From the folks that brought you … erm … a bunch of case mods for the Xbox 360, comes the “Wii Riiser Aerobic Step” for your Wii Fit Balance Board. Just in case you were unsatisfied with the heights that the existing step peripheral offered, Zoozen has gone out and created an attachment to boost the level up to a more challenging four inches.
The company contests this is the average height of an actual stepper (which we won’t point out also costs significantly less than the Wii Fit and “Wii Riiser Aerobic Step” combined), and as such, will help “improve your step aerobic workout.” While we’re sure this peripheral would attach to your Balance Board that much easier than two pieces of equally sized wood, we’re not so sure it would serve a different purpose. Zoozen’s “Wii Riiser Aerobic Step” is available now for the not-so-nice price of $39.99.
Despite some saying that Wii Fit is only gathering dust in the closet, UK amputees are using the software and bundled Balance Board to help them with their treatment. This isn’t the first we’ve heard about a Nintendo product helping folks out with their physical therapy, but this is definitely one of the most interesting. Rather than just getting people to be more active by playing Wii Sports or something, the Balance Board and Wii Fit software are helping people adapt to their new prosthetic limbs. From walking to simply leaning, it’s helping them adapt to their new, albeit very unfortunate, way of life.
Have you taken part in any non-Wii Fit-related Wii wobbling? What did you think of the experience? Do you look forward to any future Board-compatible games?
How do we know? Because they’re throwing a lot of money into advertising the game. $10 million, to be exact, all in the hopes that you’ll want to hit the virtual slopes with Shaun and the gang.
The campaign started last night, where Ubisoft purchased all of the ad space on the season premiere of popular television show South Park. That’s not it, either, as it’s being reported that Shaun White will make appearances on ESPN shows on November 16th to promote the game. In addition to that, Ubisoft is also purchasing air time on select Viacom channels with the purpose of promoting Shaun White Snowboarding.
These videos for Skate It — today’s andothers — beg one major question: how long is it going to be before people start busting their Balance Boards? A week after the game’s fall release? A day? The one thing we’re sure of is that it’s going to happen. Boards will be busted. People will cry. But in the meantime, we’re going to lean into lots of fun, and all without having to brave the prospect of introducing various body parts to the rough, hard asphalt.
According to the latest issue of EGM, the next Tony Hawk title might not be utilizing the Balance Board after all. Instead, Activision has supposedly been thinking about putting out their own peripheral to interact with the game, bundling it with the upcoming title.
Something that boggles our mind is the mentioning that Neversoft would not be developing the next Tony Hawk game. Considering that Neversoft produced a long-standing series from scratch and sustained it for many iterations, we’d be hard-pressed to think that Activision would take them off of the franchise. But, hey, that’s just us.
Many games are using Nintendo’s Balance Board, including rival skateboarding franchise Skate It from EA. Do you want to know more about Nintendo’s peripheral? Watch this instructional video and be sure to check out our own Mike Sylvester’s fun with it in his Revolutionary feature series.
If you remember their last video, these two chaps from the German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence Center demonstrated a hack for the Balance Board enabling them to travel through Google Earth and Second Life with the peripheral. In this video, the two have modified the board to control movement in another virtual world — World of Warcraft.
The Warcraft portion doesn’t appear until the 44-second mark, and you can’t really do much with the Balance Board save walk around, so don’t expect to take down any high-level elite mobs or lead a raid with the hack. But it’s still cool to see non-traditional uses for the expensive peripheral! For more Balance Board mods, stay tune for our own Mike Sylvester’s Wii Racing Experiment!
Speaking with the local paper merchants, Nintendo Australia’s Rose Lappin seemed to like Wii Fit’s chances against the current everywhere-but-Wiijuggernaut Grand Theft Auto. After starting out with standard banter concerning the Wii and DS dominating Aussie sales charts, Lappin confidently talked up the ability of Wii Fit to snag the majority interest of gamers over the long-term.
A bunch of sweaty Australian fitness fanatics have already been doing push-ups (read: smashing guns) for almost three weeks now using Wii Fit. During that time, the Balance Board of Justice stole the top sales spot away from GTA IV (irony is funny), and it hasn’t been able to reclaim its crown.
Lappin reassures us that Wii Fit will be supported for a long time, and is also pleased to see some physical education programs in local schools using the package to transform John Q Kid into Lil’ Rambo. We’re sure this is music to the ears of many parents in Australia, who would love to keep their chil’n away from Niko Bellic and his array of misadventures.
For the second installment of Iwata Asks (the Wii Fit version), Iwata gets the nitty gritty from the developers of the Balance Board. It’s pretty interesting to see what the board could have ended up looking like. Take, for example, the crazy octogan-shaped thing about. Also, whenever reading about a development process, it’s almost scary to know all the problems and obstacles that the makers run into.
Of course, the developers prevailed and the Balance Board was born. From Sumo wrestlers to Miyamoto slamming a table, the interview has some nice insight on what it was like to make the unique peripheral. As per usual, click the picture or the “read” link to check it out for yourselves.
To us, it was a no-brainer: Namco Bandai's Family Ski and Nintendo's Wii FitBalance Board were always supposed to be together. We're no skiing experts, but the sport seems to involve its fair share of leaning, making the game and Nintendo's wobbly slab the perfect match.
The Famitsu scan above suggests that Namco Bandai now feels the same way, despite initially announcing that the game would only use the Wii Remote and Nunchuk. Unless our memories have failed us, this would make Family Ski the first third-party title to support Nintendo's new peripheral.
Presumably, this means we'll be using the Balance Board as well as the Wii Remote and Nunchuk, which sounds damn involving, if nothing else. Indeed, short of the game shipping with a free wind tunnel, snow machine, and a garish all-in-one jumpsuit, we doubt much more could be done in terms of player immersion.
The ‘Wii Riiser Aerobic Step’ for … the Wii Balance Board originally appeared on Joystiq Nintendo on Wed, 22 Apr 2009 19:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
