Abacus Training coming to DS
That's right, Abacus Training
The abacus? That takes me back. One of them ancient Greek things, isn't? We used them in school when we all still had too much jam and mud on our fingers to be trusted with calculators. Slide the bead up, spin it round. Good for elementary addition, but not much else.
Wrong.
If you spend much time in Asia, you'll see them everywhere. Japanese school children use them right into their teens, and take exams on them. They can not only add but subtract, multiply, and divide. And a competent Abacustidor (I made that word up) can calculate into the millions, skittering over the beads like an insect robot superhero.
Abacus. Asia. Nintendo DS. It was inevitable that an abacus sim would come along. One already has, in fact, a Japan-only game called Soroban (no prizes for guessing what that's the word for).
And now there's another one on the horizon. Images for Abacus Training have appeared on Famitsu, and it looks like another Japan-only release. It contains four 'learning' modes, roughly mapped to the school abacus curriculum, and includes a daily training regime. It's due out in the Land of the Rising Sun on June the 19th. Get your import pre-order in now, before the stampede.
If it gets a European release, I'll eat my DS.
