Wii U Fit Meter - Durability and Tracking, Personal Review

I have been using the Wii U Fit Meter for a few months. I did not intentionally test these "features" so most are just from my recollection.

Durability

I had accidentally left the Fit Meter in the pocket of my pants that went through wash and dry cycle. Surprisingly, it has survived and appears to still be functioning accurately. Unfortunately, it did track a bunch of steps and elevation during that time. I did not find a way to cancel these steps. 

Treadmill

The Fit Meter appears to track my runs on a treadmill. I am not exactly sure how accurate it is though but it seems roughly correct. Usually, I have other steps in the day so that kind of complicates how far I actually traveled. I typically run around 3.5 miles and I end up with around 5 miles on the Wii U for the day. 1.5 miles seem to be the typical distance for the usual daily steps when I'm not at the gym.

It also does a pretty good job of determine if I am walking or running on the treadmill. I am quite stumped on how it determines this. Since I am not displacing any relative distance it would make it difficult to determine how far I walk/run. It would have to somehow calculate from just the 'bounce' from my steps (guessing). It would have to estimate my gait from my height and weight if that were the case.

Update (1/8/2015): My guess is that it estimates by the steps. Now that I am in more shape to run a bit faster, I noticed that the distance is not accurate in that the Fit Meter calculates a shorter distance. I think this is due to my sprinting form having a larger gait than walking/jogging so the frequency of my steps decrease.

Flight

Interestingly, the Fit Meter tracks the elevation even on an airplane. It does not track it for the elevation walked, but you can see in the graph that the meter was at a certain elevation while flying.

Elevation

The Wii U sits on the second floor, so most of the elevation at the gym is at a negative elevation as the instructions does mention that it zeroes where the Wii U console unit is. There is a way to reset this but I have not found this to be a problem yet so have not bothered to set the ground level to be 0.

I have also traveled to other places that have a much higher elevation. The Fit Meter tracks this similar to the flight elevation. I'm not sure if you are walking while climbing these elevations that it would record that data. I have not put in any steps during these artificial elevation changes.

Car/Train

The bumps in the car or train does not seem to impact the Fit Meter. I have not walked around the train while it was moving so I cannot say what happens for that. My guess is that the Wii Fit somehow considers the current velocity and uses the accelerometer to determine steps inside a moving vehicle.

Tricking Fit Meter, Distance and Step Compensation

Similar to losing my meter in the washer and dryer, I can shake the meter up and down to add artificial steps to the meter. Steps are also counted while walking or running in place. Jumping will also be considered a step. The distance is still calculated for these "steps" even though I do not move.

Current Status

I am quite impressed with the Fit Meter. I cannot theoretically guess how it calculates all its numbers but it seems to be accurate enough for a leisure level exercise. There are quite some limitations to viewing specific data so I would not recommend this for more hardcore 'steppers' or runners. It is great just for trends that I am steadily improving or seeing holiday splurge of added weight (sigh). 

Life: Exercising, Right Leg Hurt/Sore After Few Minutes of Jogging

After jogging for a few minutes, my right calf feels very sore (almost to the point of pain but not exactly). I am not exactly sure why this is the case. It sounds normal according to one post which seems to be consistent that I have only recently returned to running.

Odd thing is that I am right-sided (ie right handed and footed) so I always thought that my right leg would last longer than my left leg. Another odd thing is that I do not have this problem when running on a treadmill. I thought perhaps it has to do with the extra stability when running outdoors but then I just ran into the same problem when just running in place.

I started running in place while watching tv because I have been trying to get more steps onto my Wii Fit Meter. By running, I really mean walking and jogging. I have noticed that I do run a bit farther/longer before reaching the soreness every couple weeks. I typically alternate between jogging and walking until the soreness goes away. I only did this a 2-3 times before just walking out the rest of the trail because I was afraid that I may be making it worse by not letting it rest enough.

Reference

http://training.fitness.com/injury-prevention-recovery/pain-left-leg-when-running-53170.html

Review: Wii U Balance Board (First Impression)

The Wii Fit U is quite fun and the fit meter makes a nice pedometer. The most interesting thing about the game to me is seeing how stable (or how unstable) I am at certain exercises. The balance games are also quite interesting.

One drawback to this game is that I do not have other controllers. There are quite a few exercises and games that require the wii-motes to play. They look interesting.

Another drawback is that I cannot find other Wii U games that make use of the balance board. There appears to be some from Wii classic.

I kind of wish the board was a big bigger. I feel that my feet barely within the board and barely within my shoulder width, so I will be off the board if I make any slight missteps from the center. This would be a lot more fun if it were maybe double the size or something as big as the dance pad.

Review

http://nintendo.about.com/od/toppicks/tp/The-5-Best-Wii-Balance-Board-Games.htm

Review: Changing Mii Character's Pants?

Why is the default color red? Couldn't it be a little more neutral like khaki, off-white, black, jean blue, or even just regular red? I am quite color-illiterate but that red-maroon color is just kind of... eh... it just does not match any of the other palette colors available. If Nintendo was trying to make everyone feel unsatisfied equally, then they did a fine job of it.

I guess someone did invest the time into changing the pants color, but it looks so intimidating that I have learned to accept my pants color :D

I'm not sure if there are games that use the Mii characters. After reading a few articles online, it seems that the pants color may be used to identify other Miis or allow games to control some aspect of the Mii characters. All that is still speculation, as I'm still saving to buy another controller before getting another game.

Reference

http://www.ehow.com/how_6632990_nintendo-change-pants-color-mii.html

Wii U

Review: New Super Mario Brothers U - Completed All Levels and Stars for Mario (~20 days)

Overall, this game is not difficult. There are couple levels in star world that took me a while to finish. I also started playing the Luigi mode which, I suppose, kills some of the time when I don't feel like doing much. I liked that I could just pick this up and play for just 10-30 minutes at a time which I seemed to have found more of even though I was not very inclined at first.

It was quite painful to go through most of the levels again to collect all the stars. Once all the stars are collected in each area, a new level is unlocked in the star world. Then in star world, once all the stars are collected another final level is unlocked. Besides satisfaction for completing the game 100%, there is nothing else that is accomplished by unlocking and completing all the levels after beating Bowser.

The two hardest levels (by a lot) are Superstar Road's level 2 (Run for It) and level 8 (Pendulum Castle). Both levels took more than a day to complete (probably about 90 minutes of actual game play). Typically, I only play in 30 minute periods but these two really tested my nerves.

Level 8 was really difficult because I just didn't have enough patience to wait for the proper timings. I kept trying to sprint through the level and each time I would his a pendulum, fall into the pit, or die. It took a night's rest to calm my nerves which made it much easier.

Level 2 (which I actually completed after level 8) is completely opposite to level 8 where you are trying to sprint through the level. The section that I kept losing was around the third or fourth P-switch where there are moving platforms. For some reason, I just could not time this consistently. This got pretty bad to the point where I started to miss the flying koopa all-together, the P-switch, and even the P-switch at the very beginning.

Also to note, I have not played a console game for a very long time. My thumbs were actually quite sore after playing about 30 minutes. After about a month, they are no longer as sore. I did not track the total amount of time that I played, but I would guess around 30 hours of game play (usually logging more time over the weekends).

Reference

http://douglastclee.blogspot.com/2014/09/review-wii-u-and-new-super-mario.html

Review: Wii U and New Super Mario Brothers U (First Impression)

Could the name of the game be any longer? Besides that, I like the system and game in summary. This is from someone who's last system was the original NES and the last major investment of time playing was the Nintendo 64.

I spent several weeks deciding between the XBox One and Wii U. I finally decided to get a Wii U as a "gift" but of course I've been spending a lot of time playing on it. I really wanted to get the XBox for the Kinect because I heard that it was open for development. Finally decided I decided to go with the Wii U since it was meant to be a gift.

Setup

The setup did not appear to be too difficult. I was not setting it up as (supposedly) I take too much time to open the box carefully, reading the instructions, etc., etc. There is a part in the middle where it had to download the latest patches. I think it said it would take like 30-40 minutes, but we went to the gym during this time so I do not know exactly how long this process took (less than 90 minutes).

New Super Mario Brothers U

There was only the game (New Super Mario Brothers U) that came with the system. Although it (kind-of) states 2 games, it really is more like a mini spin-off of the same game.

Since I am technically not the primary owner, I kindly cede control but fortunately the system is at my house so there is plenty of time when it is available. Also, it is always fun to see someone else struggle with the game.

Basically, I just played through the game. It is quite similar to the original Super Mario Brothers in play-style. I kind of raced through it the first time and finished the game within 11 hours of play over the span of 2 days. That only included beating bowser (no star world attempt). I am not really interested in search for the star coins to complete the game so there is no plan to complete 100%.

There are options to play multi-players but unsure how that works. I will need another controller to test that out.

Mini-Games

At least that is what I like to call them. There are different types of goals the game gives. The first type is a speed-trial where you basically try to complete the level as fast as possible. Another type is to get as many 1-ups as possible. A third type is a boost which is like a time-trial but limited by the screen movement (like the airship levels in SMB3). The screen moves faster as you collect coins. The fourth type, I have not tried yet.

These games actually are more interesting to me because I get to play them in short amounts of time. Although it does bug me not to complete a game 100%, I no longer have that need... primarily I just have better things to do.

Cons

One of the reasons I got a TV was to play a console on it. I think I spend most of my time playing off the game pad. The game pad is like the hand held games like PSP, Nintendo DS, etc., but is limited to be within the sensor bar. Unfortunately, I cannot play on the game pad in the bed room or in the basement. The nice thing is that other people can watch TV or walk across the TV while playing (although it would be kind of weird that one person is playing while others are watching TV [but I guess that is nice if you had a kid]).

Summary

I have fun playing the Wii U. The purchase was worth it for me. Given that it is just under $300 and spent over 20-hours, $15/hour is not terrible. So, I already got my moneys worth within a week.

I may still consider getting an XBox. I was a little disappointed that it is not backward compatible with the 360. Probably be a few more months before I feel comfortable with the idea of getting it.