Day One: Get Soccer Slim with Mario Strikers

Lets do it. It’s time to get some ideas together on how to really have some fun with the popular Wii games and get a workout at the same time. Its not going to be an easy stroll in the park, you’ll have to use some will power here and want to actually work yourself. Our review structure for Wii games is basic and effective and is the same system I’ll be using to review every game here.

Day One of the first “Wii Workout Week” is a review of Mario Strikers Charged Football.

Fitness:

I picked this one up on a whim yesterday, thinking maybe there would be something vaguely exercise related that I could do with a Wii soccer game. I was right and wrong; the game intrinsically has no real exercise value, unless you include a bit of arm waggling to knock down your opponents. However, the game can definitely be played by an exerciser to shed kilos or stay fit. The game would receive a miserable 1 tick if you’re just going to stand up and play it normally, but picks up an extra 2 ticks because you can workout around the game fairly effectively.

For fitness, I strongly recommend playing a best of 5 series, splitting up different workout ideas that I list below into different games in the series. I’ll include a sample workout at the end of this article to show what I mean.

Here’s how:

• Bouncing. Ever seen a boxer bouncing around the ring? Add this simple motion to your Mario Strikers game to get your heart rate up.
• Jumping. Every time you win a goal jump as high as you can for as many goals as you score, plus the total score. For example, you just scored 1 goal, but the total goals in the game is 5- jump 6 times.
• The point above is the best part of this game if you have friends around and you’re a little competitive. Each time your opponent scores, you jump the number of total goals scored. Work your friends in to a sweating heap on the floor with your Mario skills!
• Alternatively, jump, and keep jumping for as long as it takes for the replay to play out, without any skipping ahead.
• Push-ups. Every time a goal is scored, get down and bust out push-ups to the game goal total. Or, if playing friends, your friend gets down and pumps them out.
• Tons of push-ups. Don’t just pump out push-ups every time a goal is scored, do them every time there’s a delay in the game; goals, replays, super strikes while the computer/your friend defends your shots, and so on.
• Work your Abs. Get down on your back and play with the Wiimote through your legs. Keep your abs contracted to sit up well enough to see the screen (probably depends on your t.v. setup).
• Super abs. Do crunches constantly while the opponent has possession of the ball, play ‘keep away’ with friends to burn their abs into aching piles of lactic acid.
• Planks! You can get down and do some planks for as long as you can handle it while you play- you can still waggle that Wiimote from your wrists! Throw in side planks to change it up.
• Squats. Take the same game technique from push-ups and apply it for a great body weight squat workout
• Extended squats. I once had a karate class when my instructors told us to get our backs to the wall, and squat down until our thighs burned furiously from the lactic acid build up. I’ve never forgotten that torture, and now pass it on to you, my poor readers. Get down in a squat position while you play and stay there for as long as you can. Once you give up, let yourself rest until you think you can take a little more and repeat.
• Power shots. If you’re particularly fit, competitive, or maybe a little silly, while you play with friends take the extended squats option & make it a game breaker. Get down and squat until you can squat no more, whoever breaks first lets his opponent have a free power shot with his captain.
• Boxing. One of my favorite things about this game is the beat down you can give friends. Rather than waggling the Wiimote like a sissy to make your players knock each other down, break out massive punches. It’ll work your biceps and back so well you’ll feel it the next day (just like Wii Sports Boxing!). For an even better workout ban slide tackles, its beat down time!
• Choose teams with the lowest defense rating so that more goals are scored, or alternatively, just set your level of difficulty by doubling, tripling or quadrupling the repetitions you do to number of goals scored. For example, a super strike by a captain lands 3 goals, the game total is 2 goals, that makes it 5. Double that, and you’re doing 10 push ups.

Example workout:

• Game 1: Start with a whole game of bouncing to get warmed up and ready for the more serious exercise
• Game 2: Push ups on goals
• Game 3: Jumps on goals
• Game 4: Squats on goals
• Game 5: Abdominal planks and crunches

Set your difficulty higher by doubling or tripling jumps/push-ups/etc if you need to, or just set arbitrary numbers of repetitions per goal scored. Remember, the whole idea behind this is to get a workout in while you enjoy yourself.

Fun:

The fun side of this game is huge. There’s nothing about this game that would make me consider bringing it out of the 5 tick class.

Lots of kudos to the game designers, there’s a variety of balanced, interesting ways to make an offensive play, from passing it around to power the ball up, defensive jinks, sprinting to break away from defenders, and my personal favorite, dishing out multiple player beat downs before making a quick break back towards your opponents half with your full 4 man team to their 2.

Defense is fun too, again, beating players up and throwing them against the electric fence is great for a laugh, but leaves the ball rolling away free, while slide tackling can let you come away with possession of the ball immediately. There’s pros and cons to each way of tackling, and different teams are better at different options.

Continuing from my last point, another game play aspect I like in Mario Strikers is the difference between team captains. If you like fast nimble teams you can go with speedy captains, or if you like slow juggernauts who can lay the smack down, go with that- it offers great re playability and a unique feel for each match up.

Online mode can be great too, giving you the ability to play multi player when you’re home alone, however about the only black mark I can give this game is that I can’t play someone of lower skill level (I could hardly believe how high the skill level was online).

Motivation:

Mario Strikers, like most good games is very addictive, and will have you coming back game after game. Motivation drops a bit for me when I’m playing alone, but is much higher if I’m playing friends where we can get competitive, and rub victories in each other’s faces.

I’m a big believer in fun being the biggest motivator, so if you can integrate these workout ideas into your Mario Striker’s games, you’re already half way there.

I hope you enjoyed day one of the Wii Workout Week. If you’d like to support my web site, and like the sound of Mario Strikers, buy it here at Amazon.

Look out for Madden 2007, tomorrow.