Nintendo has been expanding its library with the Personal Trainer titles. It's sometimes difficult to really call some of them games, per se. Personal Trainer: Recipes immediately comes to mind, for example. But Personal Trainer: Math is a very accessible title for anyone who wants to brush up on your simple addition, subtraction, multiplcation, and division.

The question is: Is This Something Kids Will Do On Their Own? Well... it IS math...

I suppose it's confession time. I am one of those kids who probably would have done this on my own, just because I'm someone who enjoys puzzles, and math, and having a quick way to do that would have been cool. But I don't believe this title was designed to be a "game". Rather, this is a handy tool for parents to make it easier to get their kids to practice math.

We've tried different ways to get our daughter (typically referred to online as "Queso" or "The Queso Kid") to practice math. We've cajoled. We've bribed. We bought an abacus. For a while, I was subscribing to an online service that would print out custom worksheets for kids. Every day, a new worksheet, and some practice. But any and all of those methods required overhead. And paper. This title makes math practice a lot faster, and a lot handier. Rather than surfing to a website, printing out the daily worksheet, and then giving it to my daughter, now I just hand her the DS, and she's good. It also keeps track of the student's top three times for a given activity, and there's a daily test (kind of along the lines of a Brain Age or Big Brain Academy). You participate in the test for a number of days, and you move to the next level.

Queso was honest that she didn't like this very much, but she also admitted that she doesn't like any math practice, so we're going to chalk that up to her not liking the subject. She claims that she liked the daily test, but I'm suspicious that it's because it was short.

Now, as a parent, I've got to say, I loved this title. It's accessible. I thought the character of the math instructor was cute. At one point, as I was getting into the game, he apologized because he hadn't thought I was going to show up that day, and was playing the saxophone. It shows an attendance record for every day someone has done the daily test. It offers a lot of different ways to practice. And I remain convinced that something like this is just what the doctor ordered to bring my daughter more confidence, speed, and accuracy at math.

So we're going to stick with this. In fact, being the tech-dad I am, I'm probably going to create a chart and some graphs so I can show Queso how this will help her get faster and more accurate with her math. If anything, that's what this title is missing. I can see the fastest three times a player had, but not a history that shows when those times were achieved, and no way to show progress over time. I'm willing to generate that on my own, but it would have been something that I can see kids pulling up to show their friends or teachers, or to see for themselves how they've gotten better over time.

Nintendo recently put out a press release that claims one in five children believe that fame is more likely than them getting good grades in math next year. I'd rather that my daughter not fall into that 20%. Wouldn't you?

So, who's going to like this? Parents. Geeky kids.
Who's not going to like it, but will use it to practice math when the parent says so? My daughter will, at least.
Is it worth the $19.99? I sure think so. If you've got a DS in the house, and a kid who's struggling with math, I'd heartily recommend this title specifically over other Brain Training games, because of the specific focus on basic math skills.

I'll post an update in a couple of weeks, and let people know how the actual Math Training is going.