Convincing children to hand out tablets and game controllers to go play outside isn’t an easy task, but Bandai Namco’s Vital Hero watches can make fitness more attractive through gamification. Instead of chasing higher scores, he ties a Digimon to a child’s wrist, one that only improves in battle the more active they are.
While the iconic Tamagotchi is about raising and caring for a virtual pet through diligent feeding, cleaning, and playing time, the Bandai Digimon took the approach popularized by Pokémon, where responsibility in caring for a digital monster is rewarded. with greater strength and occasional evolutions than to make them more capable in battles.
The Life Hero is basically one of those Digimon virtual pet pocket toys paired with a portable fitness tracker. The monochrome pixelated LCD screens of yesteryear have been replaced by a vertically oriented full-color LED display, and while the device still has buttons, the only way to improve digital monster statistics is through daily missions that require children do various activities such as walking, sprints, squats and even a round of shadow boxing, then through the motion and heart rate sensors built into the laptop.
The more active a child is, the faster their digital monster stats will improve, increasing their chances of victory when it comes to random battles against other monsters. If they lose, they must continue to face the same monster over and over again until a victory allows them to continue, providing an additional incentive to be active.
Kids can also fight friends with a vital hero using an included “Attenuation Card” that physically connects to the portable device such as a USB flash drive and transfers its monster to a friend’s device. But battles can also be deliberately triggered at any time by tapping the portable device against any NFC-enabled device, such as a smartphone or a payment terminal – an approach that sounds similar to the early 1990s Barcode Battler game. made the children scan randomly. barcodes for lights and unlockable characters.
The Vital Hero isn’t the first attempt to gamify fitness trackers to try to get kids more active. But evolving an animated digital monster that can fight other monsters directly at the wrist seems more compelling than chasing a new high score or unlocking prizes and trophies in a connected app. The Vital Hero is available today on Amazon with a blue or black band for $ 65 ($ 90), while a version with a red band is currently a Walmart exclusive.