Socal Stuff

Driving Miss Peachy: Mario Kart Wii

Disclosure: I am one of the blogging moms who is part of the Nintendo Ambassador program, and have enjoyed receiving review copies of their games for the Wii and the DS.

I would write about the games more often, but for one thing: the minute my daughter sees that a new one has arrived, she pounces on it -- and I'm lucky to ever see it again.

I've been trying to convince her that SHE should start writing game reviews for me, but so far, that sounds too much like homework to her. So you will just have to wait for my somewhat late reviews of the ones I eventually get to play with.

But if Megan and I are often found fighting over who is going to play with what game, my husband manages to stay out of it. He's just not that into it. Sure, he enjoys challenging himself to downhill skiing on our Wii Fit (a thorough review to be published here later)... and he has been known to actually beg the rest of us to play Wii Tennis with him (when he remembers we own a Wii). But game playing just isn't first on his list of fun things to do with the family...

...so I chuckled to myself when my friends at Nintendo asked if my husband would enjoy opening a Mario Kart Wii on Father's Day.

"I don't know," I told him. "But I do know my daughter would enjoy it."

So when the new toy arrived last week, I did not hold it for Father's Day. Sure enough, the kid glommed onto it immediately, and pronounced it "way cool." Then she began nagging the two of us to play it with her.

And now, my husband is a Mario Kart Maniac.

WHAT WE LIKE ABOUT MARIO KART WII:

* It's a classic.Who doesn't like playing Mario Kart? (I realized after seeing the game that it had many of the same tracks as the old Mario Kart for the GameCube, which my husband has played many times with our nephews in the UK. He loved it several years ago; of course he's loving it now that we have our own updated version for the Wii.)

* It's got several cool new tracks. All your old Mario Kart favorites are there (with updated graphics) plus several new ones.

* The Wii Wheel adds a new dimension to the game. This is a wonderful innovation. Of COURSE a driving game should be driven with a steering wheel. Duh.

* You don't actually need the Wii Wheel. Additional wheels may be purchased separately, but you can use the Wii remotes and nunchuks you already own to enjoy multi-player local games of up to four people.

* You don't actually have to be in the same home to play against your friends. You can connect with up to 12 friends over the Internet.

WHAT WE DON'T LIKE ABOUT MARIO KART WII:

So far, I've got nothing to report here! I think we're going to have to play it a lot more... Let me get back to you AFTER Father's Day.

First Look: Workout Fun with the Wii Fit

Many of my readers know that I recently lost 56 pounds.

There's no real secret to how I acccomplished this: I did it the old-fashioned way, through a program of diet and exercise. But a lot of people don't know that I supplemented my program with technology: While watching TV at night, I worked Sudoku and other Brain Age puzzles on my Nintendo DS, which broke my habit of night feeding...

...and on days when I couldn't make it to the gym, I fired up my Wii and played a couple of rounds of boxing... and maybe some tennis.

The problem with these games is that -- to be perfectly honest -- I suck at them. I am the most unathletic person who ever lived, and no matter how much practice I get, I still lack coordination and accuracy... even on something as easy as the Wii. That's why on the DS, I veer towards mind games like puzzles...

...and why I've been so eager to get my hands on Nintendo's newest Wii add-on, the Wii Fit, a device that promises to help you better use the Wii in your workouts.

Wii Fit will not be released in the U.S. until May 19 (one day before my birthday -- hint, hint!) -- but earlier this month, I was fortunate enough to be invited to a sneak preview of the device. I brought my girlfriends, Mary Ellen, Sue and Michele, and we all had a chance to give it a little test drive.

The Fit add-on is a compact white platform that functions as both a scale and a balance board. The scale is pretty accurate, too – our visit with the Nintendo folks occurred right after I’d been to the weight loss clinic, and the Fit reported the exact same poundage I’d weighed in at an hour earlier.

The Fit also computes your Body Mass Index (BMI) and tests your balancing skills before giving you a Wii Fit Age (similar to the mental quickness assessment you receive when you play Brain Age). Mine was 56, which is only four years older than I actually am. (How nice it would be to get it down to something incredible, like 40. Or 30!)

You can then set a goal and work towards it: The Wii Fit informs you that folks who have a BMI of 22 tend to live longer. Mine is 23.5; to get it down another 1 ½ points, I need to lose eight more pounds, so that’s the goal I set for myself.

Here’s what’s cool: Once you’ve hooked up the Fit to your Wii, your display will include a Fitness channel, and you will receive gentle reminders when you haven’t worked out in a while.

Here’s what’s even cooler: You can password-protect your weight and fitness information, so other family members won’t know your exact vital statistics. (And up to eight family members can do the same!)

Once you have figured out your Wii Fit age and stats, you’re ready to start your workout. The Fit gives you four choices: Strength Training, Aerobics, Yoga and Balance Games. And you get to select the personal trainer you prefer: a male, or a female – and then you can choose if you want to have your trainer face you, or follow him or her from behind. (I learned quickly that it is easier to use the right hand-foot combinations if you are looking at your trainer’s back.)

As our time was limited, we only got to sample a few of the activities available on the Fit: I did some basic step aerobics (which was a little like Dance-Dance-Revolution… and I was just as lame attempting the moves!). I then moved on to some basic Yoga stretches, before tackling one of the balance games: Table Tilt. My friends also tried out the Soccer Heading and Ski Slalom.

All of us left the hotel suite exclaiming that we cannot wait for this baby to be released, because we all want one!

I will say that I will not be using the Wii Fit as a replacement for my regular gym-based exercise routine, or my trainer (much as I would like to get rid of that expense). HOWEVER, I think this will be a wonderful supplement to the program I’m already doing, especially on those days when I can’t get to my gym.

And… it’s a heckuva lot more FUN.

Endless Ocean

The folks who designed the Aquarium of the Pacific in Long Beach took its name to heart:

The exhibits are divided into geographic habitats of the Pacific Ocean - Southern California/Baja, The Tropical Pacific and the Pacific Northwest. You walk through simulated undersea caverns to view the various fish in their simulated habitats.

Audio tour information is available via cell phone (this is the first time I've seen this feature): a toll free number is posted along with the code you enter to access the information. The only charge is for your carrier's minutes. The only downside we saw for this system was that in most parts of the Aquarium, we were unable to get a signal from our carrier (T-Mobile). Other than that, it's an intriguing idea, and one I think more museums will be adopting.

A good portion of the Aquarium's exhibits are outdoors: There is a water play area that your young children will love, touch tanks, a shark exhibit and pinniped show (you know: sea lions and seals).

The marine life represented at the Aquarium is not limited to fish and mammals. There is also a large outdoor aviary filled with lorakeets and other colorful birds, which fly freely through it (and often perch on your shoulder), and that's actually one of my favorite parts of the facility. Unfortunately, it was closed for renovation on Saturday, so we didn't get a chance to feed the birds.

The Aquarium of the Pacific has a pretty good cafe (where they serve Starbucks coffee) and large gift shops with a terrific selection of goodies for all ages in a variety of price points.

It's funny -- we used to hit the local zoos when my daughter was little, but as she's grown older, we've had less desire to go. However, we never get tired of aquariums. Maybe it's the call of the ocean; the rhythms of the waves are peaceful and relaxing. Watching the movements of sea creatures like fish and jellies can be almost hypnotic. And every time we visit, we learn something new.

Not everyone lives near world-class aquariums, but you can experience the underwater environment virtually through Nintendo's new Endless Ocean game for the Wii.

This is a different kind of gaming experience, where you take on the persona of a diver exploring the waters of the South Pacific.

I wasn't sure my daughter and I were going to like it. In fact, she spent the first 20 minutes complaining of all the preliminary exercises she had to go through to "train" her diver.

Ninety minutes later, she was exclaiming that Endless Ocean was "Really cool!" -- and I couldn't get her to stop.

How realistic is it? Check out this video below:

Sounds like fun? You have until February 29 to enter a contest sponsored by Nintendo and Norwegian Cruise Lines where the Grand Prize is a seven-day Caribbean cruise. Details and entry are located here.

Exercise Your Brain and Lose Weight, Too

I've written before about my love for Nintendo. It's not just because they threw us a fantastic Wii party this summer (although I admit I was barely aware of them before that). The truth is, I don't play the Wii as much as my husband and daughter do. When I'm home during the day, I am either writing, doing housework, or writing about how much I hate doing housework.

And when I'm home at night, I like to veg in front of the TV. I'll be doing a lot of that over the next few weeks, as the networks roll out their new shows and new episodes of my favorite returning series. (And I have a lot of those.)

But even though I just described my favorite evening pasttime as "vegging," I'm not completely idle. I find that I can't just sit there and watch. I have to do something while I'm sitting there.

For most of my life, that something usually involved food. There's nothing more relaxing than munching while you watch TV. Unfortunately, that is the kind of behavior that contributed to my enormous weight gain over the last year, and it's a habit I've had to break. I'm proud to say that I have -- and I owe it all to a little device called the Nintendo DS.

The DS is Nintendo's latest generation of handheld gaming devices, a replacement for the Gameboy. It's innovations include its dual color screen (hence, the DS acronym), microphone and playback capacity, and optical character recognition. So in addition to the buttons and cross-like control keys you see on older gaming devices, DS games may also employ a stylus, allowing you to control games by tapping the screen and/or writing numbers and words directly upon it.

In other words, this is a gaming device that a middle aged woman can embrace -- a woman like me. And so these days, while I'm watching TV, I'll have my girly pink DS in hand, solving a Sudoku or crossword puzzle... or testing my brain's age... or watching colorful little plankton float across a screen. It keeps my hands busy. And if my hands are busy, I can't walk to the refrigerator and grab something to eat. This has cured me of my night feeding urges.

Nintendo has successfully embraced the aging Baby Boomer market with its best-selling "Brain Age" game. The original game put you through a series of mind-teasing puzzles and tasks and computes your "brain age" by assessing how quickly you complete them. The ideal is to achieve a score of 20. I got completely annoyed by it, because the lowest score I could attain was 58, which is seven years older than I actually am.

They've now followed it up with even more mind-twisting fun in Brain Age 2, which offers animated anagrams that you have to decipher quickly, a version of rock-paper-scissors and a piano recital function that's kind of cool. It still makes me crazy, though -- so far, I can't bring my brain age younger than 76. Rather than enjoy the challenge, I just get angry at it, so I haven't explored it as much as I'd like. (Maybe I should drink a double espresso and give it a try. That should speed up my reaction time a bit!)

However, both Brain Age games come with 100 Sudoku puzzles, which I do enjoy -- especially while watching TV. I don't solve them as quickly as the game designers think I should, but I feel just doing the puzzles helps keep my mind sharp -- and my hands out of the cookie jar. So I am getting some mental acuity out of them.

I keep my DS in my handbag and whip it out whenever I'm sitting around bored (which is often, if you think about all the times I'm waiting for my child outside the school... or inside the gym while she is finishing her workout... or if I'm at the doctor's office, the dentist's office... well, you get the idea).

Another cool feature of the DS is that it has wi-fi built in, so if there is another DS in the vicinity, you can play games together (some games will allow up to eight players to hook in). This has made the device popular with my daughter and her friends, who bring theirs to playdates and sleepovers and share their games. Her current favorite is DK Jungle Climber, which hit the stores last week.

For the uninitiated, DK is that venerable video game character Donkey Kong, and this action game boasts "simple controls," which I assume means that even an old biddy like myself can successfully make Donkey and his sidekick Diddy Kong climb the jungle vines with ease.

"I can't believe you're going to play that," my daughter said when I informed her of my intention to try it out before writing about it here. But she was right -- whenever I try to play one of her games, I get frustrated and lost. Suffice it to say that she's been playing with this one nearly non-stop since the kind folks at Nintendo sent it to us a couple of weeks ago. "This one is really fun!" she exclaimed, once she got the hang of it. Her friends like it, too -- however, they've decided that this one is not as good as a multi-player game as when it's played solo. I will take their word for it.