Columns share an author’s personal perspective.

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Life has certainly changed since the start of the global pandemic.

At our house, we’re taking all of the recommended precautions. My wife and I are working from home, we wear masks when we have to be in public (which isn’t very often), we’re disinfecting nearly everything that comes in the house and we’re washing our hands a lot.

We certainly aren’t ready to go back to the gym. So instead of going out to get our exercise, we’re staying at home and playing video games.

Healthy ones.

A couple of weeks ago, we picked up “Ring Fit Adventure” for the Nintendo Switch. The game is a continuation of Nintendo’s “quality of life” initiative the company started with “Wii Fit” for the Nintendo Wii.

The game is an exercise-based role playing game that comes with the Ring-Con, a flexible, hard-plastic ring that one of the Switch’s Joy-Con controllers slots into, and a leg strap that holds the other Joy-Con.

You squeeze and pull the Ring-Con, jog in place, do squats and other exercises and the sensors in the controller track your progress. While doing so, you can play through an adventure mode where your character finds a sentient ring who helps you on a journey to defeat an evil bodybuilding dragon named Dragaux. It’s a cute story in a Nintendo-kind-of-way.

For those who aren’t interested in the game’s story, you can skip that entirely and just do the exercises. Regardless of how you play, the game offers a pretty serious workout.

I’m not in the best of shape, but I’m out of breath and starting to sweat by the end of each session. You can even use the IR sensor in the right Joy-Con to track your heartbeat after each level.

We’ve only been using the game for about a week. In that time, I’ve done 12 different exercises so far, including running a little over two miles, completed 566 ring presses, 110 front presses and 35 ab presses. I’ve burned 212 calories and I’m down about five pounds from before I started the game.

The game came out in October 2019 and in its first two months on the market sold more than 2.73 million units worldwide. Since the coronavirus pandemic started though, the demand for the game has skyrocketed and Nintendo is struggling to meet that added demand.

Next time I see one of those T-shirts that says “Body by Nintendo” and has a picture of the old NES controller on it I’ll have to pick one up.

Dusty Ricketts is the editor of The Destin Log and The Walton Sun newspapers and can be reached ata dricketts@thedestinlog.com.

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2020-07-24T06:01:00Z

Play Life, Live Games column 072420

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