I’m a big fan of unusual games, and it seems that the place for those at the moment is the Nintendo DS. The stylus allows for some interesting new gameplay and a great example of this is the game Trauma Center: Under The Knife.

You play a surgeon in a hospital where you have to save the lives of your patients by performing operations on them. The stylus becomes your scalpel, syringe, tweezers and a host of other medical implements. For example, you may have to remove glass from a patients arm. To do this you may first have to clean up the wound, then inject some anaesthetic, then carefully remove the pieces of glass one by one. When all the glass had been removed, you then sew up the wound.


The game would appear to be very simple to learn, since I got the basics of it playing a demo of the Japanese version. My knowledge of Japanese is even less than my knowledge of medical procedures, but I managed to complete the demo mission relatively easily despite not being able to read the instruction text.

The operations are depicted using some very effective graphics, and when the blood starts oozing you really start to feel a bit panicked, as the patient’s life signs start to drop. The top screen maintains a readout of the patient status throughout, and the time in which you must complete your work, so you must keep an eye on this as you operate. The surgeons and nurses are also depicted in that typical Japanese Manga style, which works in great contrast to the reasonably realistic wounds.

The game should be available in the US already, with a European release due in March 2006.

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