Japan gets all the cool things - Limited edition Pikachu 3DS XLs, Xboxes with Bill Gates dog-tags, and more 'what the heck?' games than you can shake a stick at. As seriously awesome as many of the games from the land of the rising sun are, too many never make the journey westwards, much to our disappointment. But this September may well go some way to making up, as one such game is slated for a European release - and what's more, it has Pokemon plastered all over it.
Learn With Pokemon: Typing Adventure works kind of how we'd imagine a Pokemon-themed typing game would work, really, complete with the obligatory 'Gotta Catch 'Em All' component we all know and love. Armed with a keyboard, you set off on a journey to help the sigh-worthy-named Professor Quentin Werty and his assistant Paige Down with their research into the local wildlife by typing the Pokemon's names as they appear out of bushes and the like, capturing them in a 'Typing Ball' so your companions can research them.
Never try typing and painting your nails at the same time...
Things start slowly, with early levels requiring you to just type the first letter of the 'mons names to capture them, before moving on to much trickier exercises - as well as offering tips and tutorials on finger placement, accuracy and speed. The faster and more accurately you can go, the bigger combo you'll build up and the higher your score for each stage will get, improving your typist rank as you go. With sixty different levels to unlock, each more challenging than the last and filled with rarer Pokemon, as well as 180 medals to collect, Pokemon Typing Adventure should keep you going for a long time too - and that's not including researching all of the 400+ Pokemon too, including some familiar faces from the latest Pokemon Black and White games.
Nintendo aren't expecting you to type on the Touch Screen of the DS or anything though, as each copy of Learn With Pokemon: Typing Adventure will come packaged with a wireless bluetooth keyboard, which will also work with other compatible products. Acknowledging that keyboards aren't really the most portable of things in the world, the game also comes with a stand to sit your DS/DSi/3DS on to keep it in place while you're busy beavering away.
Two worlds we never expected to see collide were typing teaching software and Pokemon, but it would have been just the ticket to get our younger selves to increase our words per minute - and the added allure of Pokemon means even now we'll be finding excuses to increase our typing efficiency to the speed of light. Learn With Pokemon: Typing Adventure strolls into stores on the 21st of September, although there's no word on pricing yet but given the included keyboard we're expecting it to be a bit more than a regular DS game.
