Nintendo’s latest fitness craze is Ring Fit Adventure, a fitness RPG where players use daily workouts to lead a campaign against a buff demon and his monster army. The true star of the experience, however, is the Ring-Con controller the game comes bundled with. It’s a simple plastic ring, and accompanying leg strap, but it can take a lot of punishment. Players are meant to squeeze it, twist it, pull it (but sadly not bop it), and it stands up to the abuse. As a simple yet adaptable Nintendo peripheral, it needs to be incorporated into to other games. These five games in particular would make excellent use of the Ring-Con.
Mario Kart
Mario Kart 8 Deluxe is still the Switch’s best-selling title. A good reason for that is probably because it’s the most feature-rich Mario Kart. It brings back past stages and has solid new ones. It has the gliders introduced in 7 and the motion controls from Wii. It also introduced hovering, taking tracks in crazy new directions. So where does the series go from here? Apparently into microtransaction territory.
Hopefully, when Nintendo realizes how terrible every decision made in Mario Kart Tour is, it’ll make Mario Kart 9 with Ring-Con compatibility. The peripheral would make for a comfortable steering wheel, and definitely a better one than most of the tiny things already sold in stores. This person tried it, and has some interesting ideas on how to incorporate items.
Mario Party
Clearly the best use of the Ring-Con for Mario Party is steering the car everyone rides the board on. Just kidding, let’s hope they never bring that stupid car back.
Mario Party has incorporated Nintendo’s gimmicks before. Mario Party 6 made use of a microphone of all things. Mini-games consisted of seeing things on screen and saying them into the mic. It wasn’t exciting. The greater success belonged to the Wii and Switch Mario Party entries that used motion controls for fun mini-games. Likewise, the Ring-Con is begging to be used creatively for mini-games. Ring Fit Adventure already offers things like a ring-squeezing whack-a-mole and leaning to dodge bombs. These show that the Ring-Con would be the perfect guest for Nintendo’s biggest party.
Kirby
Most people think of Kirby as an adorable platform star, but the little guy has quite the varied resume. He had a rolling game on the DS where players drew paths for him. His racing game was one of the GameCube’s best games, and that’s saying something. Most recently, he had a co-op free-to-play boss battler. So why shouldn’t he have a shot with the Ring-Con?
Imagine a simple platformer where turning the ring moves Kirby. You could pull on the ring to make him inhale and push it in to make him exhale. Perhaps there could be mini-games in between levels where you pilot the Warp Star from planet to planet. Kirby, as Nintendo’s most famous circle-shaped being, makes a lot of sense for a circle-shaped controller.
The Legend of Zelda
When Nintendo released one of its previous gimmicky peripherals, the Wii Zapper, it came bundled with a game called Link’s Crossbow Training. It was set in the Twilight Princess era, and saw Link shooting a path through Hyrule with his new crossbow. He actually made good time, getting through dungeons a lot more efficiently than he usually does. Imagine what he could do with a magic ring.
The color palate and general art style of Ring Fit Adventure actually feels very similar to Breath of the Wild. It’s easy to imagine a follow-up to Link’s Crossbow Training that also picks up the fitness torch. Perhaps Link’s Sheikah Slate gains a new ring power, and the hero must use it to jog around Hyrule and reactivate the old technology. It would serve as a great (if odd) prelude to Breath of the Wild 2!
Mario & Sonic At The Olympic Games
The Ring-Con was made for fitness. Several cases have already been made for its mini-game applications. So it makes a perfect match for the Mario & Sonic Olympics games, which happen to be both fitness and mini-game based. The ring would be great for mimicking tossing or feats of strength. The leg strap could get in on the fun as well, providing support for running and jumping events.
The only potential issue with this idea is that Nintendo does not actually make the Mario & Sonic series. That duty often goes to Sega and several other non-Nintendo developers. The thing is, Nintendo doesn’t have to be the only one using its peripherals. In fact, they would probably feel a lot more worth the cost if more developers incorporated them. So bring on the Ring-Con games, game devs. Please tell us this thing will still have a use once we get sick of working out.
