Water Cooler Games - Mental Exercise with Nintendo DS

Mental Exercise with Nintendo DS
April 1, 2005 - by Ian Bogost

Wow, talk about timing. Following on the heels of my musings about Lumines on PSP and performance intelligence, Spong News reports that Nintendo has announced a set of non-gaming applications for DS, including "a mental workout application featuring mathematical and linguistic problems, a logic-driven selection of puzzles and perhaps most tellingly of all, a complete electronic dictionary." I wonder if these follow on the heels of the WarioWare Touched bonus items... things like a calculator and pet chameleon that you can unlock by playing individual character games. Anyway, click on the screenshots at right for a bigger version; these apps certainly do look more like intelligence measures than games.

Comments (11) | Post a Comment | TrackBack (0)

Comment from Jean Dupree on April 4, 2005

Wow, apart from Meteos, this is the first DS software I've seen in a while that has me excited. We need more info.

Comment from Ian Bogost on April 4, 2005

I'm a little skeptical that this is anything more than rumor. I haven't seen anything official or even a name. We'll wait and see.

Comment from Jean Dupree on April 5, 2005

Well I had an original game boy cartridge that basically turned it into a PDA. I loved that thing. Everything I had was on that cartridge. Of course this was way before cell phones became what they are today. I do think there is enough of a market for this kind of game, though it might be Japanese only, which would be unfortunate.

Comment from Jean Dupree on May 11, 2005

Are there any updates to this story? I'd be sad to see Nintendo drop the ball on this one, though it wouldn't surprise me. Sometimes I wonder how the big N stays in business.

Comment from Ian Bogost on May 13, 2005

Nothing yet, but E3 is next week. I'll take a look and ask the Nintendo folks if possible.

Comment from Ian Bogost on May 23, 2005

I didn't see any sign of anything like this at E3. These games do not appear in the Nintendo catalog distributed at their booth. Noone I asked seemed to know anything about it one way or another. Could be myth, or could just be too early in development to discuss. Hard to say...

Comment from Jean Dupree on May 24, 2005

Ah well, it would be a dissapointment if these never see the light of day. Still, it wouldn't surprise me, seeing as how the DS seems to be following in the footsteps of the N64. (destined for failure)

Comment from Kevin on May 29, 2005

It's real, all right.

http://www.ga-forum.com/showthread.php?t=49249

Comment from Peter Smith on June 10, 2005

Game Training for Adults tops this week's sales charts in Japan.

I tried to post a link but I can't the story is at gameindustry dot biz

Comment from Ian Bogost on June 10, 2005

Thanks, Peter. The URL is:

http://www. gamesindustry. biz/content_page.php?aid=9447

Take out the spaces. We have terrible comment spam and our filters must be fouling up the direct post.

Comment from David on November 11, 2005

I can't look at the DS anymore. The PSP has won my heart...damn you sony for knowing what I want.....

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