Ever since I learned more than 1,500 schools are using Dance Dance Revolution to help combat obesity in youth I've become obsessed with video game industry news. Today, I read that a school in Tokyo has introduced Nintendo DS game consoles in English lessons at junior high schools following tests showing that the devices helped boost students' English vocabulary. I am starting to think I was born a few decades too soon.

Apparently, when Nintendo DS consoles were handed to third-year junior high school students as part of an experiment using English vocabulary training software, the students' English vocabulary increased by an average of about 40 percent over five months. Here's more:

To investigate the software's effectiveness, officials gave it to 49 students at a junior high school in the city, and split them into two groups, who played it on Nintendo DS consoles for about 10 minutes at the beginning of lessons. When one group of 24 students used the software, their vocabulary increased from an average of 1,025 words to 1,386 words, a 35.2 percent rise. Another group of 25 students went from an average of 1,013 words to 1,436 words, a 41.8 percent increase.

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