Let me tell you, Wii Fits can be tough to find. I eventually found one at Wal-Mart. I had stopped looking for them was walking by the video game aisle and just happened to see several locked up behind class. I purchased one and brought it home to begin using. Since all of our family (with the exception of our toddler twins) has their own Mii (Wii avatar), it was a quick process to get everyone signed up for Wii Fit.

Wii Fit is the name of the game which comes with the balance board. This board weighs you and then also senses shifting of weight as you stand and balance on the board. The game focuses on four main areas—Yoga, Balance, Strength Training, and Aerobics.

Yoga helps build up your flexibility as well as balance and posture with several different poses. Balance offers a variety of games such as skiing or tilting a maze to drop a ball in a hole to work on controlling your balance. Strength training offers several exercises including push-ups, crunches, twists and so forth to build up muscle strength and endurance. Finally aerobics includes hula-hoop twisting, step aerobics, can even running in place.

Wii Fit keeps track of your progress. When you initially weigh in, you can set a goal of how many pounds you would like to lose and a timeframe for it. Each time you do one of the exercises, you are awarded coins in your Fit Bank for each minute you exercise. The game keeps track of these minutes and also lets you add in additional minutes for outside exercise such as if you took a walk or went for a run.

What really impressed me was that you have a personal fitness trainer that shows you how to do the exercises and offers encouragement and suggestions. It is also fun to watch your progress. Because it is like a game, Wii Fit makes exercising fun. Our family enjoys working out and trying to beat each others records since each exercise awards points for how well you do or for the number of repetitions. This healthy competition has our kids getting on the balance board as soon as they get home from school so they can try to better their past records, earn coins (minutes) for their Fit Bank, and unlock new exercises.

The Wii is a great family gaming system. Even if you don’t have Wii Fit, some of the games with come with it on Wii Sports can provide a bit of a workout. Get together as a family and play tennis or have a homerun derby. The key is to get up off the couch, move around, and have a good time together.

The nice feature about Rock Band is that four people can play at once with each person having their own unique role in the band—lead guitar, bass guitar, drums, and vocals. While one person can enjoy the game by his or herself, Rock Band really rocks when you have a full band of four players. Guitar Hero World Tour is another band game for up to four players.

In our family, the drums are popular and the kids usually take turns playing them. (Gamer Dad is not as good at the drums since he does not get a chance to practice) They also enjoy playing the guitars; however, the vocal parts are more popular with my daughters.

One of the fun features of Rock Band is creating a band. We came up with the name for our band as a group and then my oldest daughter designed our logo. Once the band was created, our family began the tour. In Rock Band, you begin in one city and can play at a single venue. As you play different songs and song sets, you can unlock other venues as well as other cities. The songs in the early cities are fairly easy, with songs in cities farther away from your home city getting more difficult.

While many may think that Rock Band only offers heavy metal songs, in reality it actually offers a wide variety of music. In addition to metal, punk, and contemporary rock, the game includes some softer and older hits as well. Plus, you can purchase and download songs from several different genre. Recently a country pack was released with five songs by some of the hottest country singers and groups. Despite initial conceptions, these songs can be challenging with one by the Dixie Chicks actually quite difficult. More oldies are also appearing such as Roy Orbison and even Jimmy Buffet. Gamer Dads should have no trouble finding some songs from when they were younger and hipper which they can share with their family.

From first hand experience, Rock Band or other musical games which let several family members play together can provide some great family entertainment and together time. It looks like the future will offer even more songs of all different types including the Beatles and who knows what else since every week new songs are available.

If your family has a music game they like to play, chime in and share with us.

What is a Gamer Dad? At first mention, one might conjure up the image of a character from Revenge of the Nerds a decade later. However, the Gamer Dad is not a geeky wimp who spends all of his time playing video games because he has been banned from the D&D games down at the local comic shop because he is too old to not seem creepy. No, the Gamer Dad works hard to support his family. He is involved in his children’s lives. Not only does he help them with homework, but also coaches soccer, baseball, softball, and other sports. He may go on camp outs with his sons or sell Girl Scout cookies at work. In addition to these many activities, what sets the Gamer Dad apart from other men is that he enjoys playing video games.

Gamer Dad can get in there and shoot it up with other gamers online. But more than that, he is responsible for nurturing the gamers of tomorrow. Gamer Dad shows his children the correct way to hold a controller and makes sure the next generation knows the proper way to handle a game disc—don’t smear it with fingerprints! Gamer Dad plays games with the kids he normally would not on his own—games with a rainbow of colors and cheerful, repetitive music. However, these are the training wheels for future gamers. As the children get older, the games get tougher until their skills have approached those of the Gamer Dad.

How many of you are Gamer Dads? There are also Gamer Moms out there and we welcome you to our ranks as well. Our purpose is the same—to enjoy gaming and spend quality time with our family as the same time. This is the first in a series of blogs focused on Gamer Dad (and Gamer Mom) for the purpose of sharing not only what I have learned as father with gaming kids, but also to learn from your experiences as well. So stay tuned for next week’s blog on Gamer Dad.