Gaming on the Nintendo DS

My Fun Facts Coach is part of  the Coach series of games that mostly include language teaching games.  This game is kind of fun, but it is really limited to just being interesting for about 15 minutes a day, as it does not have the unlimited lesson track like the language ones and rather just has daily training.  After you do the daily training for the day playing is kind of pointless.

I do not entirely not recommend the game, as honestly it is a rental I did not want to mail back and would like to buy.  I like the trivia aspect and it has some good categories of questions, such as Body, Mind and Soul, and Your World.  I, however, think the Social  Life category is ridiculous and not just because I got most questions wrong.  It just a really odd category with some ridiculous generalizations.

Overall it is an okay game in the series and a little more interesting than learning a language, which can sometimes be tedious, but those give more entertainment time per sitting than this.  It seems like it would be fun to play through the daily training daily, but at the same time I imagine you would exhaust the topics after a while, as the depth in the encyclopedia aspect does not seem to promote a big depth of topics to quiz you on.

Word Jong for Nintendo DS is a combination puzzle and word games. The puzzles are set up like Mah Jong, but instead of removing tiles by matching tiles you remove them by spelling words.  The game has single player and mulitplater modes.  The multiplayer modes can be played over local wireless or WiFi connection.  You can even do multiplayer with one DS using the Hot Seat selection.

In Single Player mode you can play daily puzzle challenges, which are layouts that challenge you to get a specific score.  There is also Temple Challenge, which is the adventure mode in which you earn points as you complete puzzles and move up in rank.  Lastly there is battle mode in which you try to score more points than a computer opponent.

Overall I found this a fun game to play.  It can also be quite addicting just like Mahjong.  I actually found it even more enjoyable than plain Mahjong, as it offers more variation as you start to discover more and longer words as you get better at it.  It is also a good brain stimulating game.  It can also serve as a game to encourage kids to practice their spelling and vocabulary skills.   The graphics are not anything special, but then again this is not the kind of game that needs spectacular graphics.

I am really into the educational games for the Nintendo DS.  They are not always good, but I do like to try them anyways.  Spelling Challenges and More! is an interesting one.  It is not entirely well done, but it is effective.

The game tests spelling with a variety of different mini games.  It can be a little boring if you can already spell well, but for kids and terrible spellers this is can be a good game.  The Wheel of Fortune and anagram ones are kind of hard due to the poor definitions of the words

Overall this game is easy to play, as you just use the touch screen to spell or select words or the different challenges.  The keyboard layout is alphabetical and not QWERTY, which is kind of annoying if you are used to computers, but I guess for kids it might be easier.

Math play is somewhat of a Brain Age type game.  It can be useful for junior high kids to practice their math skills or be used by older kids and adults to keep their brain sharp.  It is, however, not for everyone and not exactly exciting enough to be an educational tool that kids will just want to play just because.   If you like Brain Age, though, then I think you will like this game too.  I personally like math games, so I am biased towards liking this, although I will admit the game depth is pretty minimal, but so is Brain Age’s.

The Math Play has only 4 different games to play.   One is Equal Drill in which you must arrange number and math sign tiles to make a proper equation.  One is Equal Shuffle, which works a little bit like Dominos with you make equations match up.  One is Equal Match, which is basically the game of Uno.   The final game is Equal Nine, which is a little bit like playing 21, except you try to stay under 9 with your equation.

Overall I enjoyed playing this game, but it really gets boring after about half an hour and is very repetitive in that there are only 4 activities.  Yet, I still regard it as a good educational tool and enjoyable to play every once and a while.

Today I tried out My Chinese Coach for the Nintendo DS. I own the French version of this game and loved it, so I had my brother rent the Chinese one to try out since he is taking Chinese at school. He was not interested in it because he would rather rent non-educational video games. He did let me try it out before mailing it back, though.

I found that it is very similar to the French version and I am pretty sure the basic set up of these language games are all the same with a few graphic and language changes. Just because it is similar does not make it bad. Actually, because it is similar it is just as good. I personally am not too into playing this version, but I think for those who would rather learn Chinese than other languages like French.

The activities include showing you the words in English, pinyin, and as Chinese characters. It will also read the characters to you and you can even trace the characters to learn to properly write them. Lastly, you play different games such as Hit a Word to help make learning the new words in each lesson fun.

Overall I am a big fan of My Chinese Coach and the other language coach games in the series. It makes learning the language easy and portable. Best of all it adds an element of fun that you do not usually get from computer language learning games.