Nintendo held a launch event for the Wii Fit yesterday at Central Park, and the park’s Columbus Circle entrance was festooned with little Nintendo tents. Under the tents were Wii Fit demo kiosks and Official Wii Fit Trainers wearing gleaming white tracksuits and gleaming white grins that occasionally sparkled and made a little “ding!” sound, for this was the land of Wii Fit, where exercise is magically incredibly fun!

As you might have gleaned from gee-whiz TV news reports and whatnot, Wii Fit is Nintendo’s latest gaming revolution, in which they will cure the nation’s obesity problem by pairing a movement-sensing balance board with some lame mini-games. Simply step on Nintendo’s lump of white plastic, and you will feel the excess pounds melt away. The biggest challenge is getting the Trainer to get off the board so you can have a damn turn already:

The event had a different vibe, at least kinetically, than I’d expected. Prepared to see a crowd gyrating and laughing on the balance boards, I was surprised to arrive at a relatively static, solemn affair. The balance board is very sensitive, requiring you to adjust your position on a borderline-subconscious level—at least in the modes that were on display in the tents. People figured this out pretty quickly, and the result was a long line of people standing ramrod straight in front of a TV, imperceptibly wiggling their toes. Kind of eerie.

Exceptions: the yoga mode, which saw people contorting their body into new positions with an anguished, “I AM bending at the waist, you stupid game” look on their faces, and the hula-hoop game, which was well-received and appeared realistic, if a little ornery. “The trick is to swing your hips in a large neat, circle,” it would say, as a little girl desperately wiggled around and around.

While people tried out the games, the training staff would pepper them with a well-rehearsed spiel. The bullet points:

• Wii Fit is sold separately from the Wii, so you must also have a Wii to play it. My designated Trainer re-emphasized this fact to the point where I interrupted her and politely explained that yes, I get it, Wii sold separately, I already have a Wii, thank you. Undeterred, she emphasized it again, not willing to waver from the script. So I’m guessing people are having some trouble grasping this one. (In fairness, the way Nintendo had the kiosks set up, I can see how a novice would be confused and think it’s a plug-and-play package deal.)
• Wii Fit has a number of different training modes, which you can use to track your progress. Again, this feature was repeated and rephrased in a number of different ways. At first it sounded like a feature pitch, but then I realized that by focusing on “progress,” Nintendo was begging you to keep playing and not just slide the balance board under the couch after a week or so, which you will anyway.
• Wii Fit is on sale two days early in New York, but on Wednesday, everybody will be able to get it, so if you want it, you’d better go get it right now. My Trainer said this with a knowing smile, and the clear implication was that the game would be sold out everywhere for the foreseeable future, just like the Wii itself. I half-admired, half-resented the nerve of Nintendo turning their notorious Wii shortages into a marketing tool. “We suck at inventory control, therefore, buy this game. Q.E.D.”

When I finished with my allotted tryout time—I did the table-tilt game (everybody had to do this one) and the slalom game—the Wii Trainer gave me a wristband and directed me toward a swag tent near the exit. My swag bag would include, she noted with forced excitement, a map from Columbus Circle to the Nintendo World store in Rockefeller Plaza in case, y’know, I had to have Wii Fit right this moment.

Nobody acknowledged the irony of holding this event at Central Park, where hundreds of New Yorkers were probably, at that very moment, exercising without the benefit of a twitchy $90 balance board. Of course, the trouble with a real-life park is that weather can happen. With Wii Fit, you can look like a complete doof rain or shine:

That footage of a man jogging in place¹ while watching a cartoon version of himself run through a fake park—which I have played and rewound a couple thousand times since yesterday and still have not tired of—comes from the promotional DVD that Nintendo distributed at the event.

The great outdoors is not the only target of the Wii Fit smear campaign. Smelly old gyms get what’s coming to them, as well. “NO FITNESS CLUB DUES,” offers the on-screen text as a narrator ticks off the benefits of the game. Also: “NO SWEATY GYM EQUIPMENT” and “NO FIGHTING TRAFFIC.”

The swag bag included a free T-shirt, which was cool, but it was a “Youth Large,” which was not. An odd choice, given that 90% of the crowd yesterday was grownups. I made the best of it.

Am I Wii Fit yet?

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1. Note he is not even on the balance board, which I thought was the whole point. ↑