But it was by no means the first game to attempt this; in fact, we could probably trace Wii Fit's lineage back to 1988's Nintendo Power Pad (Bandai Family Trainer in Japan), a 12-button floor mat controller that looked like an early Dance Dance Revolution dance pad. The Power Pad was designed to work with games like Stadium Events/World Class Track Meet, which had players running track, hurdling, etc.; Dance Aerobics, which played kind of like an aerobics instructional video; and Street Cop, wherein the players jumped around Manhattan clubbing bad guys. Clearly, the Power Pad was ahead of its time in both scope and design, but it failed the "looking ridiculous" test in spades. Just look up a few gameplay videos, or, heck, the official commercial to see what I mean. Playing to beat your friends in the sprint events entailed mashing on the pad buttons in alternating succession as fast as possible in a movement only vaguely resembling actual running. Looks like hell on the joints, too.
Despite its failure to attract a mass audience, the Power Pad became the foundation upon which later generations of exercise games were built. Dance Dance Revolution certainly needs no explanation; stepping in time to fast paced electronica certainly has its place in a workout routine - or even in a grade school gym class.
Japan saw its share of exclusive exercise flops as well. The game industry boom during the PlayStation days saw titles like Happy Jogging Hawaii, a jogging simulator that came with a specialized "stepper" controller. Take a step on the stepper, and your first-person view of a highly pixelated, static rendition of Waikiki would progress ever so slightly, letting you jog multiple courses through town, along the beach or through a little park. If by some chance you didn't have the stepper controller, the game was still playable by making circles with the Dual Shock's analog sticks. Still a good workout, though perhaps not quite a full-body burn.
But track and field haven't been the only inspiration for exergaming. While nothing can beat the joystick for speedy, accurate input, fighting games and combat sports have seen plenty of exotic peripherals long before Wii Boxing came along. The arcade had most of the weird stuff - Sonic Blast Man was a beat-'em-up on the Super Nintendo, but the coin-op rendition measured your progress by figuring out how hard you could punch (or kick/headbutt/body slam, at some of the rowdier arcades) the human-shaped target that represented the enemy. Fist of the North Star: Punch Mania provided a pretty good upper body workout that attempted to emulate the ORAORAORAORA blitzkriegs (imagine Whack-a-Mole, except vertically oriented and with two big boxing gloves instead of a mallet, and you're pretty much there) that games like Jojo's Bizarre Adventure have fondly echoed. Konami even entered the ring with Mocap Boxing, a game that played like a motion-sensitive version of Punch-Out, complete with bobbing, weaving and plenty of punches, though the moves were too scripted for it to be a big hit.
