WII FIT PLUS SEGWAY CIRCUIT

When I feel lazy in Wii Fit Plus, I merely play the Balance Games instead of doing yoga poses or strength exercises.  The nice thing with Wii Fit Plus is there are many more so-called Balance Games.  Wii Fit Plus may call them something else, but they are basically games, something more interesting than the regular exercises.  I got pretty good with all the games and was able to secure the top spot, or completed all the levels.  Until I hit Segway Circuit.  Pretty much the only control you have is lean forward to move forward and lean backward to, uh, move backward.  Well, you also turn left and right by turning the WiiMote, which you hold horizontally with two hands, the front of the WiiMote (the part where the infrared light shoots out) pointing to your left.  The goal of the game is to go around bumping into beach balloons that were inflated by moles or gophers.  There is a time limit and the last mole has rocket-propeller to travel faster.  With the Amateur Level, it took me a while to realize that the only to catch up to the Last Mole is to use a ramp to speed up.  One bump into The Boss Mole, I think, and it's game over for Mr. Mole.  Or at least that's what I vaguely recall.  I should go back to it just for fun.

For the longest time, or at least it seems so, I was stuck with the Advanced Level.  There are more beach balls to bust and that Last Mole was impossible to catch.  Through some YouTube video, I learned that once you have the puppy to follow you, pressing A sic the dog to the Balloons.  It saves you time from having to traverse the distance to bust the Balloons yourself.  Just travel a bit toward a Balloon, press A, then the dog will do its job.  Be careful not to press A too many times.  Press once to get the Balloons busted by the dog, but don't press too quickly or you will call the dog back to you.  Another button that is useful to know is the 1 key.  In the overview map on the right, pressing 1 will zoom out a little bit to show you where the Balloons are, so you don't end up wandering all over searching for them.  Lastly, don't bump into the Moles while they are above ground.  You lose points and I think it makes them run away to another hole, making it harder for you to bust the Balloons.

Even with more time at the end to chase the Last Mole, I still couldn't catch it.  Eventually, I realized that the dog can only do so much work.  It may slow the Mole so that I can bump into it, to bust its on-board balloon.  The on-board balloon is replaceable, so pop one and another one comes out.  Only after the third balloon popped that you would be done.

I am now on the Expert Level and it seems to be even more difficult.  There are buildings to go around, Balloons may be on the sidewalk or within some place that's higher than the road, thus your progress is slow.  I think the trick is to get the dog as soon as possible.  Luckily, the dog seems to be in the same spot all the time.  In the Advanced Level, it's under the tree on the left if you make the first right turn on the road.  In the Expert Level, it's between the building in town.  I will try to ignore all the Balloons and go hook up with it next time.  That may be the only way to quickly bust all the Balloons, with the dog's help, to have more time to defeat The Boss.

BALANCE BUBBLE PLUS COMPLETED!

The first time I tried Wii Fit Plus' Balance Bubble Plus, it was so difficult.  The idea is the same as the original Balance Bubble.  You "travel" in a bubble and direct the movement by leaning left, right, forward, and backward.  Yes, it's very useful to be able to move in all four directions.  And it's a bubble so the slightest bump and your "vehicle" busts, game over.  First time I played Balance Bubble I also thought it was difficult.  Too difficult for mere mortals!  Luckily the "harzards" moved in the same pattern so after a while I knew what to do to complete the game and completed it I did.  The Plus version introduced a rotating arm, a big one, shortly after you make a few turns.  This is where it's important to be able to go backward a step or two.  You don't want to move faster than the arm.  Every now and then I can even squeeze right in front of the arm and not have to wait for a gap to open up.  Then comes the dark tunnel, with which I had to constantly stop to observe the surrounding because your light can only see so far.  Move forward too fast and you can bump into the floats or whatever that's floating around you.  Out of the tunnel there are two small rotating arms going in opposite direction.  You need to time your movements and squeeze into the gaps.  Last hazards are the bees!  I hate them!  There are five or six of them, just cutting across the screen as you try to reach your final destination.  In a classic case of witnesses with unreliable memory, after I completed the game I watched some YouTube videos and now I cannot recall if I paused on the first two bees then zoomed past the remaining bugs, or if that's what I saw in the videos.  Whatever, I did finish the game, not easily, far from the ease the YouTube people showed.  For example, it looks like when they arrived at the dark tunnel they just went straight through without pausing like me.  Oh well, I should be glad that I at least finished it.

WII FIT - BALANCE BUBBLE GAME

 Part of my daily exercise regiment includes, usually, 30 minutes with Wii Fit Plus.  For those who don't know, the Nintendo Wii game console interface is more physically-involved than other systems.  It's a decent way to get some exercise while playing games.  They even go as far as having exercise programs such as Wii Fit and its sequel, with which you do actual yoga and strength training exercises.  The interaction is achieved with the help of the Wii Board, which the player would stand on.  You can weighed everyday to track your pounds.  You can also find out how balanced you are, even though your left and right sides are not identical, you do want to try to have a sense of balance of the two sides.

Sometimes the yoga and exercises get too boring.  You can unwind a bit by playing Balance Games and such.  They are basically video games but you control by shifting your body to move around.  Just like video games, with some games you can only advance so far and it seems there's no way to complete the game.  With some computer video games,  there are cheat modes that you might find to finally complete the game.  Not a good idea to always cheat, but it's just a game and if you already tried hard enough you just want to get over it.

One game I finally complete is Balance Bubble, found in the original Balance Games of Wii Fit.  Like many things in life, the first few times I didn't get very far.  I kept trying and got better, eventually completed the Basic Level.  In Advanced Level, there are bumble bees buzzing around and would bust your fragile bubble that you ride in when you cross their path.  Again, for a while I couldn't get past these pesky insects.  Luckily, once you know that the bees fly in certain pattern and that you can go backward or stay in place, then it's not too bad.  Also, in places where the wave emanates from the shore, the current isn't that strong so you don't need to overreact and end up crashing into the shore.

I am now trying to complete Balance Bubble Plus.  The route is totally different, there are rotating arms, and there's a dark tunnel that you can only see so much ahead.  You just have to move slowly and carefully avoid bumping into the round objects floating about.  Once you are out of the tunnel, there are two rotating arms, with smaller radius so that you have less room to maneuver, one set of arms after another.  And they rotate in different directions, too!  The furthest I got was past the first set of arms.  Even if I somehow get past the second set, time may be running out, too, so I'll have to try to lose little time in the easier, beginning section.  These games are supposedly to be relaxing but they are getting my blood pressure up!

TROUBLES IN WII PARADISE

In general, I am very happy with my Wii setup, in particular Wii Fit exercise program and Wii Board.  But as my son pointed out recently, it's over 10 years old, the world has moved on to bigger and better things.  Well, maybe not better, as the Wii physical input is probably still the best.  Yes, things are breaking down, perhaps aided by fumbling fingers.  Recall that when I recently re-discovered the Wii controllers and boards, the busted batteries appeared to do some damages to the battery compartment.  That wasn't the case.  But then the family started to use the setup regularly, everyday, sometimes by three different people.  Mistakes were made and new batteries got depleted.  One controller started acting weird, going off on its own or losing connection to the main system.  Luckily, there is a market for replacement controllers and I got a pair this week.  A visit to some setup screen and the new controllers detected the mothership, we already started using them yesterday.  (They actually arrived that day Tropic Storm Isaias cut off our power, didn't do us much good to have them.)

Something else that's different with the Wii setup is how the top ten list for Wii Fit Plus behaves.  While I am still glad that the ranking carried over from Wii Fit to Wii Fit Plus, I also noticed that some list got many entries cleared out.  Can it be because the main system is running out of storage space?  So that given the additional poses and exercises that came with Plus some older ranking must be removed?  I think as long as the top few positions are still intact, I am OK with it.  Yeah, first world problems.

WE LOVE WII FIT PLUS

In these uncertain times of sheltering in place, it is important to stay active with indoor exercises.  Years ago when I got an elliptical machine, it was used mostly as a coat rack.  I was able to run outside at least every weekend and would occasionally used the "coat rack" during the week, but it was mostly not used.  Likewise, for a while my son was using the Wii program Wii Fit Plus, with the required Wii Board, to do yoga and strength exercises.  A few months ago when I pulled the Wii Board out of cobweb, the batteries already busted but luckily a little cleaning with rubbing alcohol and cotton swaps, plus fresh batteries, all was good again.  I've been using the elliptical and Wii Fit everyday.

As great as Wii Fit is, there are only so many yoga poses, strength exercises, and balance games to interact with.  A few weeks into the new routine, I started searching for a sequel of Wii Fit.  There is one and it's called Wii Fit Plus.  Not wanting to be a compulsive buyer, I promised myself not to buy it until I finished all the moves.  Or at least between my son and me.  It's necessary to add that additional clause because I am horrible at the balance games and only play a few of them, whereas my son aced all of them.

It's been a long time since Wii Fit etc came out so there are no "new" program to buy.  Amazon offers Renewed version at some discount with a guarantee so I went with that.  For some reason, among the various offerings on Amazon there was a PAL version.  From my days of dealing with software for the Amiga platform, which was popular in Europe, I learned about NTSC and PAL, the two primary video signals used in the U.S. and Europe, plus other places.  I don't know the nitty-gritty details of the difference, just that you cannot view a video made for PAL on a TV set in the U.S., which can only handle NTSC.  I made sure the Wii Fit Plus I bought does not say PAL or spells out NTSC.  I used the Amazon Locker at my local 7 Eleven, no package for you you porch pirates!

It's been a while since I last inserted a disc into the Wii, the first time I did so with the Wii Fit Plus disc I did it wrong and the disc couldn't be read.  Flipped it over and all was well again.  I plan to go through every yoga pose, every strength exercise, with different levels of time duration, every balance games, just to make sure the disc has no bad sector or scratch.  So far the three new yoga poses and the new strength exercises work so I don't expect to return the disc.  My son is still going through the many balance games, hopefully nothing wrong there.

I suspected that the Wii has some internal memory that remembers all the players and their stats.  I am glad that that is the case.  It makes sense, but sometimes things don't necessarily make sense in real life.