Beginner’s Guide to Staying Active: How Nintendo Systems Make Exercise Fun and Accessible

Key Takeaways

• The Nintendo Switch offers a variety of fitness games for every level of workout intensity, including hits like Ring Fit Adventure that are built around movement.
• The 3DS uses a built-in pedometer to encourage daily walking, earning rewards for more steps.
• Wii Fit on the original Wii is arguably Nintendo’s best fitness game, with personalized routines and easy progress tracking (plus it’s easiy to find a cheap used console and Wii Balance Board).

Setting a workout routine for yourself is often easier said than done. If you’re looking for a simple way to start exercising, look no further than a current or older Nintendo console. Here’s where to start.

Build Your Stamina With the Switch

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Few consoles offer as much variety in fitness and sports games as the Nintendo Switch. Whether you’re looking for a quick workout or a full routine, the Switch has something for everyone.

For a light workout, sports and dancing games like Nintendo Switch Sports and Just Dance 2024 are the easiest way to keep yourself active for hours. Although they’re not as strenuous or demanding as a traditional workout, these games are effective at burning calories. Between the massive song selection of the Just Dance series and the abundance of sports available in Nintendo Switch Sports, the Switch makes it easy to spend hours working up a sweat (just be sure to wear the Joy-Con’s wrist strap while you play).

Pokémon Let’s Go Pikachu and Let’s Go Eevee can also help you stay active, albeit in a less direct way. Both titles allow you to import your Pokémon from iPhone and Android mobile hit Pokémon GO, meaning you can fill your Pokédex during outdoor walks rather than spending hours glued to a couch.

Switch owners also have access to numerous fitness games that can be incorporated into a proper workout routine. Games like Fitness Boxing, Knockout Home Fitness, and Let’s Get Fit provide a mixture of upper-body and full-body exercises, along with the option to build workout regimens according to your preferences. These games also encourage you to maintain a consistent schedule by tracking your daily logins, calories burned, and other stats that illustrate your personal progress.

However, few workout games are as effective as Ring Fit Adventure. Using the Switch’s Ring-Con controller and Joy-Con leg strap, Ring Fit Adventure leads you through turn-based battles reminiscent of role-playing games like Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest. But rather than selecting attacks from a menu, all your actions in Ring Fit Adventure are performed through strength, cardio, and yoga exercises. Between fights, you’ll run, jump, and shoot targets in a variety of linear obstacle courses. In addition to the campaign, Ring Fit Adventure also features individual workouts and a rhythm game mode for shorter sessions.

Ring Fit Adventure is much more intensive than most other fitness games on the Switch, but that’s arguably its greatest strength. Exercises that involve squeezing the Ring-Con use the controller’s resistance to help develop your upper body strength. Likewise, the leg strap allows Ring Fit Adventure to track lower-body exercises, which are rarely seen in other Switch games.

There are few fitness games on the Switch that are as varied and feature-rich as Ring Fit Adventure. The lengthy campaign will keep you hooked for hours, and the RPG-inspired leveling and upgrade systems provide plenty of reasons to replay the game on higher difficulties. With over 60 exercises that strengthen different parts of the body, Ring Fit Adventure delivers the most thorough workout experience on the Switch.

The 3DS Tracks Your Daily Step Count

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Even Nintendo handhelds can provide fulfilling workouts. The DS featured some fitness games like Personal Trainer: Walking, Personal Fitness, and My Weight Loss Coach, but these portable workout titles seemingly died out before the 3DS was released. However, you can still get fit with the 3DS by using its most underrated feature.

You may have likely forgotten (or never even realized) that the 3DS contains a built-in pedometer. While in rest mode, the 3DS counts your steps and records your total step count for each day in the system’s activity log. You can check the activity log to see your progress for each day, and compare the number of steps you took between multiple days, weeks, months, or years.

After every 100 steps, the 3DS will reward you with a “Play Coin,” which can be exchanged for prizes or currency in various games. Up to 10 Play Coins can be earned in a single day, encouraging 3DS owners to form a routine of logging at least 1,000 steps every day.

Most games on the 3DS use the pedometer solely for exchanging Play Coins, but Nintendogs + Cats is one of the rare exceptions. The virtual pet simulator provides the option to walk your dog (or cat) by using the pedometer. The amount of steps taken during these walks determines which prizes you receive the next time you return to the game. There is no upper limit on how many steps or prizes you can receive, which provides a way for 3DS owners to exercise for longer while still being rewarded.

To be fair, the 3DS isn’t as accurate or easy to carry as a traditional pedometer or fitness tracker . But for those looking for a reason to start jogging every day, the 3DS offers plenty of incentives.

The Best Workouts Are on the Wii

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Few consoles were as influential as the Wii, and its impact on fitness games cannot be overstated. Although the Switch is home to some of the best games in the fitness genre , there’s a reason people keep coming back to the Wii.

Much of the Wii’s success came from its impressive ability to turn exercise into a staple of game nights with friends and family. Like its Switch counterpart, the simple yet endlessly enjoyable design of Wii Sports allows anyone to join in and start burning calories. While most of Wii Sports boils down to just swinging the Wii remote, you’ll likely find yourself running around in its tennis matches, performing full swings in golf and baseball, or flailing wildly while boxing.

Wii Sports isn’t the only game to transform light workouts into simple party games. Just Dance, Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games, Wii Sports Resort, Dance Dance Revolution, and many other Wii games all help you stay active without even feeling like you’re exercising.

The Wii is also worth owning for its massive selection of proper fitness games, with the most notable being Wii Fit. The game uses the Wii Balance Board for a variety of strength, yoga, and aerobics exercises. Some of these involve following a trainer through exercises of varying complexity, while others are imaginative minigames that test your balance and stamina.

Wii Fit isn’t a highly intensive game, especially when compared to Ring Fit Adventure, but it makes up for its limited difficulty with an abundance of useful fitness tools. Using the Balance Board as a scale, Wii Fit can measure your body-mass index (BMI) and create a custom workout routine for you. With Wii Fit, it’s easy to measure your progress over time and see the effects of the game’s exercises. As an introduction to exercising, Wii Fit is one of the best fitness games ever made (and it’s fairly inexpensive to find a second-hand model, too).

Not every fitness game on the Wii is as thorough and feature-rich as Wii Fit, but the console still boasts an impressive variety of workout programs and exercises. Whether it’s boxing with Gold’s Gym: Cardio Workout (the precursor to the Switch’s Fitness Boxing), dancing alongside Zumba: Fitness Core, or strength training with My Fitness Coach, you’re likely to find the right workout for you on the Wii.

Fitness Has Always Been Part of Nintendo’s DNA

Even before the Wii sparked a fitness craze within the gaming industry, Nintendo had been combining fitness and gaming since the ‘80s.

Nintendo previously published various toys and peripherals that aimed to make fitness seem fun. One of the first fitness-oriented releases was the Power Pad, a floor mat created for Bandai’s Family Fun Fitness series on the NES. The Power Pad featured pressure-sensitive buttons and supported sports games such as World Class Track Meet (originally released as Stadium Events) and Super Team Games.

Nintendo continued to publish fitness products in the late ‘90s, starting with _Pokémon Pikachu_—a pedometer that also functions as a virtual pet. By logging steps with the Pokémon Pikachu, you can earn currency to buy presents and raise your friendship with your pet Pikachu. Nintendo later released a second generation of the Pokémon Pikachu as well as the Pokéwalker—a similar pedometer/virtual pet that came bundled with Pokémon HeartGold and SoulSilver.

Yet even with their many advancements and innovations over the years, Nintendo’s fitness games have never been designed to replace traditional workouts. Ring Fit Adventure may burn some calories, but don’t count on getting a six-pack just by playing it. Instead, these games ease you into a proper workout routine through light exercises presented in creative and entertaining ways, making them perfect for both beginners and experienced gym-goers.

Whether you’re struggling to commit to a workout regimen due to a lack of time or motivation, or you just want a healthy way to pass the time, Nintendo’s fitness games are the best way to start incorporating exercise into your daily routine.

Check out a few other fitness video games that can help you work out while you play .

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