WiiNoob

Wii Fit Balance Board…In Your Shoes

Here’s a new idea for a Nintendo peripheral, a Wii Balance Board built in to the user’s shoes.

Recently, Nike held a challenge called Nike78, which asked 78 artists to change the design of a pair of Nikes in a way that would change their function, while using sports as a theme. This particular artist used a pair of Nike Air Max.

He decided to use Nintendo’s Wii as his inspiration, according to his blog, basing the redesigned shoes around Wii Fit.

As the designer says, Wii Fit is currently one of the most popular ways to exercise right now, because it incorporates a fun, interactive game with a workout. Making it so that users may not even realizing they are burning calories.

What was his next step? Turn these shoes into a Wii Fit Balance Board. All he had to do was play around with some electronics, cut a few things open, there was probably some glue and scissors involved…and after working his magic, was able to put together something functional.

While it’s not necessarily the most beautiful design out there right now, it’s definitely a cool start. However, the designer did point out that the functionality is a bit different, because the user is now standing on the shoes one cannot simply step off the board when the game asks them to–they must sit down on a chair to take pressure off the device on both feet.

Either way, it looks like a tough hack, and unless Nintendo and Nike partner up and market something like this (fat chance) we doubt many people will ever get to try this. Not to mention, you have to take apart a good pair of shoes and a working Wii Balance Board (Not many of us have more than one of those lying around) to even attempt this. Maybe it’s best left to those who know what their doing.

Modding can always lead to some interesting designs. One of our favorites was the one-handed GameCube controller that some awesome dude made for his brother, who can only play games with one hand. Then there are times when it’s simply to add some fun function, like the DS Rumble Mod we found a while back.

Via NJGM