Nintendo News | Prepare to Train Your Sight in Europe This November

The Bandai Namco-developed training game for Nintendo DS that focuses on observation has already been a big success over in Japan. But now the game is set to hit Europe before Christmas!

Did you know that your eyes' ability to see is measured by more than just eyesight? And did you know you can help train your visual abilities by stimulating them? The concept of training your visual abilities has been used by many people, including top athletes and racing drivers, for many years. Now Sight Training: Enjoy Exercising and Relaxing Your Eyes is here, a programme which lets you check five aspects of your vision and helps strengthen them with varied exercises. Sight Training: Enjoy Exercising and Relaxing Your Eyes launches on the Nintendo DS across Europe on 23rd November 2007.

Created under the supervision of Dr Hisao Ishigaki, a leader in the field of visual training for athletes and professor at the Aichi Institute of Technology, Sight Training concentrates on five aspects of vision: Hand-Eye Co-ordination, Peripheral Vision, Eye Movement, Momentary Vision and Dynamic Visual Acuity. Sight Training provides fun and simple exercises which help train these visual abilities.

Using the intuitive controls of the Nintendo DS Touch Screen, Sight Training offers quick and enjoyable training and with each session only lasting two to three minutes a day, it can be done anytime and anywhere. When users first begin, their visual strength in the above five aspects of vision, termed 'Focus Ability' in this software, will be checked through a series of exercises and from these results an overall in-game 'Eye Age score' is given.

When the in game 'Eye Age score' has been calculated, a regular training programme is proposed with the aim of creating an overall balance of 'Focus Ability. Sight Training contains a variety of 'Focus Ability' and 'Sports Training' exercises which stimulate the five aspects of vision. For example Dynamic Visual Acuity, the ability to clearly see moving objects, can be exercised through Box Track in which a dot is placed under one of three boxes, with the user having to track where it has moved to. Momentary Vision, the ability to process a lot of information at once, is exercised with games like Circle Spot, where the player has to spot a circle among other shapes from an image flashed up for a few seconds. Other exercises include C Count for Eye Movement, Fast Match for Peripheral Vision and Number Tap for Hand-Eye Co-ordination.

Following each training session, results will be recorded and a stamp issued for that day in the inbuilt calendar, allowing a user's to easily track their progress. As progression is made, new exercises and challenges will be unlocked and made available to practice. After training for a certain amount of time, the game will automatically switch to relaxation mode. This is the time when users can do eye relaxation exercises which will be guided via voice commands from the programme.

Sight Training: Enjoy Exercising and Relaxing Your Eyes launches across Europe for the Nintendo DS on the 23rd November and will be available for the estimated retail price of around