"To protect the world from boring fashion, To dress all people with flash and passion, To give all Pokemon pretty faces, To extend our art to outer spaces,"

When we were asked if we would be interested in playing and reviewing Pokemon Art Academy on the Nintendo 3ds I was interested in giving it a go, not because it's the sort of game I would personally ever play but more because I'm a big fan of the old fashioned pen and paper when it comes to drawing and wanted to see what it was all about. I had never got round to trying the original NDS Art Acadamy and I don't think Opeie would have been interested in that but A Pokemon themed version definitely grabbed his attention.

Opeie loves watching Pokemon so I knew he would love it but I was expecting to be unimpressed by the game even though i was a huge fan of Mario Paint on the SNES back when i was a child. I'll put my hands up though, I was pleasantly surprised while watching Opeie play and really enjoyed helping him out. The game follows the same idea as the original NDS release teaching you how to draw specific objects (in this case, Pokemon).

Opeie's favourite Pokemon is Oshowatt (I'm more of a Jigglypuff man myself) so he was the first character to be drawn while playing. With a very clear step by step guide to drawing your favourite pocket monsters it's a great introduction into recreating your favourite characters. Most Pokemon have limited detail and can be broken down into a series of simple shapes making them easy for even the youngest of gamers to draw. Once you have completed the novice part of the game you can move on to the Apprentice and Graduate levels adding depth, detail and new techniques to your sketches. The game is actually great for teaching you techniques in all aspects of sketching and painting art.

With a great selection of tools and with each one needed being clearly highlighted at each step it's the sort of game as a parent that you can go and take care of tea, washing, ironing etc without hearing 'daddy can you help me' every 5 minutes which is great on those rare occasions that I really need to get things done (of course i do prefer to blow off those monotonous chores and play DS together). The thing that impressed me the most was watching Opeie's fine motor skills and the concentration on his face as he very carefully followed the on screen instructions.

If following instructions isn't your thing then there is a free paint option or 'quick sketch' to keep you entertained. If you have your internet settings all set up on your 3ds the game informs you when there are new images to download for the game and the most fun part for me was being able to import images from your consoles photo album to draw too. As you can see below we've only had a quick play of this option so far and i think you can agree that when Nintendo gets wind of this you'll be seeing Gifts from the Pirates Art Academy hitting the shelves soon.

Since playing the game Opeie has been wearing a cap at every given chance to look like Ash and asked very nicely a few days back if he could have a Pokeball so i got out our favourite building material and made him one, Gotta catch them all!