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I think my mind is going. The caffeine-fuelled mornings and beer-soaked nights have dulled my mind. We recently bought a Nintendo DS - forever associated for me with Japanese pop singer Hikaru “We can chat on these” Utada who advertises them. Reiko does a mean impression of her “Nintendo DS” voice.

In Japan they have a brain trainer game for the DS - presumably to make it more interesting than if there was a book of puzzles in front of you. It`s a lot of fun. You must solve maths questions, draw pictures of continents and animals and count how many people are leaving and entering a house in an effort to get your brain working actively and not passively in front of the screen killing gangsters.

Reiko is far better than me at getting bullet train level on the maths test whilst I average man on bike speed but the gauntlet has been thrown.

Technorati Tags: Japan, Osaka, Asia, Quaisi, Kansai, Expat, English, Nintendo, DS

This is probably years old but I saw this Pokemon Nintendo Gameboy Advance in a game shop which struck me.

Technorati Tags: Japan, Osaka, Asia, Quaisi, Kansai, Expat, English, Pikachu, Nintendo, Pokemon, Handheld

There is a new mobile phone game in Japan which uses the clam-shell design phones. Quick Gunman:

Who’s the fastest finger in the West? There’s only one-way to find out: Quick Gunman. This cell phone game takes advantage of the calm shell phones so popular in Japan. Players close their phones, whip them open and press the “shoot” button as fast as possible with their finger. Good for killing time on the commute home. That, and annoying the crap outta other passengers. Bang, bang!

Via Kotaku

Technorati Tags: Japan, Osaka, Asia, Quaisi, Kansai, Expat, English

Having complained about the fact that there are few good games for my PSP outside of RPG games heavily laden with indecipherable kanji, I found out I could emulate SNES and Mega Drive games on it. I never had a Super Nintendo and I am now deeply addicted to Super Mario World and ironically enough Zelda.

Thus news that someone somewhere has recorded an excellent orchestral version of the Super Mario Brothers theme tune pleased me.

Via (Osaka based?) Kotaku.com

This brings to mind a video of a Japanese guy playing the theme tune to Mario on his electric guitar complete with sound effects. Or how about Jean Baudin tapping it on the bass?

And thanks to Cosmic Buddha from the comments is Acapella Nintendo
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Technorati Tags: Japan, Osaka, Asia, Quaisi, Kansai, Expat, English, Mario, Snes, Genesis, PSP, Nintendo, Gaming