my-word-coach
Latest
DS Download Service aims to improve your vocabulary
Another week means another dose of demos available on the Nintendo Channel. If you've got a Wii, you're in luck. If not, then we suggest you cruise past the break to see one of the many reasons why you should own one.
Another Week in Europe
Hey, you! No, not the guy on the next screen along with the muffin -- you. That's right. You a European? You are? Great! So let's hear it: why have we just checked the latest European charts and found that Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney charted absolutely nowhere? If yours truly can summon up the the effort to scour the high street give his credit card details to an online retailer, you can do the same! No wonder Capcom seems to be thinking twice about releasing Trials and Tribulations here.And now look what you've done! There are bits of Brain Training and Mario and Sonic everywhere! Eww.
My word! You can coach your vocabulary for $10
Have you tried the demo for My Word Coach (available via the Wii's Nintendo Channel) and enjoyed it? If so, you might be looking to pick it up cheaply, thereby sparing your wallet and improving your vocabulary in one fell swoop. Currently, then, you can head on over to Amazon and get the game for the hard-to-resist price of $9.99. Like most Amazon sales (excluding the Deal of the Days, of course), this one is without rhyme or reason, so we can't tell you how long it will last.%Gallery-3340%[Via CAG]
Nintendo Channel: New week, new demos
Will the line-up of DS demos available on the Wii's Nintendo Channel change every week? We're not sure, but it's starting to look like it; at least, some of the demos available have been rotated out in favor of fresh meat. If you were looking for something that was previously available, it might just be gone. Lesson? Download quickly rather than putting it off, because the demo you want may just disappear!Peek past the break for the current list of available demos -- you may be surprised at what you'll find!
Pay only $16.99 for some word ability (word smarts)
Didn't you hear? Simple-minded conversations are so 2007. If you want any respect from your peers (or the streets), you'll need to burst into flowery prose whenever the situation requires. Nowadays, girls won't even look at you if you introduce yourself with anything but a grandiloquent line. Step your vocab game up, kids.Luckily for you, Amazon has just the thing to help you compete with the single sesquipedalians out there, and they've got it for cheap, too! All day today, the online retailer is selling My Word Coach, Ubisoft's vocabulary-training software, for only $16.99, almost half of its regular $29.99 price. Pick it up while you can, because it's not like you can rely on your good looks forever. See also: Promotional Consideration: It pays to have word ability (word smarts)[Via CAG]
GDC08: Ubisoft treated like an internal Nintendo team
http://digg.com/nintendo/Ubisoft_was_treated_as_internal_Nintendo_team'; Apparently, developing a "strong, obvious, and accessible" game for the casual crowd will get you treated like an internal team by Nintendo.GameDaily BIZ reports that Reggie Fils-Aime and Satoru Iwata, two of the biggest Nintendo bigwigs out there, showered praise on Ubisoft for My Word Coach. When the game was still in development, Fils-Aime told the French company, "You got it. You guys got exactly the type of game we want for this machine." It was Iwata, though, who told Ubisoft that they would be treated as an internal team from now on. While we're happy for Ubi, we're not sure what to think about Nintendo's enthusiasm. Yes, we get it, they love the casual gamer. But how about us crusty, old, core gamers? Show more developers some appreciation for creating great, non-casual games, please -- or we might just get a complex.[Via Joystiq]
Ubisoft Montreal CEO talks casual games, Nintendo's praise
We know Nintendo is looking to target the non-gamers -- any quote from the company for the last two years would make some reference to it. Speaking to GameDaily BIZ, Ubisoft Montreal CEO Yannis Mallat said that when Nintendo's Reggie Fils-Aime first saw My Word Coach (developed by Ubisoft's casual team), he said, "You got it. You guys got exactly the type of game we want for this machine."The comments were echoed by President Satoru Iwata, who provided some insight into Nintendo's current casual development philosophy. Mallat summed it up in three words (which are not, as some might assume, "Mario, Mario, Mario"): "strong, obvious and accessible." The full GameDaily interview will be up in the coming weeks.
My word! What a great price!
Ubisoft has dropped the price of the Wii version of My Word Coach to $29.99, which is the same price as the DS version. So now potential My Word Pupils can base their choice in coachery format on considerations other than the pecuniary. We suggest going for the Wii version if you're confident in your word ability (word smarts). By displaying your dominance of the English language on your TV, where others can potentially see, you send an unmistakable message: I know a pretty good number of words. Also I throw strange parties. On the other hand, displaying your flailing attempts to perform well in this game shows an interest in self-improvement. So that's not terrible either![Via CAG]Read - GameStopRead - Amazon
Best of the Rest: Ross' Picks of 2007
Team Fortress 2 (Xbox 360, PC, PlayStation 3)While Portal is being given its much deserved credit for the year, and Half-Life 2 has enjoyed years of acclaim, let's not forget about the other pillar of Valve's The Orange Box. It's been eight years since the release of Team Fortress Classic, and the game has undergone so many revisions and delays we half expected it to be released alongside Duke Nukem Forever sometime in 2012. As it turned out, the game not only saw the light of day but ended up being an addictive online experience. As a console gamer enjoying this with a gamepad, I don't care much much for the sniper, soldier, demoman, or anything except medic and occasionally the engineer. There's something brutally satisfying about charging into battle behind a heavy weapons guy, dodging the occasional bullet (people still haven't learned) and injecting him with a team-killing jolt of invincibility. Hours of enjoyment and not a single bullet shot. Pure. Enjoyment.
A year of Promotional Consideration
Promotional Consideration is a weekly feature about the Nintendo DS advertisements you usually flip past, change the channel on, or just tune out.The titling of this post is a bit of a misnomer, as we didn't start this column until early July, so it's more of a "half-year of" piece. No, you jerks, the humor in us beginning our Promotional Consideration retrospective on a disappointing note isn't lost on us.Still, with 26 articles now behind us, one every week since this feature's inception, we've written enough of these to develop a few that are actually worth reading. We've picked out our five favorite Promotional Consideration posts of 2007, carefully hiding them after the post break, that magical realm where anything seems possible.
DS Fanswag: End of the Year Blowout!
It's been a good year, but sadly, like all those other years, it must come to an end. Before we roll out the red carpet for 2008, however, we wanted to give 2007 the send-off it deserves -- and what better way to do that than by offering up huge prize packs for our loyal readers? All you have to do is leave a comment on this very post telling us which DS model(s) you own, between now and December 26. The giveaway closes that night at 11:59 p.m. EST, and we'll announce the winners, chosen in a random drawing, on December 27. You may only enter once per day, and as usual, entries are limited to legal U.S. residents age 18 and older. Please check the official rules for any other questions.But enough of the details -- let's get to the prize packages!DS Fanboy's End of Year Fanswag BlowoutGrand Prize Limited Edition Gold DS Lite + The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass (bundle) ($149.99) Nintendo DS headset ($9.99) Custom Robo ($29.99) Dementium ($29.99) Drawn to Life ($29.99) Fullmetal Alchemist: Trading Card Game ($19.99) John Deere: Harvest in the Heartland ($29.99) Mega Man ZX ($29.99) Pokémon Diamond ($34.99) The Legend of Spyro: The Eternal Night (GBA) ($19.99) Geometry Wars: Galaxies swag Dementium skin Pokémon Diamond stylus Cruise on past the break to see the rest of the prizes!
Promotional Consideration: Having word ability continues to pay
Promotional Consideration is a weekly feature about the Nintendo DS advertisements you usually flip past, change the channel on, or just tune out. In last week's edition of Promotional Consideration, we snickered over Ubisoft's scandalous My Word Coach ad, reveling in the juvenility of its baseball/sex metaphor. Imagine our surprise and mirth when we stumbled upon another printed piece promoting the vocabulary trainer, this time targeted at women! While not even half as bawdy as its brother, nor as clever, this advertisement still has some qualities worth examining.
Some My Word Coach footage for you
You know, we could use not only a coach for our words, but perhaps a coach in all things in life. We already have a coach for when we need to get down to business, but what about a coach to tell us what to choose when we're presented with the question of paper versus plastic at the grocery store? What about a coach to help us through the difficult task of deciding to go with whole wheat or white bread on our hoagie? What about a coach that could help us in picking out the appropriate pair of underwear for the day ahead? Actually, we don't think any coach would be up for that task.Looks like we'll just have to settle for My Word Coach ... for now.%Gallery-3340%
Promotional Consideration: It pays to have word ability (word smarts)
var digg_url='http://digg.com/gaming_news/Practice_vocabulary_get_lucky_according_to_this_ad'; Promotional Consideration is a weekly feature about the Nintendo DS advertisements you usually flip past, change the channel on, or just tune out.While we've exposed you to sexually-charged promotional materials in the past, much to the disapproval of your uptight parents, the last game we ever expected to feature for its immodest advertising was My Word Coach, a vocabulary trainer due for the DS and Wii this November 6th. Read on for the titillating piece and our analysis on how Ubisoft put together one of the most salacious ads to appear in Nintendo Power in recent memory without baring a single inch of skin.
Ubisoft on Ubiports: 'We made mistakes'
Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot, speaking to Spiegel magazine, candidly (yet indirectly) revealed that he believed that some of his company's Wii releases were less than perfect. No, not Red Steel. Guillemot was referring to the spate of ports that Ubisoft released to fill out their lineup.Regarding the hasty ports (games such as Prince of Persia: Rival Swords, Far Cry: Vengeance, and Monster 4x4 World Circuit), Guillemot said that "We made mistakes." Ubisoft admitting to overporting? Between this and weird releases like My Word Coach, Ubi seems like a whole new company!
Improove you're verbage with My Word Coach for DS, Wii
Described as a "Brain Age with words," Ubisoft's My Word Coach for Wii and DS aims to make linguistic education fun. IGN tested out the game and were impressed by the amount of fun and education embedded into the game. Not to mention the DS connectivity with the Wii version, where you can use the stylus as a controller -- very useful when you are writing letters, for example.Sporting 17,000 words and definitions, a glossary for reference and profile settings that let you review your previous successes and failures, My Word Coach can certainly help with one's verbage (not to imply that you, dear reader, don't already have an impeccable grasp of the English language). With four-person multiplayer, we'll be able to beat our friends and learn new, more bombastic diction with which to trash talk.My Word Coach is due out Fall 2007.[Via Wii, DS Fanboy]
My Word Coach lets you be like us (plus DS-to-Wii connectivity!) [update 1]
[Update: Fixed broken link.]Surely you've thought at some point, hunched over your keyboard because that damned essay is due tomorrow morning, that words could flow glibly and beautifully from your fingertips, as they do so often at Nintendo Wii Fanboy.All right, that was a little arrogant. We're sorry.Anyway. As you very well may know, Brain Age focused fairly heavily on the numerical side of things. Equations = sadness. Did it teach you how to express, or to inspire? Hell no. And so Ubisoft jumps into the brain training genre, with both Wii and DS versions of their literary inculcator, My Word Coach.There's an in-depth preview over at IGN, and we highly encourage you to peruse their hands-on experience. We'd also like to point out that this game features a simple and effective DS-to-Wii communication feature, in which handwriting performed via stylus is instantly translated into the Wii title, which coincidentally happens to have a far more robust handwriting recognition system than did Brain Age. Is your brain tingling in excitement? We certainly hope so.
A look at My Word Coach (and DS-Wii connectivity)
Ubisoft let fly with the details on their latest new Nintendo title, the now-official My Word Coach, a vocabulary trainer with various single and multiplayer modes. Let us be among the first to say it: we're excited. In fact, we're doubleplus excited, because you need this game.Yes, you. You. Right there. We've been reading your forum and LiveJournal posts for years. You didn't loose anything (unless you dig archery), and you're really doesn't refer to anything owned, but rather, something that is. And while there may be more than two versions of the homophones too and to, only one of these can be used to communicate that you also want something (like delicious ice cream).But enough with the lecture. The most exciting bit about My Word Coach is on the Wii side of the news, as the title is coming out for both platforms. Before you protest that the Wii isn't perhaps best suited for writing, check this out: you can use your DS to control the Wii version. According to IGN, there are several ways in which the DS can be utilized, and "you won't even need a DS copy of the game for this particular mode" (in reference to a mode that requires players fill in the missing letter of a word). This seems to intimate that for other modes, both the Wii and DS versions of the game may be necessary for full interaction. While that has a lot of potential, we just hope it's worth the expense.%Gallery-3340%
DS Daily: Finally, with the language 'games'
Three words we weren't sure we'd ever say: God bless Ubisoft. They're finally bringing some English-based language trainers to the DS: listings for My French Coach and My Spanish Coach have turned up on GameFly. We've yearned for such as these after drooling over all the English and Kanji trainers out for Japanese DS owners, and at last, it looks like the tide has turned in our favor. Between this and Jam Sessions, we're starting to feel a little better about Ubisoft and their unfortunate port habit. Also listed is My Word Coach, which sounds like it might be a vocabulary trainer, and we're all for that! We're hoping we'll begin to hear words like mellifluous and tmesis in daily conversation. So today's question is: are you interested in any of these three, or are you firmly holding out for languages not taught in the average high school? Or perhaps we should say, vous voulez acheter Mon Entraîneur Français? Feel free to correct any errors there -- we could use a French coach![Via Joystiq]
