Training

The subgenre spawned by scrabbling to cash in on Brain Age’s ascendancy, these are the sorts of “games” that promise to either teach you a life skill or make you a better human in general. It’s a genre where catalog titles can stay on shelves for a while; that combined with meager differentiation between products makes this an uninteresting category, but there’s still some weird stuff coming out (of Ubisoft, mostly).




1. My SAT Coach with The Princeton Review
NDS
Ubisoft/Ubisoft Montreal
September
This could be the best idea yet for a DS training game. Unlike, say, learning Spanish or preventing early onset of Alzheimer’s, studying for the SAT is an easily quantifiable process, and the multiple choice test lends itself nicely to a touch screen format. It should come at a price point that puts it comfortably between the cost of a Princeton Review book and Princeton Review course, and the added friendliness that comes from it being a “game” could take some of the intimidation out of the exam proper. Shelve this next to the Pokemon and it might move a hundred thousand or two. But put it next to the Cliff’s Notes in the local bookstore and it will truly succeed.




2. My Stop Smoking Coach with Allen Carr
NDS
Ubisoft/Ubisoft Quebec City
TBA
At first blush this comes off as one of the weirdest ideas for a handheld game ever conceived in a boardroom. But if you think about it a little bit more this really couldn’t be any worse than having an Easyway to Stop Smoking video that can be carried anywhere, and hey, the interactive elements might actually make it more useful. Still, this is only targeted to the small cross-section of the market that is both a DS player and a guilt-ridden nicotine addict, so it’s completely shutting out the youth audience. The question of “where do we shelve this” is even more pertinent here than with the SAT game.