Family Trainer

A new peripheral was unveiled for the Nintendo Wii. It is another accessory for the feet and it was designed for an upcoming game called Family Trainer: Action World by Namco Bandai. The peripheral is called the Power Pad.

A previous Family Trainer game was released on the Famicom system twenty years ago according gamepro.com’s article.

In the Tokyo Game Show yesterday, Namco Bandai showed a demo of the game which included five different mini-games, a co-op, and also a versus mode.

A screen shot is included in the article and it shows a girl who is playing a running game.

Some of the mini-games use the Wii Remote as well which is different from the upcoming Wii Fit game from Nintendo since that title only uses an accessory for the feet. The Wii Remote will be used to perform activities such as rowing a boat or shooting down obstacles. For example, in one of the mini-games, they are used to shoot stalactites and falling debris.

I do not think that the running activity will feel natural since the pad is not like a treadmill. However, I think it would still be fun to make those running movements in place.

It is currently scheduled to be released next year but there is no information yet whether it will be released everywhere.

I am not sure whether two Power pads will be needed to play those co-op and versus modes. I think players will need to use one pad for each of them because the pad does not look like it is wide enough to support two players.