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It’s no surprise that Nintendo at one point decided to concentrate on making non-games and try to give it a bit of a gaming flavor. Many would complain, at least Nintendo is one of the many few who are doing it right, quit complaining, freaking N64 Kids.
Personal Trainer: Walking from the name, gave me the impression that Nintendo wanted to make a series of personal training games, and so far Walking is the only one I’ve seen, I do know there’s a math one and a cooking one. I don’t know what happened, assuming it didn’t do very well seeing that the only two games with pedometers from Nintendo were this and Pokemon HeartGold/Soulsilver. The game in fact comes with, not one, but two pedometers.
You have two pedometers because Nintendo wants the second pedometer for your friend, relative, significant other and/or dog, very general selection if you ask me. Starting up you get to pick either selecting a mii from a template or import yours from the Wii. You can’t edit your mii from the DS you have to import it from the Wii, assuming Nintendo wants more people to buy Wiis, I highly doubt the Mii creator has too big to be included in DS game, there’s barely any game in Personal Trainer as is, so shame on Nintendo for for being lazy and/or greedy.
Once the mii is imported, you set your daily goal of steps and then there’s nothing else to do other than to put the pedometer in your pocket and walk for the rest of the day. When you have enough steps registered, here’s where the “fun” begins, you point the pedometer’s IR port to the game’s cartridge which is noticeably black compared to the dark gray of other cartridges. The game will take your steps and stretch it on a timeline to see where you have been the most active and the most inactive, then rank you on animal depending on your walking rhythm.
That’s main part of Personal Trainer: Walking, however there are a few minigames that you get to play with, 3 to be precise. The first one is called Walk the World, a level based game where you have to hit a target to unlock a “world souvenir”, as you walk through each level, your mii will draw trail as they walk around an open field, giving you a hint of what souvenir you’re unlocking, you will bump into a few pedometer shaped mascots that will further give you hints on the souvenir. The souvenir would usually be something like an animal, fruit, artifact or a worldly architecture. Illuminate is the second game where the game will take all the steps you’ve taken that week and calculates it to Kilowatts, then ranks you in light object intensity (LED, flashlight, etc.)
Last but not least is Wifi, there is very little to say about the wifi play. There are two options within wifi, the obvious world ranking and a social game where it sums the total of steps taken by all online players and use it to walk to different planets on the Solar System. The world ranking is fairly odd as you can’t see names, just miis and you can’t compare with friends either.
You don’t unlock any other games, that’s pretty much what the game offers, while very limited the game should be fun played with someone else as you can compare your exercise routines with someone else, therefore giving some competition to yourself
What We Think: Nintendo had already made this game obsolete with the 3DS, as that works as a pedometer as well (with a point collecting system that’s suppose to unlock something in 3DS games). But where Personal trainer’s advantage is in its form factor as it is a little bigger than two DS cartridges stacked up on each other. You don’t get a lot but it’s not bad with what it does. If a non-gaming family member doesn’t want to invest on a 3DS, you can give them your old DS (if they don’t already own one) and get them this.
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