THAT BOARD THING NO GAMER CARES ABOUT UPDATE
The more I dick with it the clearer it becomes that the training exercises are 100% intended to be throwaway. I say this because the the thing itself works entirely independent of the pack-in disc - it installs to a channel (in my case, nestled comfortably next to Megaman 9) from which you have free access to the Brain Age Check Body Test and your assorted exaggerated stats ("You lost three pounds today! That means in four days you will lose 12 pounds! I AM A FITNESS EXPERT!"). If you want to do the training exercises, then you have to insert the Game CD. Because despite the serious business they try to sell it as, doing exercises with the Wii Fit board is really nothing but a game. Well, more like two games - it's split exactly across the middle between Wii Sports 3 and The Yoga Instructor of the Dead*.
When Wii Sports was unceremoniously packed in with the spare Wiimote, it was never assumed that the Wiimote was specifically and only for playing that collection of cheap minigames. It kind of bugs me that Wii Fit is branded as such, because the balance board is honestly sort of a neat thing with lots of potential for gaming that will probably never be used as such because
A) Nintendo has way too much ADD nowadays to actually support their new gadgets, and
B) Third-party developers are starting to shove away the Wii and its tricks, having grown understandably tired of the torrential vomit of new gimmicks that make their software So Last Month the moment it's rushed out the gates.
Which is a damn shame, because - strained knees aside - there's potential there to do some truly unique stuff, especially in conjunction with the Wiimotechuck. I'm crossing my fingers that they've got enough coffee in Kyoto to keep those guys focused on the board long enough to realize that, hey, it's about time we had another sequel to Punch-Out!.
* So-called not just because the Yoga Instructor looks Dead, but I swear they took some of the dialog animations from early Sega arcade games. You know, the kind where people always wave their hands and bob their heads instead of moving their lips.
