As is common with all popular consoles, the Nintendo DS saw its fair share of video game oddities while it was around, with these incredibly niche titles almost always being conceived to capitalize on the success of the platform or a specific trend or hobby that was in the news at the time.
In the past, we've come across a few of these titles — from the likes of Russell's Grant's Astrology to Square Enix's wine-tasting sim Wine no Hajimekata DS — but one game we'd never heard about until recently was My Stop Smoking Coach: Allen Carr's EasyWay.
This is an anti-smoking game, endorsed by the British self-help writer Allen Carr (not to be confused with the comedian Alan Carr) which was primarily developed by Ubisoft Quebec City Studio and released in 2008.
As we mentioned, the game only recently came to our attention thanks to stumbling across a tweet from @vgmuseum1, and just like them, we initially thought it must be some kind of photoshopped game cover.
There are a couple of reasons for this with the major one being that we couldn't believe that there was much of a demand among Nintendo DS players for an anti-smoking game, considering the average audience for the DS was estimated around this time to be made up primarily of 8-16 years olds. The other, meanwhile, was the presence of a bizarre quote on the front cover, which seemed to imply that Sir Anthony Hopkins (Hannibal Lecter himself) gave up smoking, thanks in large part to his time spent playing his DS. Though, of course, upon second look, this seems to just be cribbed from a testimonial for Allen's books and reworded slightly to avoid false advertising.
The game, from what we've been able to decipher, seems to be a combination of tenuously related minigames (we're not sure what spelunking for diamonds has to do with nicotine addiction) and a bunch of condescending text boxes from the most "stock image"-esque people we've ever seen. As a result, we're not entirely sure how impactful the game could actually be for stopping someone's habit, but we're ready to be surprised.
Did you happen to have this bizarre Nintendo DS game in your collection? And has it helped you? Let us know in the comments!