Nintendo – slew of new DS titles announced

Here’s the first news coming out of yesterday’s high-powered meeting at Nintendo of Japan, in which a number of new DS titles were announced to a Japanese media and public eager to hear what the next top handheld games and crazes are going to be. Amongst a slew of interesting-sounding new DS titles, more of which shortly, one of the first to grab SPOnG’s attention was one which roughly translates as ‘Common Sense Training for Adults’.

And here’s the first screen we could find from the game. Of course, we haven't got a clue what it means as none of us speak Japanese. Common Sense Training for Adults is down for an October release (in Japan) so expect to see an English translation following sometime in 2007. SPOnG has just put a call in to Nintendo Europe so see if we can find out a little more on this intriguing sounding title, which sounds very much like a follow up to Nintendo’s successful Brain Training titles, targeting very much the same market.

And let’s face it, no matter how intelligent we think we may be, we can all use a dose of common sense now and then! Most of us know of people with sky-high IQ’s who haven’t a drop of common sense. Perhaps Nintendo will rectify this with an ingenious new DS title. Perhaps not. We’ll bring you more news as we get it.

The other intriguing title in Nintendo’s new Touch! Generations range of software is the cooking game ‘Talking Cooking Navi’, which releases in Japan on the 20 July for 3800 yen. Nintendo expects 200,000 sales of Talking Cooking Navi, so this is no mere niche title.

Essentially the game is an interactive cookbook with over 200 recipes from a famous cooking school in Japan. The game talks to you and responds to voice commands such as "turn the page". The game also allows you to input the ingredients you have in your fridge and tells you the various things you can do with them. It’s a superb idea, and again, it will be interesting to see if it translates and works in any countries outside of Japan.

While SPOnG would of course buy an English version of this type of software – especially if it were to have, for example, regularly updated recipes and content via WiFi – it’s questionable whether or not our ‘cordon bleu’ continental cousins over in France, Spain and Italy would allow a little Japanese toy to tell them how to cook.

Again, more news on these intriguing new Touch! Generations titles as we get it. In the meantime, for anyone who understands a little Japanese, you can see more on the type of questions that will be found in the Common Sense for Adults title right here.