Bueller?

February 14, 2008 2:21 AM

Kanji Sonomama Rakubiki Jiten, a DS lite "game," is apparently really useful for learning kanji. So much so that people in this thread recommended it over dedicated electronic dictionaries. Any other DS software you'd consider that useful?

At first I was thinking about things like educational software, flash card programs that let you make your own cards, &c. But really I'd like to know about any DS programs that are so useful you'd recommend them hands-down above other resources. Doesn't matter what they're useful for.*

* except time-wasting please, unless your software cures it.

posted by trig to computers & internet (9 answers total)

Jam Sessions is a really neat guitar simulator. It's not good for learning chord positions - as that's all controlled through buttons you can configure - but it's great for strumming practice and overall song learning via repetition.

I've never heard of any other type of portable guitar program or similar resource, so this one wins by default.
posted by Meagan at 6:00 AM on February 14, 2008

How about a wifi voip phone? Need to be prepared to deal with homebrew, though.
posted by mendel at 6:05 AM on February 14, 2008

Well, if you're looking at kanji-learning games, and I have a lot of them, I'd say 大人の漢字練習完全版 is the best by far. It, too has a dictionary that is ok, but as far as learning kanji, it's comprehensive and has lots of great games in it, too.
posted by greasepig at 7:48 AM on February 14, 2008

DS Scrabble is better than either dedicated handheld units or PC software versions. Whether playing Scrabble is actually useful is a question for another time.
posted by box at 7:49 AM on February 14, 2008

Another homebrew title, NitroTracker is more useful than it is educational, but it is a gentle introduction to art of sample-based music production, MIDI, and (light) sound editing.

You can record directly from the mic, crop around the good part, and drop it in your mix, composing on the fly from environmental sounds.

Whether that's actually useful or just fun I guess is dependent on how seriously you take it.
posted by moift at 7:54 AM on February 14, 2008

I have My Word Coach for my DS Lite. It helps expand your vocabulary by teaching you new words and how to spell them. It also has a built in dictionary with 17,000 words.
posted by geeky at 11:05 AM on February 14, 2008

1. did you find any flash card programs?
2. Brain Age and Brain Age 2 are nice, and I like their sudoku UI more than any other hand held sudoku I've tried (but these probably fall under the time-wasting category)
posted by rux at 9:04 PM on February 14, 2008

erg, sorry for the late response.
rux, I haven't found any (I was just being hopeful).
Thanks for all the suggestions! The music programs especially sound interesting. Nintendo games are sometimes so creative, so I guess I was hoping to see that creativity applied to other kinds of applications as well.
Thanks again.
posted by trig at 12:04 AM on February 21, 2008

forgot about electroplankton for the ds, another music game/simulator. there's a bunch of youtube videos showing what people can do (this article reminded me)

some other possibly relevant threads
posted by rux at 8:15 PM on February 23, 2008