Kanpai!

Few could have imagined it, but the DS is becoming the most significant new console in Japan since the PS2. What started as a rumbling -- with great novelty games such as Wario and XX/YY -- has recently turned into a full-scale dual-screen uprising led by Electroplankton and Nintendogs. For the past month or so, the DS has been outselling all other hardware (including the PS2 and PSP) and its software is performing equally well. To date, there are around 2.5 million DS owners in Japan.

As I said last time in this column, the DS is accessible. And not just to gamers -- but to middle-aged dog-lovers too. Well, now the DS horizon has been expanded still further, and we've been given a stunning view of what's possible when -- to pinch a certain mooted slogan -- developers "think outside the box." And welcome, dear readers, to the latest and completely irony-free Japanese 'fever' (that is, 'phenomenon') ... edutainment!

"Which animal species belongs to the camelopardalis genus?" Animal, species, genus … the girl on the park bench muses thoughtfully. Her schoolmate bright spark has an apparition: a cel-shaded giraffe appears before them in the rainy Tokyo street. "Giraffe!" shouts the visionary. Girl A writes the answers on the DS' touchscreen and awaits confirmation. "Yatta!" ("We did it!") Cue, arithmetic.


This is the wonderful and wonderfully educative world of a certain professor at Japan's Touhoku University who has, with the help of an assembled team of intelligentsia, produced the first DS game for intellectuals and/or fans of Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? And it's selling like umbrellas in the summer rain -- Nou o Kitaeru Otona no DS Training, for that is the name of this game, recently debuted at number one in the Japanese all-format sales chart and has since gone on to sell over 150,000 copies. WiFi play for up to 16 players, as well as a low price of Y2,800, have no doubt helped the professor's cause. And, like Nintendogs, there's no sign yet that it's going to stop selling. Impressive stuff.

Next up, I kid you not, is a piece of software with the catchy title of Yawaraka Atama Juku, which reads in English as Gentle Brain Excercises. The idea here is to solve a series of cerebral puzzles -- jigsaws, mathematical equations, color patterns -- after which your performance will be analyzed by the DS. A pentagon chart of your intelligence is produced, and you can see where work is needed for improvement. (For me, a weak point is observation. So, like, please don't believe anything I report!)