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Nintendo came under fire last night on the BBC’s Watchdog program which claimed the company’s Nintendo DS title Dr. Kawashima’s Brain Training isn’t capable of understanding words pronounced in a Northern accent.
The problems arise in a challenge in which the player must say the colour of the word shown on screen and not the colour spelled out. The biggest problems seem to come from the pronunciation of ‘yellow’ and ‘blue’, although Watchdog found that it wasn’t just Northern accents which the game had trouble understanding.
Nintendo says extensive research was carried out to ensure the game would recognise different accents and pointed out that only a small section of the game utilises voice recognition. The platform holder also suggests that gamers experiencing problems with the voice recognition should ensure the DS is held 20 to 30cm away when speaking and avoid shouting and blowing into the microphone.
The rather light-hearted report concluded that if you want to play the game problem free you’ll need a voice akin to that of the Queen of Des Lynam.
