It’s a new year, and with the new year comes resolutions. At least in the United States, the number-one resolution made by people is based on fitness/weight loss. While I set my goal last year, the new year brings a wave of people getting excited about fitness, and this energy encourages others to do the same.
I’ve personally had no major shakeups since the previous update, but I’ve seen streamers on Twitch and people on Twitter across the world take up to getting into Ring Fit Adventure and games such as Fitness Boxing. A journey is always better with company, so January has proven to be a success in keeping up the motivation to be active.
As I mentioned in the previous exergaming update, I was able to purchase Knockout Home Fitness by XSEED during Black Friday. I was finally able to receive this as a Christmas present and I started into this game in January.
I chronicled this beginning with a new video on the GemuBaka YouTube channel that I will include here:
This has temporarily been substituted for Fitness Boxing 2 for the time being as I build up new exercises and options in Knockout Home Fitness. As I expected, Knockout Home Fitness has a very similar premise as Fitness Boxing 2, but there are key differences between the two titles that will help players decide between them if they were going to make a choice.
Fitness Boxing obviously focuses on that sport, developing exercises that rely heavily on punching and quick body positioning. Knockout Home Fitness goes a step further, featuring not only boxing routines, but also disciplines such as kickboxing and muay thai. This means, on top of a variety of punches, Knockout Home Fitness also forms exercises around strikes that include elbows, kicks and knees.
The other big difference in Knockout Home Fitness includes an additional stance. Both games have players assume orthodox (right-handed) and southpaw (left-handed) fighting stances, but Knockout Home Fitness also works in a wide stance or a “horse” stance. This stance includes a wide range of new strikes and movement geared to work out your legs and midsection.
I’ve reached 12 workouts in Knockout Home Fitness at this point. I don’t believe this is a point where I can truly “review” the game, but I have to say I do enjoy the increased variety in strikes. Having attacks that work in the lower body and the extra stance really increase the variety as compared to Fitness Boxing.
Another plus I’ve noted is Knockout Home Fitness also dives straight into the full exercise routines. This might actually be a negative for those new to the game and not accustomed to how timing-based games work, but I appreciated how the routines accelerate into the full regimen more quickly than Fitness Boxing. This lets me get more out of arranging routines that are from 3-5 minutes instead of needing to line up 12-plus-minute routines in Fitness Boxing that very slowly build up to the full routines.
In most cases, the estimated calorie burn in Knockout Home Fitness is 10-15 Calories per minute. Fitness and weight loss is the end game, so at the end of the day, both games meet this goal by allowing me to burn at least 500 Calories with a full session. It’s just Knockout Home Fitness seems to be more to-the-point about reaching that goal.
Although Knockout Home Fitness is a more interesting workout routine to me, so far I’d have to say Fitness Boxing is the better “game” – something that absolutely needs to be acknowledged since the topic is exerGAMING.
While Knockout Home Fitness is definitely manageable, the user interface in Fitness Boxing is by far more intuitive, especially at first glance.
The vertical orientation of Fitness Boxing’s screen lets you get a very quick visual of what the game wants you to do between the left and right halves of your body. Comparatively, Knockout Home Fitness has left/right colored segments for its markers that are read similar to commands in Taiko no Tatsujin or Donkey Konga. Because I have a lot of experience in this style of game, perhaps it’s easy for me to say I was able to adjust to reading the commands pretty quickly. Still, the cleaner presentation of Fitness Boxing definitely jumps out to the viewer.
Perhaps the bigger long-term factor is that Fitness Boxing seemingly has a better “carrot on a stick” approach to its full list of offerings.
Knockout Home Fitness does offer a slow drip of content that includes different instructors, music and backgrounds, along with unlockable workouts at progressive intensities. However, Fitness Boxing always takes these features a couple steps further.
The achievement system in Fitness Boxing is a nice reward to those who put the time into the game. Not only does this put reminders of the player’s progress front and center, but it allows players to customize their trainers.
Even at a base level, Fitness Boxing puts a scoring system front and center, and this is further “gamified” with combo bonuses and a progressive meter that grants even more scoring bonuses at key points in the workout.
Eventually, while I may decide Knockout Home Fitness gives me a more flexible and interesting workout, my preliminary thought is that the title may not measure up to the “game” offerings seen in Fitness Boxing.
Still, both are great when you strictly boil them down to being active and burning calories. Of course, I will keep at these games – along with Ring Fit Adventure – and keep archiving thoughts in these journals on GemuBaka.
Outside of activity on the Nintendo Switch, I spent a portion of New Year’s Day playing Pump It Up XX. Up until arriving at the arcade, I was completely unaware of a server issue Andamiro had encountered. This resulted in a good chunk of player data being lost.
Thankfully, it seems there was a partial recovery, so I didn’t lose my full data. The reset left me about four levels lower, which unfortunately resulted in a loss of my SSS ratings and the “intermediate” title I worked hard to get.
At least the issue was partially resolved, though. Andamiro did offer a big payout of player points as an apology, and it set the entire lineup of unlockable step charts to the cost of a single point.
The situation could have been worse, and I appreciate the extra resources. The experience points and calorie burn is the most important part, though, so I’ll have no issues in getting back on the stage and continuing my climb to get better at this game!
StepManiaX also had a December update, and I was able to get a session under my belt. Per usual, I have rhythm gaming update videos for two of the songs.
The update included “Cyber Kyoto” by Re-venG (“Naoki” formerly of Konami and DanceDanceRevolution), which I enjoyed tremendously. Naoki’s Re-venG style brings a traditional spin on the games’ dance music, and this song evokes feelings of songs like “Tsuguru” from the DDR mixes.
StepManiaX is always enjoyable, and I’m looking forward to more updates and filling in scores for songs I haven’t quite played yet!
Stay healthy and keep having fun with those exergames!
GemuBaka 
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