 Written by Mike Richardson Bryan
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Wednesday, 13 August 2008 |
TOKYO—Following up on the success of the Wii Fit, the groundbreaking interactive exercise game, Nintendo has announced plans to release the Wii Fat, the first game deliberately designed to encourage and reward laziness.
"The Wii Fit demonstrated that there's a market for people concerned about physical fitness," said company spokesman Akira Azuma. "But we'd be fooling ourselves if we didn't admit that there's an even bigger market out there for people who want to sit on their asses and stare at a television screen until the day they die. The Wii Fat is the game for them."
The core of the new game is the Power Pillow, an advanced controller in the form of an overstuffed seat cushion. The Power Pillow senses not only the player's center of mass and body mass index, but also the accumulation of Doritos crumbs and empty Red Bull cans in the player's vicinity. Using this data, the Power Pillow calculates the player's Sloth Index, which is central to gameplay. Points are awarded for sitting still, with bonus points awarded for labored breathing and profuse sweating. Spontaneously manifesting symptoms of diabetes results in an automatic win.
"As always, it's the games themselves that will make or break the product, and we've spared no expense in that regard," said Azuma. "The Wii Fat includes over a dozen lethargy-based games, including Couch Frenzy, Snail Racer X, and SimGlacier. Additional games will follow starting early next year, including an exclusive entry in the popular Metal Gear series from Konami, tentatively titled Metal Gear Torpid. How long can Solid Snake stand in line at the DMV? You'll have to play the game to find out."
Surprisingly, the announcement has attracted little criticism, even from traditional opponents of unhealthy lifestyle choices.
"Look, we've been trying to get people off their lazy asses for going on thirty years, but we know when we've been beat," said Libby Redmond, president of the National Fitness Council, the country's largest health advocacy group. "So go ahead, people—eat asbestos and smoke Canadian bacon in a corncob pipe, for all I care. We'll all be dead from mad cow disease in a few years, anyway. You might as well run out the clock on the couch where you're comfortable, slowly disintegrating into a carcinogenic blob of human gristle. And save a spot for me."
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