my-word-coach posts(Subscribe to this feed)

DS Download Service aims to improve your vocabulary

by David Hinkle { Aug 4th 2008 at 6:23PM }

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.

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Amazon's plethora of cheap games

by Candace Savino { May 24th 2008 at 5:00PM }

Amazon's "Deal of the Day" this fine Saturday is Trace Memory, a fun adventure game reminiscent of titles like Hotel Dusk and Phoenix Wright. While not as good as the other two (in this blogger's opinion), it's still a good (albeit short) game that's worth its current $8.99 sale price.

The fine folks at Cheap Ass Gamer also noticed some other low-priced DS software at Amazon, if you're looking for filler. These include:

My Word Coach for $9.99
Lunar Dragon Song for $9.47
Dragon Quest Rocket Slime for $14.99
Magical Starsign for $14.21
Gunpey for $11.99
Wario Master of Disguise for $14.21
Custom Robo Arena for $18.99
SNK vs. Capcom Card Fighters for $14.21
Mega Man ZX Advent for $18.99
Sonic Rush Adventure for $21.99
Dungeon Explorer for $14.21

Those are exactly the kind of games that aren't worth buying at their full price (with perhaps a few exceptions), but are much more tempting when on sale. So, let us know if you see anything here that's worth recommending.

[Via CAG]

Another Week in Europe

by Chris Greenhough { May 17th 2008 at 4:00PM }

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.

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My word! You can coach your vocabulary for $10

by Candace Savino { May 14th 2008 at 4:00PM }

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: My Word Coach

[Via CAG]

Nintendo Channel: New week, new demos

by Alisha Karabinus { May 12th 2008 at 11:45AM }

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!

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Another Week in Europe

by Chris Greenhough { May 3rd 2008 at 4:00PM }

For a continent that gave the world tiramisu, Audrey Tautou, and the Renaissance, Europe sure does disappoint us at times. Yep, it's another week of gray, predictable drudgery when it comes to sales of DS software.

All you truly need to know is that More Mario & Dr. Kawashima's Olympics Training sold really, really well, and almost everything we care about didn't. Except for Animal Crossing: Wild World, which popped in to the German top ten, and Mario Kart DS, which secured eighth place in Ireland, and fifth in Germany. So maybe the world isn't all that rubbish, after all. And if you really believe that, we advise you go and rent Eurotrip.

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Another Week in Europe

by Chris Greenhough { Apr 26th 2008 at 5:00PM }

Featuring charts from across the region, Another Week in Europe documents the buying habits and quirky tastes of a whole continent of DS lovers.

It's business as usual for the DS in Euroland, where Brain Training and Mario & Sonic have once again ruthlessly harvested the wallets of gullible (probably non-DS Fanboy-reading) consumers. We would love to suggest that this madness will end soon, but Brain Training has been around these parts for almost two years now, while the for-real Olympics will surely only boost people's interest in assaulting their DS's poor touch screen. In a word: gah.

More pleasingly, there's been a mini-renaissance for (of all games) Mario Kart DS. Sales of the game rose in the UK, Ireland, France, Germany, and Sweden, and we're pinning this sudden rebirth on the success of Mario Kart Wii, which continues to run down the opposition at an alarming pace. Then reverse back over it, just to make sure.

More charts await your attention past the break, though we're sorry to say that the Spanish top ten is taking a siesta this week (see what we did there?). With any luck, it'll be back next Saturday.

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Pay only $16.99 for some word ability (word smarts)

by Eric Caoili { Mar 21st 2008 at 12:00PM }

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

by Candace Savino { Feb 20th 2008 at 12:00PM }

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

by Ross Miller { Feb 20th 2008 at 5:30AM }

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!

by JC Fletcher { Jan 4th 2008 at 9:45AM }

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 - GameStop
Read - Amazon

Best of the Rest: Ross' Picks of 2007

by Ross Miller { Jan 1st 2008 at 8:30PM }

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.

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A year of Promotional Consideration

by Eric Caoili { Dec 30th 2007 at 4:00PM }

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.

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DS Fanswag: End of the Year Blowout!

by Alisha Karabinus { Dec 12th 2007 at 10:31AM }

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 Blowout
Grand 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!

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Promotional Consideration: Having word ability continues to pay

by Eric Caoili { Nov 4th 2007 at 4:30PM }

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.

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