You could have another use for that "Wii Fit" balance board gathering dust underneath the sofa when "Tetris Party" arrives later this year on WiiWare.
"Tetris Party" aims to provide "the ultimate 'Tetris' workout," joked Tetris Online VP of marketing Casey Pelkey to MTV Multiplayer at Nintendo's fall summit last week.
Incorporating the balance board into "Tetris Party" wasn't originally part of the plan for Tetris Online or developer Hudson Soft., but "Wii Fit"'s success started planting ideas in their head.
"We knew that the balance board was going to be a success for Nintendo," said Pelkey. "So when we first started to talk to Hudson about the concept, they loved the idea. Initially, we knew that controlling the tetrimino was the obvious solution, but we were trying to think 'How do we take exercise to the next level? How do we actually make it the ultimate 'Tetris' workout?'"
Right now, the balance board allows for basic "Tetris" controls. You lean left to move pieces to the left, you lean right for the opposite effect. Moving forward, however, drops the pieces faster -- but so does leaning backwards. Squatting rotates the pieces. It doesn't take long for someone to look like a complete loon.
"The natural tendency when you lean forward and it starts to drop faster is instantly to lean backwards to stop it," he said. "Well, that also makes it drop! So, you're working your core! And when you're trying to shift, well, you don't want to shift too much. … You have to be really precise in the middle, so your core movement is really interesting."
The companies behind the game had a different idea for the balance board at first, one they ended up ditching in favor of the simpler approach described above.
"Originally, it started by walking on the balance board, like stepping," explained Pelkey. "Stepping would advance the actual tetrimino blocks. If you stopped, it would basically pause things and limit your view [of the next pieces]. So we quickly found it worked, but it added a dimension that would basically confuse gameplay with this idea of always having to walk. We didn't want to add any monotonous action to it."
As development winds down on "Tetris Party," Pelkey said late nights are prone to fits of laughter, as people jump on the balance board and try to survive.
"It's quite the workout and we've been testing that mode with different people and seeing from an endurance standpoint, where can people go with it," he said. "There's no doubt that people are breaking a sweat on it and so that's kind of been our tagline -- break a sweat with the Wii balance board on 'Tetris.'"
You might not have ever wanted to sweat with "Tetris," but...now you can.
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