The Nintendo DS Lite is certainly looking good to take top spot in terms of hardware sales across the whole world for this generation of consoles, be it handheld or otherwise. This phenomenal success is certainly unprecedented despite the inferior hardware when placed side by side with its nearest (and only) competitor, the Sony PSP. Sales were also helped by a slew of interesting non-games such as Brain Age as well as dependable franchises from Nintendo (Mario et al), and not forgetting new, quality titles such as Phoenix Wright and remakes of Final Fantasy from Square Enix. Here is yet another non-game that will be released in Japan, and I predict it will definitely help push more sales as the Japanese public lap it up eagerly.

Last year, a publishing company released an edition of some classical Japanese literature, enabling readers to trace the poet’s words with slow, delibrate movements. The book was an unprecedented hit, and now game developer Success has taken the same idea and translated it to a DS experience. Known as Enpitsu de Oku no Hosomichi DS, this title will come with a complete musical score, watercolor-style illustrations, and verbal readings by actor Nakamura Toru. The DS must be held sideways (like how you play Hotel Dusk) in order for them to trace kanji on the touch screen.

This is neat for those who want to brush up their kanji while sitting through an entire classical book. I suspect first timers as well as those new to the Japanese language will see this as an opportunity to speed up their writing process in a fun manner. Too bad there won’t be a Romanized version, as writing alphabets on the DS just ain’t gonna cut it with the rest of the world.

Source: Joystiq

You can leave a comment, or trackback from your own site. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Add to Del.icio.us