technabob » wii fit

wiitality: look ma, no hands!

technabob — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 04:29:33 +0000

For those of you trying to keep in shape playing Wii Fit or Wii Fit Plus, here’s a great way to keep that Wii controller from flying out of your hands while you get your workout.

Talismoon’s Wiitality is a neoprene band that’s designed to hold your Wii-mote in place with no need to hold the controller in your hand. The band is fully adjustable, and fastens to your wrist or bicep using sturdy Velcro straps to ensure the controller stays put while you sweat. Since so many of the exercises in Wii Fit require you to put the controller down, and then pick it back up again, this is a great little idea.

You can find the Wiitality over at Amazon for about $3 (USD) each.

and the best-selling game of the decade is….

alisha k. — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 11:12:50 +0000

…the Nintendo Wii Remote. Wait! I mean Wii Play (with Wii Remote). That’s right, folks. Halo isn’t the best-selling game of the decade, and it ain’t Gears of War. Forget all the Final Fantasy installments. It’s not any of the gun-toting installments of Grand Theft Auto. Scratch off Madden and all other sports games. The first decade of this new millennium was all about some cow racing.

Holding second right now is Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, but it may lose its place to… Wii Fit. If you were doubting the success of Nintendo’s Wii console in any way, uh, stop. Their consoles really might as well print money.

It’s easy to make jokes about the extra controller being the primary selling point for Wii Play (because it’s pretty much true!), but there’s no arguing with millions of people heading out and buying an expensive video game package like Wii Fit. The exergame and its associated balance board have been a booming success, to say the least.

[IGN via OMG Nintendo]

massage your feet while you play wii fit

technabob — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 12:45:37 +0000

So now that the new year has passed, are you finally carrying out your resolution to get in shape by playing Wii Fit? Well just because you’re gonna spend countless hours standing on that Balance Board doesn’t mean that your feet have to hurt afterward.

Thanks to these cushy silicone covers for the Wii Fit Balance Board, your tootsies will get a serious massage while you get your workout.

Just slide this form-fitting silicone cover over your Balance Board, take off your shoes, and enjoy the massaging acupressure dots under your feet. As an added bonus, the bumpy silicone surface should reduce the chance that you’ll slip and fly off of your board as you do your exercise routine. (Although it won’t prevent you from throwing the Wii-mote at the cat.)

You can get your hands erm, feet on one of these over on Amazon for just $9.99 (USD). You feet will thank you.

wii fit balance board controls world of warcraft

technabob — Sat, 14 Jun 2008 12:00:23 +0000

I haven’t come across too many hacks involving the Wii Fit Balance Board yet, but they are starting to emerge. In this recent demo, the board has been configured to control 3D movement in a game of World of Warcraft 3.

A couple of guys from DFKI (the German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence) took a Balance Board and connected it to a regular old laptop PC. A custom C# application communicates with the controller via Bluetooth, translating simple leaning movements on the board into 3D moves on the computer. By leaning forwards, back, left and right on the Balance Board, the player can move through a typical first-person view game with ease.

Click to View Embedded Video Clip

While this demo shows off some basic movements within Google Earth and WOW3, I’d venture to say that it could be easily modified to control any first-person 3D game. Imagine playing a FPS in which you hold onto a gun controller with your hands, and move around the environment by leaning. Even better yet, how about an FPS which supported ducking and dodging bullets on the Balance Board? Now that would be really cool. Only time will tell what other applications end up taking advantage of the board’s unique sensory abilities, but I’d lay odds that Wii Fit is only the tip of the iceberg.

[Balance Board Blog via Hack-a-Day]