Bakushow is the Nintendo DS Wireless party quiz game for 2-4 players with just one Nintendo DS game card used no matter how many people play. A cross between your favourite quiz show and charades, as the game's host you simply pose a question or task to the other players who then send their answers back to you. Everyone then gets to vote for their favourite...

Bakushow is a party game for 2-4 players. If you can think it, you can play it on Bakushow. Playable by two-to-four players using just one game cartridge, Bakushow (which literally means "big laugh" in Japanese) is a cross between your favourite quiz show and charades.

The host proposes a question or task to all the players who then send their answers back to the host within a certain time limit. All the answers are then revealed to all players who in turn vote on each other’s work.

Questions can be in the form of intelligence or memory style: What does M.B.E. stand for? What does a Scottish terrier look like? You can also compete using your imagination. Ask everyone to draw a unicorn for example. Using Bakushow’s copy tool, you can ask players a range of varied questions based on images drawn or information written by the host. For example - finish a part completed illustration or word, Sudoku style challenges, multiple choice answers and rank order answers.

The whole point of Bakushow is to be as imaginative, clever and amusing with your friends as possible.

While Bakushow is great fun, the biggest problem I had with this release is the fact that the Nintendo DS already has a function built in that is incredibly similar to Bakushow, it's called Pictochat - and I was left wondering why anyone would pay £30 for what is basically a bells and whistles version of this free software.

Pictochat allows a group of friends (up to 16) to play games very similar to that in Bakushow and then vote on which is the best. For example, you can ask all of your friends to draw a dog, then when everyone has finished they hit the "send" button at the same time and everyone can see the various entries and choose a winner. While Pictochat can't keep score, it's still very similar.

The other problem I had was with the review copy we received. The opening screen had four options, none of which I could understand - as they were in the form of strange images. The instruction manual made this no clearer. In fact, the start screen that the instruction manual showed was nowhere to be seen on the review copy we received.

At the end of the day this game is just a more funky version of Pictochat and personally, as I hardly ever use Pictochat, I can't see the benefits of Bakushow. However, those that use Pictochat all the time (and have only three other friends) will find Bakushow to be a fun, more polished application.

4

Pete Boomer