Wii would like to Fit... (Azura's Work Out)

It's not possible, is it? Azura, one of the world's most renounded gamers and head of his own soft pitch little league baseball team... WORKING OUT?!

... shut up you jerks. You're the same Negative Nancy's who were surprised that I would get a girlfriend (I still love ya Lil, Shkaboink babe!) or play Pokemon: TCG with people I've never met before (even though I quit that a few months ago).

Well, I suppose I should get this done properly before it turns into a self-defence session.

Wii Fit is Nintendo's latest hit craze that no one will be able to find this holiday season. The main premise is to promote self-awareness in fitness and promote taking better care of your body. Scientific studies say that a lack of fitness in modern society leads to increases in health risks as you get older. Not that this bothers most people who live "In the Now", but for anybody who was planning on living long past your 30's, it's time to start saying "What can I do to prevent these risks?".

The solution lies in video games... as it always should, in my opinion!

The first thing you'll wind up doing when you plug 'er in is do a simple test to determine where you currently sit as far as weight, balance and body control, as well as determining your BMI (Body Mass Index) and Wii Fit Age (similar to Brain Age). It's recommended you do these tests once a day, as it helps you keep track of how well you're doing. The game will also give you a nice little measuring on where you currently rank based on your BMI, ranging from underweight, average, overweight and obese. As much fun as I enjoy being heckled about my weight (sarcasm) it came as no surprise that I was "overweight" in the game. However, I'm expecting that a lot of people were like that when they first turned it on, so I feel no shame... in fact, I feel a little more "average" than all of the people who were probably "average" when they did the test in the first place. But... does that work? Or even make sense?

... I don't really understand the system anymore, but let's move on...

The next thing you'll wind up doing is setting a goal for yourself. It's easier for you to continue working towards playing Wii Fit if you give yourself a goal to work towards that you can use to keep coming back. I wound up aiming for "-3 lbs" in 2 weeks time, so hopefully I can pull that off. After this is all said and done, you're finally going to go and do what you came to do... fitness excersize!

Wii Fit consists of four main categories of excersizes to play, ranging from Yoga (posture) training, Strength training, Aerobics training and Balance Games. Each category is set up to help you in different fields of excersize, so pick whichever one makes you more comfortable. The game isn't able to be a personal trainer, so it helps if you have an idea of what your planning on doing. I currently didn't have any set goals in mind, so I tried a little bit of everything.

Oh, almost forgot... you also get to choose a trainer to help calm you into your excersizes. There's a male trainer and female trainer, each of which has a very calming and relaxing voice, able to make you feel comfortable with the training. For the first 30 minutes of playing, I had the male trainer help me. The remaining time was spent with the female trainer. They both seemed to be exactly identical, so just go based on whatever you're more comfortable around... I mean, it's not like you want a fit woman to watch you hit the ground after two push-ups, right?

... yes... I fell... jerks...

Yoga training focuses on increasing your posture. These excersizes are calming and allow you to work on maintaining your balance and stretching areas of your body that you may not regularly be working out with. You start off with a fair number of different ways to bend your body, but it's all fairly simple stuff. The only one I had trouble with was the tree excersize (I didn't fall over you jackasses, I merely had trouble getting my foot to stay in position while maintaining that pose).

Strength training should be relatively self-explanatory... but I like explaining the obvious, so here goes. You'll be working out to build up endurance and muscle strength. This is a good set of excersizes to help lose weight, so I'll probably be working here the most. The only excersize I've done in the Strength category I can't stand is the Push ups and Side Stands excersize. My hands are not comfortable on the board and my wrists tend to grow weak quickly. The first time I did this excersize, I collapsed after 4 reps, making the game give me a horrific nickname, "Couch Potato". A little depressing, but not enough to stop me from coming back later and succeeding where I once failed.

... take that, game. Points for Azura!

Aerobics are excersizes that work on multiple fields of fitness training and merges them together. Modes such as Step Aerobics, Jogging and Hula Hoop keep this mode interesting. It's more fun than the other two modes, but it doesn't provide as big a work out as either of the others. I still enjoy it and use it as a chance to relax between heavy workouts.

Then we finally reach the Balance Games. The fun section that keeps you amused and brings you back over and over again. I like this section, as it's the "Let's have some fun" part of the game, instead of the more serious "Let's get fit!" parts up above.

Overall, Wii Fit has definately gotten me hooked with it's demonic grasp and promises of fitness. Hopefully I won't get sidetracked and lose all my progess in one fell swoop... but then again, you never really know anymore...

Hooray for the Old Man (An Update For Once...)

As Mr. Monius would so kindly put it, "It's Azura! R-A-V-E-N! Azura!"

Well then, let's get this pain train on the move, shall we?

September is amung us, and with it come a few signs of pantamonium and chaos. First of them all is the new game releases coming out over the remaining months of the year. These releases are going to continue to become more and more constant until the end of the year, making for an interesting dilemma...

Who do I buy, and who do I ignore?

It's reached a pretty bad point when there's this much to buy, but I have to make sure to make my priorities before I go around spending every cent that I earn on video games (not that I'm not about to go a few days without food if it means getting to shake my maraca's a bit, mind you). I've come up with a list of incoming releases that show my "Must Own Titles" of the '08 holiday season.

SEPT:
Wii - Samba de Amigo
Wii - Wario Land: Shake it!
DS - My Japanese Coach
DS - Kirby Super Star Ultra
DS - Sonic Chronicles: The Dark Brotherhood

OCT:
PS3 - Naruto: Ultimate Ninja STORM
Wii - Wii Music

NOV:
Wii - Tales of Symphonia: Dawn of the New World
Wii - Animal Crossing: City Folk
DS - Chrono Trigger
360 - Banjo Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts
360 - Naruto: The Broken Bond
360 - Sonic Unleashed

October would seem to be my main "Save Up The Moneyz" time for November, but even then I'm not too safe due to other expenses...

But there might be some of you out there who know me pretty well who are thinking "Isn't there something you're forgetting Azura?" "Isn't there another game coming out you forgot about?"

... Mega Man 9... *sigh*

I promised that I would be doing a video walkthrough for the game the day it came out (which I still plan to do). This means I'm still planning on purchasing the game. There exists a problem in this though, as the game is coming out on multiple different system's downloadable content features. The two big ones that I would have to choose from are Xbox Live and the Wii Shop Channel.

However, here lies the problem.

Xbox Live's version of the game is scheduled to come out roughly 5 days before the Wii Shop will be carrying it, so it turns into a battle of "What's more worth it?"

The Xbox will have it first, meaning earlier access to the game... but on the other hand, the Wii version will be able to use the Wii remote like the original NES controller, giving it that more retro-feel to it. Mega Man 9 is currently scheduled to be released this September, so I'll need to decide quickly on what I'm going to do. Odds are I'll do the stupid thing and just download it on both, so I can play it early, get the achievements AND use the NES-style control...