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Oh where, oh where can the Nintendo 3DS exergames be?
Count real steps in Nintendogs + Cats for 3DS (courtesy Nintendo)
My daughter loves her Nintendo 3DS, the handheld game console that succeeded the Nintendo DS, and I agree that it’s a nifty little gadget. Among many other features, it has a pedometer built right in, and an Activity Log on the main menu automatically records your daily steps if you go for a walk with your 3DS. The built-in pedometer means that games can also have the ability to give you bonuses for getting up and walking around. No need anymore for 3DS games to have peripheral pedometers like the Pokemon HeartGold/SoulSilver Pokewalker or the pedometers that came with Personal Trainer Walking or My Weight Loss Coach for DS.
So there should be more 3DS walking and activity games than you can shake a walking stick at, right? Doesn’t look that way. Even though there were several walking and general health and fitness games for the old DS console (see the list here), my active game list for 3DS remains empty. You can play any DS game on the 3DS, and it is easier to have a tiny pedometer clipped on than to carry the 3DS console in your pocket all the time, but it would still be great to have more games that take advantage of the built-in pedometer technology. Besides, you’re less likely to put your pants in the washing machine with the 3DS in the pocket.
It’s not easy to even find which 3DS games give you bonuses for walking. One that does is Nintendogs + Cats, a fun simulation game in which you adopt and pamper a virtual puppy. You can take Rover for a fake walk by just steering with your stylus, but if you take the console for a real walk with the game turned on, not only do you burn real fat and gain real fitness, you also get presents from your dog, and not the kind you have to scoop. Gifts depend on how many steps you take; according to the list at Nintendogs Wiki, they range from a dog biscuit for 10-99 steps all the way up to a gold bar for 99999+ steps.
The Street Pass feature built in to the 3DS is another feature that might encourage walking, or at least getting out of the house. With Street Pass, you leave the wireless internet detector on in the 3DS as you walk around, and if another wireless-activated 3DS is in the vicinity, your Mii avatars will “visit” each other and sometimes exchange gifts, or show off their Nintendog or Nintenkitten. We’ve walked extra loops around crowded malls just to try to collect Miis.
Do readers know of any other 3DS games that encourage walking?
Nintendo’s taking the 3DS a step further with a built-in pedometer
There’s a lot of excitement in the gaming world about the upcoming successor to the handheld Nintendo DS, the 3DS (named for its glasses-less 3-D screen). Now exergamers have reason to be excited also: according to Kotaku, the new device will have an on-board pedometer, and as you walk around with it, you’ll earn virtual coins that will help you power up games that support it, such as fueling your Pokemon with watts, buying Mario a snazzy flying raccoon tail, etc.
This means you won’t need a separate device like the pedometers that come with Pokemon HeartGold/SoulSilver, Personal Trainer Walking, or My Weight Loss Coach.
One more giant leap to keeping gamers active and fit! I just wish the 3DS was as compact as a pedometer – it’s supposed to be the same size as the current DS Lite – but you can be sure they will come out with holsters, belts or even deep-pocketed walking shorts for it.
Personal Trainer:Walking for DS plus 2 pedometers for a bargain price
It’s a little too late for Christmas shopping, but if you want to start on those post-holiday resolutions by just getting up off your glutes more, Amazon is currently selling Personal Trainer: Walking for Nintendo DS for under $20.
This game comes with 2 pedometers, so you and a friend or SO can play, or you can even attach a pedometer to your dog’s collar. It also lets you import a Mii from your Wii. I don’t have it, but if I get a little Christmas loot, I might consider it. Here’s the official website to learn more about Personal Trainer:Walking, and here are more fitness-related games for your DS.
New Active Life game for Wii is announced, Active Life Explorer
A third installment in the Active Life series for Wii is coming! It will be called Active Life Explorer, and will have a treasure-hunting theme. GoNintendo has a description and screen shots, and there’s also a trailer for the European version, Family Trainer Treasure Adventure:
This game will allow one to eight players (either they take turns, or each person stands on one spot!) and will use the same Active Life mat as the other games. I love the intensity of the games on Active Life Outdoor Challenge (I don’t have the follow-up, Extreme Challenge, which sounds like little more than a reskinning of much the same games) and I hope the “treasure hunting” theme means there will be a minigame similar to Walk It Out!
Pokemon and the future of fitness
I’ve had the Pokemon HeartGold game for DS for a few days now, and one thing I want to make clear for casual gamers like me: this is a serious gamer-type game. Unlike Walk It Out or Just Dance, where the jolly avatars don’t even have names, much less strengths, weaknesses, super powers, emotions and biographies, with Pokemon you have to worry about ALL that stuff and the Pokewalker pedometer is just icing. You can’t even use the Pokewalker straight out of the box; you have to play the game long enough to have a Pokemon that you caught with your Pokeball that you bought with your Pokemoney that you won from fighting and traveling and networking your way to being a Master of the Pokeuniverse. I have enough of that in carbon-based life, thanks, so I let my daughter do the virtual Pokelegwork on the DS while I do the real legwork with the Pokewalker. (I wish it was possible to get multiple Pokewalkers synced up to one game.)
One thing Pokemon has that most fitness games don’t, is an online community. There are multiple ways to play with others, both on and off line: you can use the wi-fi capability of the DS to play, trade or chat with other players within the game, or play against someone in the same room using the DS’s capability to communicate with other DS consoles within range. Even the Pokewalker itself can communicate with other Pokewalkers, so if you see someone else in public sporting the bright red-and-white disc, you can exchange gifts or do battle.
I keep thinking how awesome it would be to have a fitness game with similar features. I also thought of Pokemon when I saw the Future of Fitness White Paper, a report published by Les Mills, a company that has had tremendous success franchising gym classes like Body Pump. The report discusses how today’s trainers and gym owners can stay in business by keeping up with technology and giving clients what they need (physical health, emotional health) by giving them what they want (fun, personalization, a social experience). It mentions how exergames are drawing users by offering those things:
Technology is likely to empower consumers to choose from a range of fitness options to supplement (or perhaps replace) social and club-based options. For example, a ‘virtual personal trainer’ might lead your workout while you’re at home alone; you might be able to link from home to your gym’s group-fitness experience; you might get your exercise while appearing in a virtual ‘game show’ with your friends; or maybe you’ll go walking in the park and experience it as a virtual science-fiction battle.
Sounds like the future of fitness is already here, in the hands of an army of little Pokemon trainers.
