Nintendo’s Personal Trainer series is always looking out for you. It began by helping people with cooking and math and now its newest effort is assisting people in putting one foot in front of the other. Personal Trainer: Walking is the company’s newest twist on the exergaming genre, and when put to good use, serves as an excellent tool to supplement one’s activity.
Out of the gate, I’ll want to stress Personal Trainer: Walking isn’t a game, per say, but rather an application that assists users in making the most out of their daily walking activity and offering other small sage bits of advice to advocate health and wellness. As such, if you’re looking for an interactive game, you’ll want to pass on the title and readers should please bear in mind the contents and scoring of this review measures the software’s peripherals, ease of use and ability to accomplish its intended purpose.
The most obvious innovation the software brings to the Nintendo DS is its inclusion of two pedometers, which are kept on person in order to measure daily walking activities. While two pedometers are included in the initial package, the title allows for up to four people to store and share data on the same cartridge (of course, extra pedometers are sold separately). With the ability to recognize up to four different pedometers, this openly encourages families to walk together and compare their daily activities and the software also has a “dog” toggle so even Fido can get in on the action to quench your curiosity of how many steps your pooch takes in a day.
The pedometers are quite compact and with a clip attachment, easily attaches to one’s belt loop, but they can also be carried around in one’s front pocket. A flashing light on the pedometer registers each vibration – if the light is red, the owner has not yet reached their daily step goal, but a green light indicates a job well done. Also on each device is an infrared sensor, which is used to wirelessly communicate with the game cart when an owner wants to upload their step activities for the day. While, on occasion, it will take a few tries to get the pedometer and cart to sync up, for the most part, anyone can easily connect to the software with a push of the pedometer’s button.
Article comments
1 - Ruth in Yonkers
I hope Nintendo comes out with this for the Wii. It would be nice to have a pedometer option with that system. I'm definitely not going to buy another gaming system thought. Wii is enough for me.