Ian Bogost - Water Cooler Games - Mental Exercise with Nintendo DS

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Water Cooler Games served as the web's primary forum for "videogames with an agenda" — coverage of the uses of video games in advertising, politics, education, and other everyday activities, outside the sphere of entertainment.

The site was maintained at watercoolergames.org from 2003-2009, where it was edited by myself and Gonzalo Frasca. It is now archived here in full.

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Mental Exercise with Nintendo DS

by Ian Bogost April 1, 2005

categories: Console & PC Games , Educational Games

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)

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

Jean Dupree on April 4, 2005 6:17 PM

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.

Ian Bogost on April 4, 2005 9:35 PM

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.

Jean Dupree on April 5, 2005 4:51 PM

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.

Jean Dupree on May 11, 2005 3:03 PM

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

Ian Bogost on May 13, 2005 7:44 PM

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...

Ian Bogost on May 23, 2005 4:53 AM

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)

Jean Dupree on May 24, 2005 2:25 PM

It's real, all right.

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

Kevin on May 29, 2005 11:17 PM

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

Peter Smith on June 10, 2005 2:21 PM

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.

Ian Bogost on June 10, 2005 3:41 PM

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