Gold's Gym Cardio Workout

Gold's Gym Cardio Workout for the Wii is a reasonably good workout game, but has several drawbacks. Intended to interface with the Wii Balance Board, Gold's Gym offers exercises for the balance board, but they don't work well and end up being more frustrating than useful.

The most entertaining and usable features of Gold's Gym are, unsurprisingly, the cardio boxing sections. With premade or customized workouts, you can produce a satisfying workout that fits your schedule, giving you a quick aerobic interval before work or whenever you have fifteen or twenty minutes to exercise.

The game takes a while longer to unlock than I'd prefer--I had to spend a few days going through the tutorials before I could actually get a good workout--but once this hurdle has been passed, the workouts proceed at a nice pace.

Recommended for increasing aerobic and cardio activity, but avoid the balance board options.

EA Sports Active Personal Trainer

After getting the Wii Fit for Christmas, it took me about three months to unlock everything in the game and get to a point where it wasn't offering me an intense enough workout. The arrival of the EA Sports Active offers new alternatives.

EA Sports Active integrates with the Wii Fit Balance Board, but also uses the nunchuck controller and a leg strap to track movement, as well as an elastic resistance band to provide surprisingly intense strength training. You can use pre-made workouts, including a 30-day challenge sequence, or make your own workout sequences. With workouts lasting from 20 minutes to as long as an hour, at three different intensity levels, EA Sports Active provides a variety of workouts that you can easily fit into even a busy day.

With its wider range of exercises and more intense workouts, EA Sports Active offers a great next step after your needs surpass the exercise provided by the Wii Fit.