By Staff Writer, Colleen Park

            Sweat beads form across your forehead as you ready your serve, hoping for an ace. Pulling a shaky breath of fresh air into your lungs, adrenaline rushes through your veins. Finally, you raise your arm and vigorously strike that virtual tennis ball with all your might.

            Can playing a Nintendo Wii really give you a workout? Many are skeptical of such claims, but then again, most of those skeptics have never played a Wii before.
            In November 2006 the Wall Street Journal published the article “A Wii Workout:
When Videogames Hurt,” pertaining to health benefits and injuries documented since the release of Wii. With interviews with both people who considered themselves fit and not, the blogsphere filled with avid gamers, eagerly consumed the reports. This, in turn, spawned the “Wii Sports Experiment” in the blog Wiinintendo.net by Mickey DeLorenzo, putting the concept to the test in a six-week plan with 30 minutes of game play a day. The blogger posted his surprisingly positive yet less than earth-shattering results: a two percent drop in body fat and 1.2 point drop in body mass index.
            Josh Dektor (’09) finds a source of relief in Wii fitness, a program in Wii sports that analyzes vigor daily and gives players a fitness age, the best being 20.
            “When I get a good fitness [age], it raises my self-esteem,” Dektor said.
            The notion began simply. Using the Wii remote in conjunction with the motion sensor bar strays from the usual gaming stance of hunched shoulders and tense fingers. The game eventually obliges even reluctant non-gamers with their awkward feeble flicks of their wrists to stand up. This comes from personal experience.
            Upon my sister’s return home for spring break, I bought a Wii, to which my sister’s unenthusiastic, unsolicited response was “that’s stupid.” As an avid gamer, I silently fumed and bided my time until I could smugly taunt “I told you so.”
I asked myself, “How could anyone not enjoy the seventh generation revolutionary console from Nintendo?”
            I only began playing the next evening and after about ten minutes of watching me, my sister asked to try. With an inner laugh, I gave her the controller and said it would be better to play standing up. After another ten minutes, she was hysterically laughing about how funny she looked.
            When I first started playing, I was surprised at how quickly I broke a sweat, albeit a small one. After playing for half an hour, my sister cracked open a window to get a breeze flowing.
            “Wii sports [is] a workout since its design is based on aerobic movements that get you to use oxygen,” Giovanni Carillo (’08) said.
Perrin Kaplan, Nintendo’s Vice President of Marketing, stated in the Wall Street Journal that they did not see this coming.
            “We saw it as a form of entertainment,” she said. “We did not see it as a form of exercise.”
            However, Wii is not all fun, games, and now exercise. Documented are some amusing yet serious injuries associated with over-enthusiastic game play or for those not in shape. There are reported collisions with lamps, furniture, and people. Players have lost their grip and flung the controller, accidentally smacking family or friends, and my dog now knows to wander away whenever someone is holding that strange white contraption.
            Countless hours of flailing the game’s controller can result in aches and pains in backs, shoulders, and even “Wii elbow.” However, Nintendo was aware of these issues when they completed the console.
Before playing, a caution tells players “Make sure there are no people or objects around you that you might bump into while playing.” When playing Wii sports, a message pops up every 15 or so minutes reminding the player to rest. As for Wii related muscle aches, Kaplan said, “If people are finding themselves sore, they may need to exercise more.”
            Although it may not be considered a complete replacement for playing sports outdoors, it does have its benefits.
            “After playing it for a while, you develop faster reflexes,” Rosemary Kim (’09) said.
            Whether it is a cure for couch potatoes or an alternative to outdoor exercise, Wii proves that video games can even make burning calories a whole lot of fun.