Nintendo News | More Details About Face Training & the DS Camera

A new report from Japan has revealed more details about the recently release Face Training product from Nintendo, which comes bundled with a DS camera and special stand. The programme is the latest in the popular Touch! Generations brand of 'non-games' that reportedly appeal so much to older generations, lapsed gamers, and the female contingent. Face Training helps players to exercise their facial muscles in order to improve their smile and give off a more vibrant facial appearance in general.

The camera slots snugly into the GBA port of the DS and provides a video image of your face on one screen and the appropriate exercise on the other so that you can easily compare what you are doing and if you need to change your technique. There are sixteen differing types of exercise that come under the heading of 'facening', a moderately popular technique designed by beauty expert Fumiko Inudo. Each exercise takes between two and ten minutes to complete and Nintendo recommends playing no longer than fifteen minutes at any one time.

As well as the animated image on-screen, the programme also has an instructor voice that will actually talk you through the various moves and with any luck you will soon have "tighter (face) cheeks and a bright-eyed look". For example, the DS will in one instance say "Open your mouth slightly, one, two, three, four." Those of you with an ounce of imagination can no doubt twist that to make it sound extremely rude...we would not dream of doing such a thing, though, obviously!

"It certainly perks your curiosity, doesn't it? The success of games is usually a question of how to engage people's feelings."
- Company spokesman Yasuhiro Minagawa.

He also added that the product is entertaining as players make amusing faces in order to obtain a more youthful appearance. Overseas sales plans are still undecided, it seems, although Nintendo UK currently has the game on offer for play testing, and the localisation required is likely to be extremely minimal. The game started off last Thursday with just 10,000 unit sales, which is considerably lower than previous releases 'More English Training', 'Common Sense Training' and 'Vision Training'. However, all of these 'wider appealing' titles have proven to have great longevity in terms of sales, with an example being More English Training, which started off well, petered out quickly, but is now slowly working its way to the 500,000 mark with ease after a couple of months on the market.

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