DS fitness app Walk with Me! stepping out in June
Links into global step counter for journey across the solar system
After announcing its gentle fitness app Walk with Me! in late 2008, Nintendo Europe went all quiet on the release date for the game, which ships with two pedometers so you can check your daily step count.
It's now announced it will be out on June 5th.
The point of the application is to encourage people to be more active. It's reckoned that we should be making in the region of 10,000 steps per day in order to keep in shape.
Walk with Me! works to encourage you to set up a daily routine. It stores the data collected from the two activity meters (these store data for up to seven days) so you can check your progress, as well as compare with your friends and family.
You transfer the data from the meters to the game cartridge in your DS using infrared, just like a TV remote control, and the software has slots for up to four individuals.
The entertainment part of Walk with Me! comes with the mini-games, which are designed to encourage you to be more active. Your collected steps will unlock trivia, create images and enable you find out how much electrical energy your walking would have generated for the day.
There's an online mode too that you can connect to via the Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection and send your data to a central server and compare it with other Walkers with Me! from around the world.
Indeed, every Sunday the rankings for all users will be updated, covering total steps, highest step count in the world and the previous week's step count. Anyone who then updates his game will be able to view the top ranked players and how far they have walked.
Nintendo will also use this information to generate a world step count which will be used to plot a virtual walk across the solar system. Let's hope it's more successful than Keita Takahashi's Noby Noby Boy attempt to connect the planets, which got about as far as the moon.
