Activision's Spanish For Everyone may not be as inclusive as the title may make it sound. There are a lot of people, in fact, who may fall outside the category of "everyone" that this game purports to be for. Allow us to describe the introduction of the game: Miguel asks to play with his friend Shawn's (brother's) DS for a minute, just as Miguel's father pulls up in a limousine and informs him that it's time to go. The car pulls out before Miguel can return the DS, headed straight to Mexico and trailed by two police cars. Shawn's aunt, a taxi driver, pulls up and offers to drop him off in Tijuana, and to help him learn Spanish along the way. She tells him "They don't call me Gina Vasquez for nothing! I can teach you many things, and Spanish is definitely one of them!"
If that offends you, the game's not for you. If the fact that this sequence was depicted in CD-I Zelda-level art bothers you, the game's not for you. If you don't trust a language training game whose English text is rife with errors, you are just not a member of the "Everyone" that Activision is after. You should be proud.
Activision should be proud too. They've created a series of ridiculous videos that's bound for Internet memedom. The story continues after the break (Spanish For Everyone spoilers ahead)!
... by including wine! Square Enix's Wine no Hajimekata DS (Beginner's Wine DS) will ship in two packages: the standalone game, and what will no doubt prove to be a very popular limited-edition set containing a bottle of Dourthe No. 1 Bourdeaux. The bottle and game come packaged together in a very handsome box, which will no doubt lead to the open-and-drink/keep-LE-package-pristine dilemma.
This is exactly the kind of training game we like to see: it is a handy reference to a subject that not a lot of people know about; gamers, in particular, may not be well-versed in this particular area of the culture. Being non-drinkers ourselves, we can't tell one glass of wine from another, finding them all kind of disgusting. A little education would probably help in that department, a little.
Of course, we imagine the people raging about Manhunt 2, who assume that all games (and "games," we assume) are for children, would begin breaking glass with their screeches if they saw a DS game that included alcohol.
Enjoyable and quirky as they are, we'd never seriously claim that the Ace Attorney titles are representative of courtroom life in the real world -- that's what Judge Judy's for, right? Which shows how much we know, because Capcom producer Minae Matsukawa says one professor at a Japanese law school advocates his students using the games to assist them in their studies.
Speaking about an encounter at this year's Comic-Con to MTV's Multiplayer blog, Matsukawa recalled how "A gentleman came up to me and said that he was a professor at a law school. He told me that as an educator of lawyers-to-be, he highly recommended the Ace Attorney games to his students."
According to Matsukawa, while Phoenix Wright and friends may not be much use for teaching the finer details of the law system itself, they are pretty handy at relaying "the basic ideas that a lawyer should trust their client, and to expose lies to find the truth."
Nice! So not only is Nintendo's versatile handheld able to instruct us how to tend bar, firm our faces, and generally become acceptable human beings, it can now make ace attorneys of us all.
Time and time again, we feel the need to remind you that there are tons of training games for the DS. We're not complaining, we're just in awe.
The sad thing? Most of these nongames only come out in Japan. Sure, we can improve our brains or the brains of our fake pets. Soon our DS will even teach us yoga. But, as life dictates, we always want what we can't have. So, which Japanese training game do you wish you could play?
We think IQ Breeder is our new obsession. We can't help but approve of the insane premise behind the game-- blending Nintendogs and Brain Age to create an unfathomably weird training game in which you perform brain training exercises to increase the IQ of a virtual pet. The new screens at Famitsu show some of the games that you and your "friend" can play together in the interest of boosting its fake IQ. And as for those pets, you can choose a dog, a cat, a pig, or one of four types of turtles!
The games range from math problems to rhythm games, as well as classic distractions like mazes. One of the math games involves solving equations to win a race, like in the Atari 2600 game Math Gran Prix. Our favorite game, however, is the cat-picture jigsaw puzzle, because it looks like developer MegaHouse actually went to the trouble of making a 3D model of the same cat that appears in the sample puzzle. We hate puzzles, but we love cat pictures!
That's probably why the folks over at Agetec felt the need to bring us Rhythm N' Notes, which came out today for the budget price of $19.99. The game is designed to teach you about the technical aspects of music through interactive lessons with a piano and drums.
If you already think that time signatures and chords ain't no thang, Rhythm N' Notes isn't letting you off the hook just yet. Not only is this game designed for the musically inept, but it also has multiple difficulty levels for the more advanced musician. So now you're out of excuses to avoid this game ... unless you just don't give a damn.
Posted Oct 10th 2007 6:40PM by JC Fletcher
Filed under: News
Yesterday we saw brain training for nonexistent puppies, and today it's for real toddlers. Companies are really struggling to find unexplored niches now! Next week: brain training for inanimate objects!
505 Games' preschool-age brain training game I Did It Mum! is, implausibly, coming to the U.S. It comes in separate "boy" and "girl" versions, and allows a parent to record encouraging messages, presumably to ensure that the child bonds to his or her DS. It also gives kids a happy message on their birthdays.
I Did It Mum comes from Starfish, who are gaining prominence for their Wii games Kiki Kai World and Monkey King: The Legend Begins. This is about as far as one could get from those two shooters, however.
Megahouse's IQ Breeder is a cross between a Nintendogs-style virtual pet and a brain training game-- which, you must admit, is kind of a clever way to try to make money on the DS. It's a brain training minigame collection in which the goal isn't to lower your Brain Age, but to raise the IQ of a virtual pet.
As you complete the minigames and improve your performance, your pet's IQ increases. It's brain training by proxy. And as if that concept weren't bizarre enough, the goal of all the training is to raise your nonexistent pal's IQ until it can complete the training games itself. We've played countless hours of Brain Age in front of our cat, but we have yet to see him attempt any Sign Finder. Maybe we should get him his own DS so he can practice.
We're not exactly the best people to ask about Pilates, especially in regards to how it differs from yoga. All we know is that they're both activities that require you to carry a mat around and hurt yourself stretching. That's why, even though we're not exactly the target audience for Konami's Doko Demo Pilates, we're the ideal audience for it. We're fairly doughy and out-of-shape, and we need exercise training in a form we can understand (i.e. on a game cartridge).
And now, looking over these screenshots, we see that Pilates training gives you super powers. Advanced practitioners can manifest enormous scissors, crazy energy waves, and even a gigantic, phantom soccer ball, all through nothing more than positioning one's own body. We cannot even begin to name all the situations in which we wished we could do that. We are in,Konami.
Telefilm Canada announced the winner of its Great Canadian Video Game Competition: a game called MindHabits Trainer designed for the DS. The game is intended to increase social aptitude and create positive feelings toward social interactions, through daily minigame sessions.
Developer MindHabits received $50,000 in January to work on the game after passing the first round of the competition. They went on to best Hobby Shop for Wii and Ambush! Trivia for PC, Xbox Live Arcade and cell phones as the title that most exemplified "the Canadian creativity and innovation that our panel of esteemed industry judges was looking for," in the words of Telefilm executive director Wayne Clarkson.
We'd definitely play a game about boosting our social skills. There's definitely a need for it, let's say. And, even though it doesn't sound like the most entertaining of concepts, we didn't think we'd like a game about doing math problems and memorizing numbers either.
Talk about overcoming adversity: Snoopy, the lovable beagle from Peanuts, is getting his own English training game in Japan, despite being a dog. And despite the fact that the comic from which spinoff products would spin off no longer exists.
English Lessons With Snoopy isn't all learning words and phrases from a cartoon dog, however; the whole Peanuts gang, including chronically depressed Charlie Brown, anxiety-ridden Linus, and Lucy, who is just a jerk, will join in the learning fun. Who's more qualified to assist a dog in teaching language skills than five-year-olds?
The main game, "Event Mode," involves touching everything in a scene to see its English spelling and pronunciation. As you explore, you'll trigger animated events within the scene. There is also a selection of English training minigames, and a number of unlockable non-training minigames, including slide puzzles and a Charlie Brown dress-up game. Surprisingly, his clothing choices are not limited to hundreds of identical yellow shirts.
We are impressed by the size and breadth of the Japanese DS market. We still have yet to getone foreign-language program for the DS, and licensed cash-in language training games are already being released in Japan.
It seems like the most obvious joke ever now: a training game about trains. Especially in Japan, the land of both trains and training games. And now it's real! We made up the pithy name, though. The real one is not nearly as catchy: Chishiki-Ou Series Train Master.
Train Master features daily quizzes, each day of the week focused on a different category, including routes, trains, train cars, and history. On Friday, you get to choose the topic, and on Saturday, you are tested from within all the topics. This is actually starting to sound like work.
The developers seem to recognize the work-like aspect, as well. On some Sundays you get to take a day off from quizzing-- to go on a virtual date with one of the mascot characters at an interesting railroad- or train-related location.
GungHo's Nakamura Toru kanshuu Indo-shiki Keisan Drill (Indian Style Calculation Drills Supervised by Toru Nakamura) improves calculation speed and skills with special techniques and shortcuts. You may be asking yourself (or us, or no one in particular): How is this Indian style? What does India have to do with teaching math skills? Or, it may be plainly obvious to you. It wasn't to us.
Vedic Mathematics is a system of math found in Vedas rediscovered in the early 20th century (or made up by some guy-- we're not about to go after the solution to that mystery while researching a DS non-game). It is based on sixteen sutras that provide simple methods for calculations.
Publisher Shinyusha's book Math Drills: The Indian Way is currently a massive hit in Japan and has sparked a Vedic math fad, not only among the school-aged, but among adults. And what is the other fad in Japanese education techniques? Right, the Nintendo DS. Shinyusha is partnered with GungHo in the development of Indian Style Calculation Drills. And now you know ... the rest of the story. Good day!
Nintendo's new math game will teach you to recognize ten in its natural habitat. Tashiten: Tashite 10 Ni Suru Monogatari is all about adding and subtracting to make onscreen numbers add up to 10.
That sounds really limiting, but the screenshots show at least five different games, all based on making numbers add up to 10. Apparently the game contains more than 30 different tasks.
Naturally, this game will release on October 10, at a cost of 1000 yen 4800 yen (we suppose that making money supercedes keeping to a theme.)
A developer called Success probably knows a thing or two about achieving it. Luckily, they're planning on sharing some of those tips with you* via the newly announced Mensetsu no Tatsujin: Tenshoku-Hen, aka Interview Master. The training title is designed to help improve interview skills to assist in those looking for a job or attempting to switch careers. After you select your field of choice, a myriad of practice questions are offered up to give you go-getters a chance to hone your skills.
Most job-seekers have experienced at least one less-than-good interview in their work careers. We've had a few, uh, memorable experiences ourselves. This is definitely a training title we could have used over the years. On the fun scale, however, bartendertraining sounds a little more interesting.
*Unfortunately, as with many training games, "you" is probably limited to those who can speak and read Japanese. Cue fist-shaking!
Time
We think 
Yesterday we saw brain training for 
Megahouse's IQ Breeder is a cross between a Nintendogs-style virtual pet and a brain training game-- which, you must admit, is kind of a clever way to try to make money on the DS. It's a brain training minigame collection in which the goal isn't to lower your 
We're not exactly the best people to ask about Pilates, especially in regards to how it differs from yoga. All we know is that they're both activities that require you to carry a mat around and hurt yourself stretching. That's why, even though we're not exactly the target audience for Konami's 
Telefilm Canada announced the winner of its Great Canadian Video Game Competition: a game called MindHabits Trainer designed for the DS. The game is intended to increase social aptitude and create positive feelings toward social interactions, through daily 
Talk about overcoming adversity: Snoopy, the lovable beagle from Peanuts, is getting his own English 
It seems like the most obvious joke ever now: a 
GungHo's Nakamura Toru kanshuu Indo-shiki Keisan Drill (Indian Style Calculation Drills Supervised by Toru Nakamura) improves calculation speed and skills with special techniques and shortcuts. You may be asking yourself (or us, or no one in particular): How is this Indian style? What does India have to do with teaching math skills? Or, it may be plainly obvious to you. It wasn't to us.
Nintendo's new math game will teach you to recognize ten in its natural habitat. Tashiten: Tashite 10 Ni Suru Monogatari is all about adding and subtracting to make onscreen numbers add up to 10.
A developer called Success probably knows a thing or two about achieving it. Luckily, they're planning on sharing some of those tips with you* via the newly announced Mensetsu no Tatsujin: Tenshoku-Hen, aka Interview Master. The 
