Wii causing some woes

John Klee of Rocky River, Ohio, bought a Nintendo Wii for his son for Christmas. They played the bowling game for hours. The next day, Klee felt a soreness in his chest.

Three days later, the pain was still there, and his wife was concerned. He spent four hours at Fairview Hospital for the full battery of tests they administer to guys over 50 who complain of chest pains. They gave him a clean bill.

“We can’t be certain,” said his wife, Jacqui. “But I’m sure it was a pull of the Wii.”

First comes the Wii, then comes the woe. Anecdotal evidence suggests that excessive use of the Nintendo Wii can lead to muscle soreness, hand injuries, broken furniture, cracked television screens and marital discord. It’s a sign of the times: virtual games causing real problems.

For Cleveland accountant Paul Frank, it began on New Year’s Eve.

“I was at a couples party,” he said. “The people had a Wii. I had never played it before. We were playing track-and-field games. The 100-yard dash was one of them. The faster you move your arms, the faster your guy on the screen goes. Everybody took turns. Then we did the swim meet. Again, it’s how fast you move your arms. The next morning my arms were real sore. Not like an injury. But the way they would feel after a good workout.”

Other examples have been space-related. One first-time player using a crushing backhand playing Wii tennis in his nephew’s cramped bedroom cracked a knuckle on a dresser. Wii tennis, bowling and several other games require more space for rapid movement than the average video game.

“I have not seen any Wii injuries yet, but I fully expect to,” said Dr. Amanda Kelly, director of pediatric sports medicine at Rainbow Babies and Children’s Hospital in Cleveland. “I have seen tendonitis in thumbs and fingers from regular video games. But I expect to see some low-level repetitive motion stress.”

But Kelly doesn’t want kids to put down the Wii: “The benefits outweigh the risks. The exercise is good for obese kids.”

A report in the New England Journal of Medicine in June quoted a doctor in Spain who had treated patients with what he called “Wiiitis,” another name for repetitive motion injury. Players move their arms without exerting themselves by running around. The result is that that they can play Wii sports much longer than they can play the actual sport.

Household furniture is another casualty in the Wii world. The motherlode of all things Wii-disaster is the non-Nintendo Web site www.wiiihaveaproblem.com. Wii fans post photos of broken windows, busted lamps, black eyes and other accidents that result when players lose their grip on the remote or connect with a solid object or each other.

Wii-related accidents caused by faulty Wii-mote wrist straps resulted in a class-action suit filed last year in the U.S. District Court of the Western District of Washington. Nintendo offered replacement straps for those broken by vigorous gamers.

Wii accidents have become such a part of the cultural experience that Southwest Airlines has made it into a commercial. In the “Want To Get Away?” spot, a gamer playing a virtual baseball game at a friend’s house loses his grip on the remote, shatters a flat-screen television and knocks it off the wall.

But the Wii news is not all bad. A study this month in the British Medical Journal reports that Wii gamers burn more calories on the device than they do on traditional video games, which work out only the thumbs. Researchers at the Liverpool John Moores University said children who play Wii sports games such as tennis or boxing burn up 66 percent more calories than did children playing with an Xbox 360.

Kids playing Wii tennis burned 179 calories in an hour while the Xbox group expended only 107 in the same time period. The average sedentary child uses 70 calories in an hour.

And as for marital discord? Given the addictive and entertaining nature of the Wii experience, can the advent of Wii widows and widowers be far behind?