Jugaccino

I remember when games made you feel clever. I remember the times when I beat Bowser with Mario on the NES, I remember when I beat up end of level bosses in Double Dragon on the Atari 1040 STe, I remember when I’d sit for 25 minutes for Rick Dangerous to load on my Spectrum ZX to beat the crap out of some bad guys. I used to feel good, and even now I have a cloud of smug forming above my head as my mind wanders off to my misspent youth….

Back to reality, and now it seems people don’t want to win. People seem to enjoy having their brain pummelled by Dr Kawashima. 2+1=3, 3×4=12,7×6=aaaaaaarrrrrrggggghhhhh!!

It turns out the guy who brought us Brain Training on the DS is as popular as ever, despite the fact its been around for two years now. According to figures released by Media Control, the number crunching game was number one in charts all over Europe for the first six month of 2008.

Holland, Switzerland and Belgium is still going daft for the original Brain Training, while in Germany they’re enjoying More Brain Training. Spain has both of the titles atop their gaming charts, and Austria and Italy had them in the top ten for ages.

Media Control GfK International’s MD Ulrike Altig reckons Brain Training is the reason for DSs European success.

“The success is closely associated with the brain training trend,” said Altig. “Players use the DS particularly often for brain training exercises”.

Is it just me, or are games becoming to dull. I hated maths at school, and I hate it now. You see kids on the bus shouting at their DS, but it’s never because Mario just got squashed, its always because 5+5 =9 right?

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 13th, 2008 at 9:07 am and is filed under Nintendo DS. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.