Most fit and proper video game

Nintendo has devised an ingenious way to sweat it out at home while fighting an array of monsters.

As you perform actions, you watch your overly fit avatar mimic them.

Through the years video games have made me smile and laugh and yell and even contemplate my existence. But until today they’ve never made me sore.

My muscles are aching (just a little) after spending a morning sparring with monsters and dragons while wielding Nintendo’s latest exercise device, the Ring-Con.

This flexible toy is basically a Pilates ring — a popular, circular exercise tool that works your muscles as you squeeze and stretch it in all directions. But Nintendo’s version enables you to play Ring Fit Adventure, the first title to use the device, sensing your arm motion and even checking your pulse between levels of the game.

The controller attached to the Ring-Con pairs with another you strap to your left thigh to track all your leg movements.

As you perform actions such as running in place, you watch your overly fit avatar mimic them on your screen, dashing through a fantasy world, traversing meadows, climbing stairs, leaping obstacles and bumping into dragons, which you fight with the power of your exercise.

The first few levels of the game establish basic Ring-Con moves. Wrap your hands around the comfortable grips at the sides and squeeze in hard to have your avatar shoot fireballs at obstacles, or pull out on the grips to snatch prizes littered along the path.

When you meet a monster to fight, you knock it out by performing reps of different exercises, relying on feedback to correct your form. How many reps depends on how high you’ve cranked the game’s difficulty level.

It took me about 25 squats, 25 sit-ups and another 10 overhead chest compressions to defeat a few of the smaller guys, and about twice that to defeat an imposing one called Dragaux.

“Video games make exercise more engaging and more fun,” says Cedric Bryant, president and chief science officer at American Council of Exercise.

Hybrid exercise tools-games such as this, he adds, can be a way to sneak in some physical activity.

Lest you think this kind of thing is only for kids, Bryant argues “many adults really need to learn how to play again, and learn how to have fun with movement and physical activity. It can have some benefits both physically and psychologically.”

If it still sounds too silly, you also can access the game’s virtual gym that puts you through the paces of a morning workout — without the monsters.

ACE recommends 150 minutes of activity each week. I’m well above that threshold, yet after only 15 minutes in the game I had sweated through my shirt — something I had never done swinging a racket with Nintendo’s Wii Sports.

I ultimately vanquished Dragaux and his minions. A bonus: I also was able to identify pretty quickly some muscle groups I’d been neglecting.

The Wall Street Journal