Korea Times blue over Brain Age recognition issue

by Alexander Sliwinski { Feb 4th 2007 at 11:00AM }

Korea, which Nintendo just recently began marketing in, is learning the joys of Brain Age recognition frustration. As sister site DS Fanboy reports, it looks like the Koreans are having problems with the software recognizing certain numbers. The Korea Times reporter says, "The game is supposed to recognize spoken words in some of exercises, but some words rarely register correctly. Also, when you write your answers on the touch screen, the machine sometimes confuses similar Korean words and numbers such as 9 and 0, 7 and 9, and 6 and 0."

She dismisses these as simple "mistakes [that] don't make or break the game." Korea's got it easy on the number recognition issue. As many English speaking owners of Brain Age will discuss the absurdity of screaming at their DS during the color training exercise, "Blue. Blue. Blue? BLUE?! BLUE! THE COLOR IS BLUE!"

Tags: brain age, confusion, errors, korea, numbers

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

Jonah Falcon @ Feb 4th 2007 11:28AM

BLUE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I can't tell you how many times I've nearly thrown my DS 50 feet in frustration over that.

Thank God for Big Brain Academy.

NintendoFanbot @ Feb 4th 2007 11:53AM

BRUE always works for me. For real. :P

Judd @ Feb 4th 2007 11:54AM

Maybe they should stop speaking Korean, and learn to speak the right language...American./sarcasm

mike @ Feb 4th 2007 11:59AM

confuses similar Korean words and numbers such as 9 and 0, 7 and 9, and 6 and 0.

----

Great.. I love how 4 numbers sound the same in Korean. Brilliant.

ShortFuse @ Feb 4th 2007 12:07PM

You know how you confuse 9's with 0's and 6's with 0's? When you write big girly bubble numbers.
Yeah, you guys know exactly what I'm talking about. Think back to high school. Now think the female asian obsession of all things cutesy.
Now it makes more sense.

ShortFuse @ Feb 4th 2007 12:11PM

I don't think one person's review really works for saying the game is flawed when writing numbers. I never had problems writing numbers when I did it clearly.

Then again, how credible can you expect it to be with the last line in the article being:
"Once you play ``Brain Age,’’ you’ll understand why the game has been sold more than 100 billion copies."

OhJustSomeRandomGuy @ Feb 4th 2007 1:16PM

I don't see why Korea's so mad about this. It's all jacked up here in the US, too.

Anytime in multiplayer when were trying to speed through, 3, 1, and 7 were a total craposhoot. The match would invariably be decided by whose Brain Age recognized the numbers the fastest.

Destin @ Feb 4th 2007 2:08PM

Yeah, I don't play the color recognition game any more. I have a generic American accent without any real regional slant, and enunciate pretty well, but the damn thing just won't recognize "BLUE." I've tried every pronunciation from "BLOO" to "BALOO" to "BROO" to "BUH" to "BOO" and it still takes at least five times every time. I don't get it.

ss @ Feb 4th 2007 3:55PM

It's BRUE, God dammit!
BRUE
Wen wirr you Americans compry?

DJDoc @ Feb 4th 2007 4:20PM

How hard is it to write numbers so the machine can recognize them? A 5 year old can make the adjustment, if the machine doesn't like your regular 6, 0, or 9.

It's not like it's GRAFFITI or something.

Now the "blue/brue" thing is frustrating though. I predict Brain Academy will be HUGE in Korea.

I much prefer Brain Academy.

Ethan @ Feb 4th 2007 6:37PM

I 'speak' to my DS with my best plummy Londoner, and that seems to enhance things. As we can see from the 'localized' Wii ads, Nintendo thinks the most agreeable and ordinary voice to the British is actually 'received pronunciation.' When of course the current most popular accent is rubbish mockney.

BPM @ Feb 4th 2007 7:25PM

Blue! Blue! The Goddamned pen is blue!!!

Oh... I'm sorry. What were we discussing?

Sean @ Feb 5th 2007 1:11AM

I never had a problem with Blue. I wonder if it's some sort of east coast/west coast thing. Do you easterners pronounce blue weird or what? :)

Godmil @ Feb 5th 2007 6:12AM

I wonder if the 'blue' is an american thing, I'm from the UK and have never had or seen anyone have problems with blue.
Yellow on the other hand....

Je2037 @ Feb 5th 2007 9:22AM

Eh, the color test don't matter and you sort of have to learn how to write each number, the order of the strokes makes a big difference. They just got frustrated too quickly.

Steve @ Feb 5th 2007 9:37AM

The blue bug really drove me nuts. I've heard the tricks; say “broo”, say it quietly, play the game in a sound-proof booth in the basement of a nitroglycerin lab, but no matter what I did the game would not recognize my voice on a consistent basis. It's inexcusable! Does Nintendo even have a QA department anymore? How could they possibly miss this bug? The US version was extensively modified for the US market. Therefore a responsible company would have tested it with people from that market.

My solution for Brain Age is to tell the game that I cannot use the voice recognition games at the moment. Americans and now Koreans are experiencing software bugs with this game, but you rarely hear about europeans running into these bugs. Did Nintendo do a better job at localizing those versions, or is this yet another example of europeans shunning intellectual activity?

Nintendo's been allowing too many bugs of this degree to get out on the market. The sky cannon bug on Zelda is another example of Nintendo's new Microsoft attitude of software development.