The increase in self-improvement games on the Nintendo DS shows no signs of slowing. Just on their own Nintendo has a large stable and the list is becoming increasingly unusual:

Brain Training - fine
More Brain Training - naturally
Sight Training - okay
Face Training - getting weird now…

But, just when you thought Face Training DS (a Japanese game which tells you how to move your face and uses a camera to judge your perfromance) could not be topped for weirdness, Nintendo have released Common Sense Training DS. Thing is if you have no common sense to start, the result is that it’s unlikely you’ll think it a good thing to buy the game to increase it.

Actually, Common Sense Training is not quite as unusual as it first seems. Turns out, (sadly) it’s more of a general knowledge quiz than common sense. The 1800 questions explain their answers if you get one wrong so you can learn from your mistakes. To the left is an example of a question: What kind of flower is this? Obviously the answer is 3 - okay, that’s a guess.

One report on the game says there is a question showing a car seat layout and asks “on a business trip, who would sit where based on their importance within the company?”. It’s already sold 1.7 million copies in Japan so it’s certainly attractive to the local audience, and that’s the key, isn’t it? Coming soon from Nintendo is English Training on DS - if I don’t get a good score at that…

The big thing here is how more diverse can these games get, as they surely will. Medical operations, court cases and building aquariums all exist as games on the DS, but where will the next DS self improvement game go? To have a hit, understanding your audiences needs is critical.
So, think to yourself no matter how strange, what would be the best one for you? As the DS can be online, could we reach the stage where we could all be given the tools to create our own tailored applications? Experts on subjects could post their own self-improvement games which could be downloaded by others. Shared training, teaching and learning could spread to the millions of DS owners across the world. A small fee could be paid to Nintendo for the download (all through a central server) so they’re not bypassed in the revenue chain. Who would monitor the answers were correct? That’s the tricky part but It would be a powerful tool and is a very interesting prospect.

Tags: brain training, game, nintendo