Two words: competitive yoga. Leave it to Nintendo to take what for most people is an incredibly introspective and spiritual practice and turn it into what could easily become one of the coolest party/drinking games of all-time. Pure genius. And it's just one of many things that makes Wii Fit a must-have for anyone who likes to do more than just thumb-work in their gaming. There's definitely some filler to the package, but there are far more hits than misses.

I've been waiting a while for Wii Fit to drop on this side of the planet. In addition to having written hundreds of game reviews, I've also written dozens of fitness articles for national magazines and have just started work on my second fitness book. While roughly 90 percent of my game reviews are based solely on what I've gathered from reading press releases and what's written on the back of the game case -- heck, I don't even own some of the consoles for which I've reviewed games -- here, I actually know what I'm talking about. So, will playing Wii Fit turn you into a ripped, buff and sexy dude or dudette? Probably not. There's not a balanced enough approach to things -- especially in the strength training department. Will it get you moving and using parts of your body you've never used before and developing skills and attributes that you've never even thought about? Definitely.

Unlike Wii Sports, which comes bundled with the console and uses nothing more than the Wii remote and Nunchuk to get you up and moving, Wii Fit lets you do your gaming and exercising on the Wii Balance Board. It's a nifty apparatus that not only lets you know your weight, but also lets you know how you use that weight. The board measures the subtleties of your movement to tell you how much of your weight is on your left foot versus your right and your toes versus your heels. The ultimate goal of the disk is to give you better body awareness that'll lead to better balance, posture and core strength. Not a bad set of goals.

Exercises are broken down into four categories: strength training, aerobics, balance games, and yoga. And while there are merits to all of them, logistics and the laws of physics make some more fun and effective than others.

Strength training probably suffers the most. Because you're dealing with bodyweight exercises -- you don't use dumbbells or any other type of resistance -- and because the measurement device, the Balance Board, is located on the floor, you're limited to strength exercises that have you pushing against the Earth's gravitational pull. For upper body development, this means you can get a great chest and triceps workout by doing push-ups, but there's really no way to target the back and biceps, since those are generally pulling motions. There's a pulling rowing motion that's part of a squat routine, but since it's done without any form of resistance -- gravitational or otherwise -- it won't do much to give you that sick, v-shaped, cobra's-head-looking back that you may be searching for.

Lower body development also has it problems. The lunges are cool and if you've never done any before, a few sets of them will make sitting down the next day a bit painful. Squats, though, suffer from the design of the balance board. The majority of people need to have their feet wider than shoulder-width apart to do squats safely and comfortably. At just 18-inches across, the balance board simply isn't wide enough. If you've never done any strength training before, stick with the push-ups and lunges and spend the majority of your time with the game's other sections.

The highlights of the aerobics section are the Hula Hoop games. If you're a guy who would consider using a Hula Hoop a bit effete, wait until you get to do your hip-gyrating without a prop. By constantly keeping your hips rotating, you keep an on-screen Hula Hoop -- or two or three or four -- spinning. It's challenging, tiring, and strictly from a fitness point-of-view, it's incredibly beneficial. Loose and strong hips -- as opposed to the tight and weak hips that most folks have -- are a key to better performance in any sport and will help you stay free from lower back pain.

The balance games are also a kick. Because of the way that the Balance Board can detect even the slightest shifts from your left foot to your right and from your heel to your toe, you get to do all sorts of oddball and surreal things. By shifting your weight on the board, you're able to do everything from walking a virtual tightrope, to slaloming at high speeds down a mountain, to guiding multiple balls into holes on strange-shaped free-floating tables. The games all work to give you a better feel for how your body works and how to better control it. They're also all really good ways to put your balancing skills up against a buddy.

And that brings us to the yoga section. Amazingly, this isn't the first attempt to bring yoga to the videogame crowd. EyeToy: Kinetic -- an otherwise stellar exercise and movement game designed for the PlayStation 2 -- had a yoga section that was flat-out boring. Yourself! Fitness for the PS2 and Xbox also had a yoga component, but it was a tad too advanced and complicated for most. Here, the yoga is as easy -- leaning to one side in half-moon pose -- or as difficult -- standing on one leg for a while in tree pose -- as you want it to be. What makes it addictive is that it's scored. An on-screen red dot shows you where your center of gravity is and your job is to keep it inside a small target area. When you feel that your karma is more powerful than your pal's, it's time to go head-to-head. Most swank yoga studios would be horrified by your jamming your forefinger into another member's sternum and sarcastically yelling, "Nice tree pose, loser!" Here, it's completely acceptable.

Some of the yoga postures may get your qi energy flowing in a bad direction, though. Several poses require you to look away from the screen, which greatly affects your ability to control your center-of-gravity dot. You end up craning your neck to see the screen -- effectively taking you out of whatever beneficial, aligning and calming position you were in.

While Wii Sports scratched the surface of how the console can be used to get people into shape, Wii Fit takes the next logical evolutionary step. The balance board is an insanely innovative peripheral and the development team -- overall -- was creative in building intuitive, fun and productive fitness-themed mini-games for it. It isn't a perfect product, but -- again -- the plusses far outweigh the minuses. It'll be interesting to see how future releases make use of the balance board, but in the meantime, there aren't too many gaming moments more satisfying than fragging a friend yoga-style.

This review was based on a retail copy of Wii Fit that was supplied by the publisher. Not for nothing, but the publisher also sent him special Wii Fit socks. They have small nubs on the bottom.