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Voice recognition problems in Brain Age for the Nintendo DS

15th December 2007, 07:51 pm


Question:

I have found your website pretty informative, but I have a question for you regarding the brain age game or maybe the ds system I have. It seems that there is an issue with the voice recognition or something, when you play the part in the game where you have to answer for the rock paper scissors….it rarely recognizes what you say or the program is identifying the object wrong. Have you heard of this before? I just bought the system and do not know if I need to return the game or system. Any suggestions?

Answer:

I would try playing with some of the other voice recognition aspects on the DS, apart from the rock-paper-scissors game. If the rest of the voice recognition aspects work well, then the problem is most likely the game’s interpretation of your voice when using rock-paper-scissors. I remember in the Nintendo DS Brain Age game, the game often had trouble when I pronounced the word “blue”. (For detail, click the link above and scroll to the “Brain Age problems” section.)

In my case, I had to adjust my voice when speaking the word “blue”, trying small variations until I found the pronunciation that the Nintendo DS voice recognition liked the best. I’m guessing your situation is similar. The Nintendo DS voice recognition doesn’t learn from your voice. Because of this limitation, you may have to mold your voice to fit what the game expects.

Keep experimenting, and you’ll find how best to talk to your DS, and how to make it listen”!

Other articles related to this topic:

Category: Games, Voice Recognition

8 Comments

  1. Shane:

    Hi,

    I’m having a similar problem and it seems to be mainly with the word, paper, in the rock, paper, scissors brain age game. I thought that it was probably pronounciation but i tried varying my voice in many ways but to no avail. I would normally be of the opinion that there is a problem that needs to be fixed as voice recognition is quite good in this day and age. I mean paper is just a two syllable word and very easy to approximate the waveform for the word.
    I will give it a few days however and keep trying.

    26 December 2007, 2:44 am

  2. Jon L-ski:

    For the life of me, I can not get the game to understand any words. I don’t speak with any impediments, and come from the Midwest where we are essentially accent free. I’ve tried dozens of different ways to say words to no effect. I’ve also tried altering the distance between me and the DS, again to no effect. I am in a perfectly silent environment during these tests.

    Where can I get real technical support for this real crappy issue?

    5 February 2008, 10:53 am

  3. Andy Kaiser:

    Jon, I’m wondering if the voice recognition on your Nintendo DS is having problems. Do you have any other games you can test with (not Brain Age)? Or do you have another Nintendo DS you can compare to? That will tell you if the issues are with your game or the DS.

    5 February 2008, 8:48 pm

  4. Tess:

    There has been entirely too many people complaining about the voice recognition with the ds… specifically the words blue and scissors, among others. Why can’t nintendo do something about this? I can’t tell you how many times I say blue blue blue BLUE B L U E BLUUUUUUUE.
    And then close the ds and toss it.

    13 March 2008, 2:31 am

  5. donna:

    my voice recognition does not work at all at all

    11 January 2009, 7:12 am

  6. Lana:

    UGH! I’m having the same problem as a lot of other folks. The Brain Age game will not recognize the word “blue” no matter how many different ways I say it!

    20 January 2009, 8:08 pm

  7. Carrie:

    I am having the same problem only with brain age 1 for the voice calculations. It is next to impossible to get it to recognize the numbers 2 or 6 it is not like it is even close either. when I say 2 an 8 usually pops up and for the 6 I get a 9 half the time. I fortunatlly have not had problems with the rock, paper, scissors yet.

    30 January 2009, 10:17 pm

  8. Anonymous:

    For those who have trouble with voice recognition. Not only try different variations but also from different distances from the mic. Being too close or too far can affect the outcome of the system. Also, is the mic port clean? Such as debris or lint inside blocking it. Are you in a quiet place with no background interference? Are you saying the words slow enough (or fast enough)? Are you around any electrical device, such as microwave ovens that can possibly cause electrical noise or interference? I hope this helped. Good luck.

    1 April 2009, 3:14 am