Flower service Fleurop in Germany is suggesting something other than the usual bouquet and pleasant card for your mom this Mother's Day. It would seem they're teaming up with Nintendo to suggest your mom get some good old Brain Training in. And buy some flowers, of course.
For 199 Euros, customers can get a nice floral arrangement with a DS Lite and Brain Training. Sadly, we have no idea what DS Lite model consumers will be getting in this bundle.
In what is yetanother statistical landmark for the DS in its homeland, the data gatherers at Media Create have revealed that Japanese consumers have purchased their 100,000,000th Nintendo DS game.* Considering the handheld itself hit the twenty million mark only last November, we calculate that to be ... a pretty good attachment rate! In total, 922 titles have appeared in the region, 21 of which have been million-sellers. Hit the break for the top ten best-selling games to date.
* Rumors that the 100,000,000th game sold was Bangai-O Spirits are yet to be verified, and are suspected to have originated at popular Nintendo DS blog "DS Fanboy."
I've never considered buying a Korg synthesizer before. I don't know how to play a keyboard! I don't know what all those knobs and wires do! I would be totally useless with one. But when the Korg DS-10 card was revealed yesterday, I was suddenly filled with desire to own a synthesizer. Of course I need one of those, I thought -- I've always wanted one.
It's sort of a reversal of the expanded audience idea. While Nintendo intends to have this kind of stuff on the DS to bring people in who traditionally don't like games, I find myself as a gamer drawn to stuff that I wouldn't really want unless it were released on a game console. I know I'm not the only person who decided it was very important to keep my brain active right around the time Brain Age came out.
The very nature of something being on the DS makes it more interesting to me. Anyone else feel the same way?
The DS Life is a weekly feature in which we scour the known world for narrative images of Nintendo's handheld and handheld gamers. If you have a photo and a story to match it with, send both to thedslife at dsfanboy dot com.
Like many other three-year-old boys, Kristopher divides his playtime among toy cars, toy trains, and toy things with buttons and lights. When his dad's iPhone isn't available for him to appraise with his tiny, curious fingers, he flips open his Nintendo DS Lite, a hand-me-down from his mother (she now owns a newer edition/color).
Of course, we don't expect to entertain you with just photos of some kid and his DS -- no, we have something much more hilarious planned for you! Jump past the post break and into Kris's crib!
Here's a cheap, easy costume you can whip up for your next Halloween/convention/boxart-head meetup -- dress up as Dr. Kawashima's disembodied head! Here's all you need:
some white posterboard
a pair of scissors
a sharpie marker
a pair of glasses
an aging Asian man
Flickr user ClockworkGrue spotted this character last weekend at WonderCon 2008. Girls must have swooned over it, as there are lipstick kiss marks all around the Brain Age mascot. Why else do you think he goes around calling himself LL Cool K (Ladies Love Cool Kawashima)? Step past the break for more video game related costumers spotted at Wondercon 2008.
Nintendo is releasing a brand new DS Lite bundle containing ... the white DS Lite and the first Brain Training game. It couldn't be worse timing, with the BBC in the midst of attempting to manufacture controversy over the two-year-old game, because now it's going to be a new product and thus even more made-up-newsworthy. But for people who aren't convinced the game is discriminatory, and would like to give the DS a try, this £119.99 bundle is an option --a n option packed in a very clinical-looking box. If the DS supply continues to be as constrained as it is, it may be the only option!
The bundle will be out on the 15th, ready to help you learn and keep your brain young and maybe play a game or something if you're into video games.
The BBC's Watchdog consumer report program has discovered a shocking issue with Brain Training: apparently there are some problems with the voice recognition! The game doesn't always understand you when you say "blue" or "yellow!" Have you guys heard about this?
What you may not have heard about is that this is now being interpreted as discrimination against people with certain regional dialects. "I'm going, 'yeller' and everyone's saying to me you need to be a bit posher. You need to say, 'yellow' and as soon as I did, it picked it up," reported Michelle Livesey. Host Nicky Campbell then suggested that the game was discriminatory against people with Northern and Scottish accents. Nintendo responded to the report with a statement explaining that they recognize the issue, and that voice recognition in the Stroop test is only a small, optional part of the game.
Yet again we find ourselves taken aback by the mainstream media's treatment of gaming. Had Liveseydone even the most casual of Googling, she would have learned that the Brain Training voice issue is the "Take my wife, please" of DS game jokes (meaning it's ancient). It's not enough that they presented a well-known problem with a two-year-old game as news, but they seem to have attempted to ignite some sort of controversy over it, without actually doing any research or knowing what they were talking about. People across the United States have the same problem, but to our knowledge nobody accused Nintendo of discriminating against most Americans. We're just going to choose to believe, without having heard the program, that Campbell's comment was facetious in nature. For our sanity.
Posted Jan 31st 2008 12:00PM by JC Fletcher Filed under: News
Here's something completely novel: a college professor who is obsessed with his work. Usually Ph.Ds are the kinds of people who can keep sensible hours and leave their work behind at the end of the day -- not the kind of people who ignore everything for research. Not at all.
Dr. Ryuta Kawashima, whose theories about brain exercise (along with his head) make up the basis of Brain Age, isn't that into video games himself -- not even the ones he's literally in. "To hear this may put you off -- but my hobby is work," adding that even if he had time for things like exercise, he would prefer to use the time for research.
His obsession with his own research continues into his family finances. While Kawashima is entitled to split royalties from the game 50/50 with his employer, Tohoku University, Kawashima has not taken any of the money. Instead, he is in the process of building two state-of-the-art laboratories for the university's Institute of Development, Aging and Cancer.
"Everyone in my family is mad at me but I tell them that if they want money, go out and earn it." And it's hard to argue that he's being selfish when the money is going to cancer research. That's got to be hard for the family to argue.
A list of the top fifty best-selling games in the UK last year has surfaced, and the DS snagged six of the spots, though you may be somewhat surprised by what made it. Of course, considering that there are a lot more regular folks than there are "hardcore gamers" (and even the hardest of the hard like a little break now and again), you may not be that surprised after all.
The original brain game, Dr. Kawashima's Brain Training, took the number two spot as the second best-selling title overall, and the sequel, More Brain Training, slid in at number five. Considering that Big Brain Academy turned up at number 37 (along with its console cousin at number 24), there must be a lot of healthy and exercised brains trundling around Dear Old Blighty these days. The other games that turned up were New Super Mario Bros., at number 13, Cooking Mama just above it in twelfth place, and way down near the bottom, Pokémon Diamond turned up at number 44. Perhaps our friends in the UK have already caught them all.
We're normally used to insults, jabs, and cat fights when it comes to Sony and Nintendo talking about each other, so it's always refreshing to hear compliments instead. David Reeves, president of Sony Computer Entertainment Europe, recently had some nice things to say about the company's competitor. When talking about how the industry has grown in the past year, he gives Nintendo due credit.
Reeves states that, thanks to many Nintendo games (like Brain Age, for example), the video games market has expanded to include more female gamers and families. which in turn has been good for the industry. It's certainly hard to argue that Nintendo has brought in many new gamers, but it's still nice for SCEE to give Nintendo props.
It's the weirdest thing. Right around November and December of every year, sales of luxury and entertainment items go way up. December of 2007 was no exception for our favorite entertainment item. How much of an exception was it not? How about 2.47 million units in one month alone? 2007 was already a fantastic year for the DS, with 8.5 million systems sold. But considering the constant chart-topping success of the DS, it's pretty remarkable that fully one-third of the year's total DS units sold were sold last month.
Let's look at some little arrows to help put the numbers in perspective.
DS Lite: 2.47m 940K (61%)
Wii: 1.35m 369K (38%)
Xbox 360: 1.26m 490K (64%)
PS2: 1.1m 604K (122%)
PSP: 1.06m 493K (87%)
PS3: 797K 331 (71%)
Head past the break for the December software charts, where we welcome an old friend back to the chart. We've also got the 2007 totals posted, which are, of course, DS-eriffic in the hardware section.
Electronics retailer Circuit City has an ongoing deal in which you can get any two games priced at $19.99 for only $30, but, because of a recently discovered glitch during the ordering process, customers have reportedly received a $10 discount for each $19.99 game they've thrown into their shopping carts, bringing their total even further down to $20 for two items.
Though many of the online shop's $19.99 titles are currently out of stock, we've put together a short list of the DS titles available that you might want to pick up with this buggy bargain. We can't guarantee that your order will stick once Circuit City's management catches wind of this bug, nor can we say whether or not exploiting this slip-up makes you a horrible person, but here you go:
While there are also a few GBA (as well as PS2 and PSP) titles eligible for this "deal," keep in mind that this glitch works best with two games from the same console.
Millions of DS users have found themselves charmed by Dr. Kawashima. Afterall, he's not bad looking for bodiless head, and he's a doctor. Mom would be so pleased!
It seems, though, that the popular handheld is not enough to keep the good doctor satisfied, since later this month he'll be debuting on European cell phones (or mobiles, as they call them in those parts). The Brain Age ripoff game, called Brain Coach with Dr. Kawashima, will be licensed by Namco Bandai (not Nintendo), and will use daily exercises to track your level of brain aptitude. That sounds familiar ...
And to think, we actually believed his sweet, encouraging words as we struggled with our math equations! When all this time he was just looking for younger, slimmer handhelds to play with. We thought you were different, Dr. Kawashima, but you just had to go and break our hearts.
Posted Dec 6th 2007 10:30AM by Eric Caoili Filed under: News
Determined to settle the blondes versus brunettes debate once and for all, UK tabloid The Sun gathered ten of its Page 3 girls -- topless models featured on the daily newspaper's third page -- and had the golden-topped ladies compete against their dark-haired opposites in a series of More Brain Training puzzles.
As you can expect from a classy publication like The Sun, the resulting article is filled with comically descriptive bits of text like, "Both sides were chest desperate to come out on top." In its praise for the blonde with the lowest and best individual Brain Age, the paper reported, "Sam proved it's not just her 30Fs that has her out in front and was crowned the overall winner."
As a group, though, the brunettes took the team prize with an overall better Brain Age. Brunette Peta remarked, "Even before the brain training, I knew the brunettes would win. It doesn't take a genius to work that out." You can ogle more photos of Peta and the other Page 3 girls testing their wits past the post break. Sadly, redheads, a crowd favorite at the Fanboy offices, were nowhere to be seen.
Did you ever make it? We mean the optimal score in Brain Age, of course. Tragically, the lowest this blogger ever hit was the low-to-mid twenties, but surely that comes from being a drooling, Castlevania-obsessed blogging type (and also, apparently, old-brained). Did you get all the way down to twenty? Did you pump your fists in the air and cheer? That can be embarrassing when you happen to be in public. Or are you more like me, sad and pathetic, staring through the glass at all the younger, smarter, better people? It's okay. It's not too bad here on the outside.
Flower service Fleurop in Germany is suggesting something other than the usual bouquet and pleasant card for your mom this Mother's Day. It would seem they're teaming up with Nintendo to suggest your mom get some good old Brain Training in. And buy some flowers, of course.
I've never considered buying a Korg synthesizer before. I don't know how to play a keyboard! I don't know what all those knobs and wires do! I would be totally useless with one. But when the Korg DS-10 card was revealed yesterday, I was suddenly filled with desire to own a synthesizer. Of course I need one of those, I thought -- I've always wanted one.
Here's a cheap, easy costume you can whip up for your next Halloween/convention/boxart-head meetup -- dress up as Dr. Kawashima's disembodied head! Here's all you need:
Here's something completely novel: a college professor who is obsessed with his work. Usually Ph.Ds are the kinds of people who can keep sensible hours and leave their work behind at the end of the day -- not the kind of people who ignore everything for research. Not at all.
We're normally used to insults, jabs, and cat fights when it comes to Sony and Nintendo talking about each other, so it's always refreshing to hear compliments instead. David Reeves, president of Sony Computer Entertainment Europe, recently had some nice things to say about the company's competitor. When talking about how the industry has grown in the past year, he gives Nintendo due credit.
It's the weirdest thing. Right around November and December of every year, sales of luxury and entertainment items go way up. December of 2007 was no exception for our favorite entertainment item. How much of an exception was it not? How about 2.47 million units in one month alone? 2007 was already a fantastic year for the DS, with 8.5 million systems sold. But considering the constant chart-topping success of the DS, it's pretty remarkable that fully one-third of the year's total DS units sold were sold last month.
940K (61%)
Electronics retailer Circuit City has an ongoing deal in which you can get any two games priced at $19.99 for only $30, but, because of a recently discovered glitch during the ordering process, customers have reportedly received a $10 discount for each $19.99 game they've thrown into their shopping carts, bringing their total even further down to $20 for two items. 
Millions of DS users have found themselves charmed by Dr. Kawashima. Afterall, he's not bad looking for bodiless head, and he's a doctor. Mom would be so pleased!
Did you ever make it? We mean the optimal score in Brain Age, of course. Tragically, the lowest this blogger ever hit was the low-to-mid twenties, but surely that comes from being a drooling, Castlevania-obsessed blogging type (and also, apparently, old-brained). Did you get all the way down to twenty? Did you pump your fists in the air and cheer? That can be embarrassing when you happen to be in public. Or are you more like me, sad and pathetic, staring through the glass at all the younger, smarter, better people? It's okay. It's not too bad here on the outside.
