Dentist
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A trip to the dentist becomes a treat thanks to the DS
One dentist practice is pioneering a new, better way to handle folks stuck in the waiting room. As seen above, courtesy of flickr user tarabrown, the choice between magazines and some sweet handhelds is available to folks who find themselves waiting on their dentist. No word in the way of what games are available, but this is just an all-around great idea.Seriously, for how cheap a DS is (or an original GBA, for that matter), we imagine a practice could just snag a copy of Brain Age and Nintendogs and have their waiting room content and at ease while they, uh ... wait. Might help with those few who become pretty irate when forced to park it in the waiting room.According to Tara, the practice is run by one Dr. Jade Kim and located in Seattle, WA. You can check out the website right here. Apparently, the DS had Mario Kart DS in there. Awesome!
Do you have a talent for causing things pain?
Then get Simple DS Series Vol. 34 THE Haisha -- and pay D3 to let you be inhumane! For some reason, IGN has compiled a large gallery of D3's Japan-only budget torture game, showing all kinds of ... dental procedures ... and even some of the nightmarish implements you, as THE Dentist, will have access to.For a cheap game about an extremely unpopular subject, we're kind of surprised by the effort shown here. There are many different kinds of ... tooth issues on display here, and both 2D and 3D representations of the offending teeth. The whole thing actually looks good.%Gallery-16530%
More Vol 34: The Dentist shots -- now with added YANKING
Ow. Ow. OWWW.We're sorry, but you'll have to excuse our bleating. You see, we just clapped eyes on the latest round of screens from Vol. 34 THE Haisha (translation: Vol. 34 THE Dentist), and can't stop cringing. Just look at that plier-on-tooth action on the right, and tell us it doesn't make you want to grimace as well.Like most people, we're not fans of the dentist, so why we'd want to relive the experience through a gaming handheld that is supposed to be fun is beyond us (though in the last batch of comments we received on D3's dentistry sim, revenge was mentioned as a possible motive for playing this).Call us crybabies all you like, but we challenge any of you to visit the gallery below and not wince at least once.%Gallery-16530%
What's simpler than dentistry?
D3 Publisher has announced the next three games in the Simple DS series. Vol. 33 THE Crossword & Kanji Puzzle will be of limited interest to non-fluent importers for the simple reason that doing crosswords in Japanese is pretty hard for people who don't know a lot of Japanese. Vol. 34 THE Haisha will be a niche product for a different reason.Because "haisha" means "dentist." It's a game about dentistry. From what we can tell, it's a Trauma Center type of game, except the traumas are located entirely within mouths, and seem more troublesome than traumatic. Not that we wanted to do any emergency oral surgery anyway.Vol. 35 should prove to have wider appeal than the others: it's a DS remake of the PS2 Simple game THE Genshijin (Primitive Men), which is one of the rare Simple games to be released in the U.S. (as The Adventures of Darwin). It's a strategy-sim-type game in which you control a tribe of cavemen. The DS version happens to be extremely cute.
GumEase dental mouthpiece numbs without needles
Next time you go to the dentist for some dreadfully painful procedure, you may have the option of eschewing that Novocaine-bearing needle for a flexible dental mouthpiece that turns out the lights on your maxillofacial nerves. Developed by Laguna Hills-based BioMedDevice Limited, and recently approved by the FDA, the so-called gumEase uses no conventional anesthetics, instead relying on cryoanesthesia: basically, the freezer-stored device chills your mouth into numbness. One application of gumEase, which lasts up to 20 minutes, is said to relieve 90% of a patient's pain within two to three minutes -- and to prove it, the manufacturer has produced a rather graphic video depicting a hypodermic-free tooth extraction, which you can watch at your own risk after the break. With products such as this one and the RelaxView HMD seemingly making dental visits more pleasant than ever before, we may actually have to review our policy of only making appointments during leap years.
Simroid robot lets dental students know what hurts
We've already seen medical students operate on robots that bleed, yap and flat-line, but it's about time dental students underwent the same kind of scrutiny, don'tcha think? If things go as planned, future dentists in Japan could soon be practicing on Simroid, a humanoid that resembles a young woman and can talk back when students hit a nerve. Reportedly, the bot can exclaim "it hurts" and move her eyes / hands whenever discomfort is felt, but best of all, engineers included a "breast sensor" to determine if that area has been touched inappropriately during training. Nothing wrong with ensuring the ethical treatment of robots, we suppose.[Via Physorg]
Conjecture Countdown: 2 days to go
Even with a diminished E3, there's no controlling the wave of rumors that hit the Internet every year before the show. Why fight it? From now until E3 hits, we'll be posting one piece of wild speculation every day. Some may be patently ridiculous, and others just might turn out to be true. Even some of the ridiculous ones might turn out to be true! Rest assured, everything will be totally made-up and unfounded. Except, of course, when we speak about all the ass Reggie is going to kick. That part? Totally true.Rumor: The dentist game we've all been expecting since Nintendo first revealed the Wii remote will finally be announced. Titled Open Wide, this orthodontic release will feature minigames like filling cavities and fleecing parents out of thousands of dollars by recommending that their children wear braces for the next decade. Though you'll be able to trade dental x-rays with your friends, online multiplayer support will not be included. According to developers, working with Nintendo's WiFi connection was like pulling teeth. Har har har!
New low-intensity pulsed ultrasound device helps re-grow teeth
We'd gladly trade in most of our gadgets if it meant we never had to go under the drill at the dentist again. But researchers at the University of Alberta in Canada don't want our electronics, they just want a few more years to perfect their low-intensity pulsed ultrasound (LIPUS) technology that they hope will ultimately be able to re-grow lost or severely damaged teeth from the root, eliminating the need for pricey prosthetics and painful procedures. The pea-sized device, which can be held in place by a bracket or a crown, is controlled by a wireless remote and needs to gently massage the gums for 20 minutes a day over the course of four weeks to attain noticeable growth. This tech isn't expected to be available to the public for another two years, so hold off on that all-candy and Red Bull diet you've been planning for just a little longer while you ponder the rather incredible possibility that this method could eventually be used to grow human bones and actually make people taller without subjecting them to any kind of medieval torture.
