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Non-Game Boy: Serious games before they were cool
Since the release of Brain Age in Japan, Nintendo has turned their attention toward casual, nontraditional fare for adult audiences. Much of it, like Brain Age, is casual game material with a slight educational slant, but other successful DS releases, like Cooking Navi and Eigo Zuke, are not games at all, but rather educational aids and tools designed to use the DS's unique interface. They're all doing massive business, which makes it difficult to laugh at them no matter how silly they are. But Nintendo was not the first company to attempt to sell application software on a gaming system, however. That distinction probably falls on BASIC Programming for the Atari 2600. Nintendo wasn't even the first company to sell application software on a Nintendo handheld. In fact, Game Boy non-games appeared in 1991. They didn't change the face of gaming. But they make for an interesting historical footnote now, and isn't that better than selling millions of copies? It is for us!
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]
Using World of Warcraft to teach English
There's a story on Gamasutra today about using games, specifically WoW, as a way of exposing Asian youth to English. As an author of English-language textbooks for students in Japan and Taiwan, this particularly caught my attention. I'll let you go read the article to understand what's been done, but I'd like to share some thoughts here on the subject. First and foremost, I think that using a game like WoW to teach casual, conversational English is a fantastic idea. With in-game chat, as well as Teamspeak/Ventrilo, you can really expose non-native speakers to the language in all its forms. Granted, you're not going to learn high-level business English, but you are going to be able to come away with a grasp of the language and some of its conversational nuances. I also firmly believe that language is not as severe a barrier in WoW as it may be in other games. I know that many of us have come across a member of the opposite faction, and have been able to communicate through emotes or movements, or even through how we interact with the mobs in the situation. With less of a barrier to communication from the get-go, there's less of an intimidation factor involved for someone who wants to get something across. However, through my experience, I've definitely seen some roadblocks to using WoW as an educational tool. I think it may be less prevalent on the European servers (please let me know if this is so, or I have a misperception), but on the North American servers I've played on, there seems to be a solid amount of intolerance for people who can't perfectly communicate in English. A lot of this may stem from gold farmers who don't speak the language, but there are also French and Spanish speaking players on these realms who may have had to endure a certain amount of ridicule before finding acceptance in a given guild. My question to the WoW Insider community is this - if you were aware that your server was being used for cross-cultural and cross-lingual training, would you accept this and would you put forth the time and energy to help non-English speakers be a part of your guild or your party and learn the language? If not, why not?
Imaginarium's Cam1 camera for tykes
It turns out Spain's Imaginarium can do an equally bangin' job applying bulbous design principles to kiddie cameras as it can to kiddie phones, showing the "Cam1" ahead of a possible 3GSM debut next week in Barcelona. "Why 3GSM, haven of all things cellular," you ask? Well, seems this 2 megapixel number can use triangulation of GSM towers to location-stamp images. Otherwise, you get a 1.8 inch color display, MP3 player functionality, and some cutesy buttons that'll likely appeal to the younger crowd. Look for it to be sold through Movistar (it does have a GSM radio, after all) starting this summer for less than €100 ($130).[Thanks, Javier]
Wiinja modchip enables Wii / GameCube backups to function
We've seen plenty of Wii hacks since its November release, and we've even seen a completely uninspiring "hack" to run backup discs, but this time, we're thinking it's for real. The Wiinja modchip is on the loose, and apparently it requires soldering to the Wii innards in order to function, but it purportedly allows for Wii and GameCube backups to be played back on the console. Unfortunately, there's not a whole lot of information beyond that, and there's just a single photo to instruct forthcoming owners how to correctly attach it, but if there's one thing that helps its case, it's the video. So go on, click on through for the YouTube demonstration, and start saving up those €40 ($52) it'll run you when this hits "commercialization."[Via Engadget Spanish]
Japanese Hardware Sales: 8 Jan - 14 Jan: Turnabout edition [update 2]
[Update 2: Date mix-up!]Judge - Court is now in session. Mr. Edgeworth, your opening statement.Edgeworth - My case is simple. I shall prove that the defendant, the Nintendo Wii, is guilty beyond any reasonable doubt. His abject sabotage and subsequent murder of the DS Lite is immediately evident to those of us not blinded by a foolish, persistent belief in their clients.Judge - And Mr. Wright?Phoenix - He's ... wait, what did he say?Maya - C'mon, Nick! Pay attention!Judge - Mr. Edgeworth, you may call your first witness.Objection!Judge - ...Phoenix - ...Judge - Overruled.Phoenix - Sunnuva ... !
La historia de Steve Jobs en espaol
Behold. Via Charged.tv and Google Video, we present to you this silly history of the Steve Jobs success story. This video, which comes from Fox factory and Universidad de Palermo in Buenos Aires, Argentina, is actually much more amusing if you don't speak any Spanish. Thanks to Ruben Santiago.
Ich bin ein Mac. Und du?
You've seen the US ones. You've seen the Japanese ones. Now, behold, Deutsches GetAMac. "Ein iPod. Klassik!" Ja zum Mac. Of course, it's not just German. Apple hosts a surprising number of internationalized "I'm a Mac." "I'm a PC" ads. There's the badly dubbed French one, the strangely familiar Spanish one and a host of Scandahoovian ones, which they did't even bother to translate. I guess everyone in Northern Europe really does speak English. Danke Magno Urbano
MVNO Picante Movil to target Spanish speakers
Titan Global Holdings and subsidiary Oblio Telecom look to take the leap from prepaid calling cards to prepaid wireless service -- a leap that has become significantly shorter thanks to the magic of the virtual network (MVNO) concept. Picante Movil, as it's known, will focus on prepaid offerings to the Spanish speaking community. Though it runs up against a number of competitors in the MVNO space with a Spanish slant, Picante's selling point might be that its phones can be kept active by adding as little as $5 at a time. Now, if you'll excuse us, we've gotten hungry thinking about picante; we're going to go fix ourselves a little something.[Via The Wireless Report]
New Verizon services give you a babelphone
¿Puede traducirme esto, por favor? Verizon is looking to facilitate awkward, painfully slow conversations between you and the Spanish speaker of your choosing, launching a handful of language tools through its Get It Now service. First up is the Merriam-Webster Spanish-English Dictionary, offering over 100,000 translations for $3.49 per month. Next is AppAbove's Spanish Anywhere, a phrase translator with over 1,200 phrases and 5,500 words for $2.99 per month. Other languages are getting love, too -- VOCEL's Living Language learning program lets users practice and hear 600-odd words and phrases in over 20 languages for $3.99 per month. According to Verizon, "If you spot someone on the street speaking Japanese, German or one of 20 different foreign languages found on select Get It Now-enabled Verizon Wireless phones, don't interrupt their class – they're being tutored by VOCEL's Living Language program." Thanks for the heads-up, guys -- we typically stop folks speaking foreign languages on the phone in their tracks and sternly ask them to stop.[Via textually.org]
Engadget around the world
We know you've been watching closely all week, but there's more going on out there in the world of Engadget than just what we're writing about here in the States. Check it out, this is Engadget around the world.Engadget Japanese DELL to supply 56,000 PCs to Japan's "leaky" Defense Agency Sharp/Vodafone 904SH VGA handset released "Ring-Exhaust" for your mobile Engadget Spanish Solaris in an iMac OSCar - The Open Source car NTT DoCoMo's Music Porter X Links' V-Gear USB TV tuner Wireless Dynamics' RIF miniSD card SDiD 2010 Engadget Chinese CTK introduce 3369 cellphone BenQ-Siemens' CL71 and AL21 Google unveils Chinese brand name: GuGe Averatec's 3715-EH1 notebook Modeo's Smartphone Municator $149 PC made in China
Telenovelas coming soon to your HDTV
A new telenovela "The Lost Survivors" being filmed in the Dominican Republic is entirely in HD. This is great for several reasons. As prices for high definition production come down, more studios worldwide will produce more content, pushing broadcasters and consumers alike to adopt HDTV if they already haven't. Additionally, this brings us one step closer to the day Caliente is offered in HD which is what we're really waiting for.
International co-operation
The recent news of a Spanish localisation didn't surprise me too much; WoW has been spreading like wildfire across Europe, and a key way to capture territories outside the UK is to offer a native-language version. However, in my travels across a number of European servers, I've seen very few Spanish players.However, there seems to be a preponderance of Nordic gamers, and I've also encountered several Dutch speakers in my travels. With the lack of specific-language servers (let alone a client version), these players often post messages in general chat searching for fellow countrymen--on some servers, any foreign language is met with venom, but on others players are very helpful. Having observed this on several servers now, it seems that PvP and RP-PvP server residents are most hostile towards any non-English speakers, although that's something of a generalisation. Perhaps it's due to the frustration of having to type names like Bjørn.Playing in Europe is a great way to get an international flavour to your gameplay, although it's sometimes surprising to find out someone is from Holland or Belgium when they have been speaking better English than the UK-based players for weeks.
