they include a program called Wii Fitness. Once day per a Mii you can run the program. (A Mii is your avatar in the gaming system.) It gives you three random tests picked from the training simulations. They judge you on speed, stamina, and balance. At the end they tell you how old you are. Let me just say, this has been a blast. We were both in our 60s the first time we tried. I have been tracking in my 20s this week. Ali has been in her 30s. One other thing about Wii Fitness (or Wii Sports in general) you do not tend to do well if you’ve been drinking. For instance, Ali and I had a bottle of wine with dinner one night, and she scored as 80 doing Wii Fitness that night.

Even though they’ve been out since last November they are still hard to find. If you happen upon one, I highly recommend it.