AkiraXXX

I know Triforce mentioned this a while back, but I thought I'd look into it a bit more since the Nintendo DS "Game & Watch Collection" was on the front page today.

It seems that there are more than just 2 "Game and Watch" Easter Eggs available in DS #0405: Kanji Sonomama Rakubiki Jiten.

Here are the mechanics of getting to some of the games:

1) Fire up the game

2) Ensure that the proper language button is selected. On the bottom screen, it is the fourth button from the top along the left side of the screen that has Japanese characters. The first character on the button looks like a dash or minus sign. These language buttons as I call them (if someone can give me the proper term it would be welcome) are below the blue up and down arrows in the top left corner of the bottom screen.

You can see an image of the screens on this Nintendo page:

3) Below the language buttons is the input method buttons. There are three methods: writing, Japanese keyboard and English keyboard. Choose the English keyboard by tapping the capital "A" that is just above the blue icon that looks like a wrench or tuning fork. The above referenced page shows you how it will look.

4) At this point, just type the word that interests you and you should go to it.

You can tell that the word evokes a game because it looks different than the other words surrounding it. In my case, the words all have blue letters. But with the word "judge", the letters are grey and are all in uppercase. If you tap the word, the game is invoked.

Two games have been mentioned by Nintendo: Judge and Manhole. Each is invoked by looking up the corresponding word in the dictionary by using the instructions above and then tapping the word.

I was curious, so I started looking for other games. The first I found was "ball". The next was "flagman". After that I was too excited about telling everyone to look. So, everyone look around and see what you can find. I discovered that "Mario" and "Donkey Kong" both have the special characters on their names, but they don't invoke a game when tapped, just a definition. Maybe I'm just missing something? If there are mistakes in my instructions or if anyone knows a better way to do this, please let us know so we can all partake of the Game and Watch goodness.

Good hunting.

I was wondering what the moderators thought about adding a "Playability Index" rating to non-English language games?
This rating would tell individuals how playable a game is even though it is not in English. I'm sure a 0 - 100 index would work fine.
It would be sad to have someone miss out on a game that was somewhat or very playable just because they assumed it was
unplayable due to being in another language (I'm sure Japanese will be the biggest language about which we are concerned here).