It has been six years since Ring Fit Adventure, the Nintendo Switch fitness game that asked players to defeat monsters (and a sexy dragon) through exercise. The workout game used the Joy-Cons’ accelerometers to measure your movements and translate them into fitness attacks on screen. It’s weird, it’s wacky, but it worked.
I played quite a bit of Ring Fit during the COVID-19 lockdown. What can I say: Nintendo kept me active at a time when I wasn’t doing much else. And it didn’t take long for me to notice that I felt stronger. Exercises like squats or leg lifts, which were incredibly difficult in my first week, got easier.
Even now that the world has opened up again, as a chronic miser, I hesitate to join a gym or a yoga studio. At the end of the day, I can’t help but think: We have Ring Fit at home. (I don’t endorse this mindset, but I do own it.)
But as the years have gone by, a creeping fear has grown in the back of my mind. And now, in the early weeks of the Switch 2’s release, it seems undeniable: They’re not making a Ring Fit 2, are they?
Nintendo should make Ring Fit 2
Photo: Nintendo
Ring Fit Adventure was a blockbuster game for the Nintendo Switch. During the pandemic, desperate players snatched the game off store shelves or overpaid for it on eBay. In 2022, it was one of Nintendo’s best-selling games.
The same was true of Wii Fit for the Nintendo Wii, which reportedly sold out in stores even before it was released. But its follow-up, Wii Fit U, didn’t do so hot — it didn’t crack the top 10 titles for the beleaguered console.
Maybe this is what Nintendo is trying to avoid. But the Switch 2 isn’t comparable to the Wii U when it comes to sales. There are 3.5 million units in the wild right now, but scant few console exclusives. I can’t complain that most Switch games are playable on the Switch 2 (including the original Ring Fit Adventure, more on that later), but it seems reasonable that an audience for a new fitness game exists.
Part of the charm of Nintendo’s fitness games has always been their visual quirks. In some Wii Fit exercises, your bean-shaped Mii is the on-screen avatar, and they do step exercises onstage in front of cheering crowds. The avatars in Ring Fit Adventure are more sophisticated, but the narrative is full of cartoonish characters and scenarios.
The lighthearted aesthetic, and Ring Fit Adventure’s low-commitment model, make working out feel more fun than a chore. It only takes about 10 minutes to complete a level. While you can certainly do more in a session, I can’t tell you how many times I convinced myself to get off the couch and work out because “it’ll only be 10 minutes!”
Nintendo hasn’t completely abandoned fitness games. In December, it released Fitness Boxing 3 for the original Switch. As an exercise game, it’s definitely functional. But its laser-focus on boxing and a more straightforward gym setting doesn’t quite scratch the itch that Ring Fit Adventure did.
Theoretically, you can play Ring Fit Adventure forever. Once the main quest is over, you can essentially do a New Game Plus run by crafting custom workouts. Armen B. at CGI Coffee did an entire year of Ring Fit Adventure, and reported that the hardware holds up, even after hundreds of reps.
It feels wrong to be asking — nay, begging — Nintendo to let me give them more money, when they’ve already released an expensive console and populated it with select $80 exclusives. But even if Ring Fit Adventure is a forever game, surely Nintendo left something on the table?
A second installment of Ring Fit’s narrative could bring lapsed players like me back to the fold — and introduce new ones to the fitness game. Please, my atrophying thigh muscles are begging for it!
Ring Fit 2 would need new hardware
The good news is that Ring Fit Adventure is still compatible with the Nintendo Switch 2. But the hardware isn’t. In its compatibility guide, Nintendo notes that the new Joy-Cons won’t fit in the Ring-Con or the leg strap. Players can still use the original Joy-Cons to play, which is great. But given how susceptible they are to drift, it’s not exactly fun to imagine buying a whole new console and still possibly needing to shell out for replacement controllers for the old one if they break, just to play a fitness game.
It would be great to see a new Ring Fit Adventure, built for the Nintendo Switch 2 and its upgraded hardware. I have always appreciated Nintendo’s commitment to fitness, and I hope we won’t have to wait too long to see what it could do with the Nintendo Switch 2.
