Nintendo DS Review: Bakushow

A game that no single player can play? What is this madness?

If you can think it, you can play it on Bakushow. Playable by two-to-four players using just one game cartridge, Bakushow (literally ‘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. With infinite possibilities and guaranteed laughs, Bakushow is never the same game twice!

Bakushow Features:

With just one game card, between two and four people can play at a time. Each will need their own Nintendo DS!

Bakushow does not use the Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection. Your friends need to be within wireless range to play with you

Save your favorite answers for eternity

Great for play whilst travelling, on holiday or any place where friends get together

No single player mode is included so Billy No Mates need not apply!Bakushow is an odd one; it’s a game that doesn’t have any modes other than the ones you create. You can only play with 2-4 players, so if you friends and only one DS…you are pretty much stuffed, so in that case…don’t pick it up unless you are sure others have a DS. The idea is simple…the host writes and draws questions then set a time limit for the other players to answer and that’s all there is to it.

Looking at it, Bakushow is an incredibly limited game. It doesn’t use Wi-Fi, so you can’t play with players online and its only really fun when you are and your friends are in the mood. Word of advice to those who still have the original DS, the bottom screen can be incredibly dark when compared to the Lite, so just be prepared for that.

Bakushow is good because it lets you make your own entertainment, but it would have been nice if the game added some of their own templates and ideas for questions. Instead it’s all down to the host, it’s nice that 4 players can connect to just one card…but it’s hardly revolutionary. The real kick in the teeth is that most of what can be done in Bakushow could just as well be done in Pictochat, just without the time limits and gratification of winning…but at £25, you’d expect so much more for your money.

The Verdict

If the game had any real modes then I would have got into detail about them, but Bakushow lets the player create his/her own fun as long as they have friends, if you don’t then it will be impossible to play. It would have been nice for some content to be included in the package and some online functionality, but alas there is none, making Bakushow rather limited for its price tag.