In Japan, it's time for Ertain's releasing Relax your Heart with Adult Color-In Painting! No, it's not a stress-relieving porno coloring book that uses the DS stylus in unique, adult ways - it's something of a paint program and game slapped around famous art pieces. In much the same way that Nintendo used the popular books by Ryuta Kawashima for Brain Training, Ertain hopes to strike lightning by releasing an adaptation of the extremely popular series of Adult Coloring Books.

These books have one of the most "fun" claims ever: they are classical art outline books that say they stimulate the frontal lobe when you choose the order and color of your paint, and the temporal lobe when you remember where you saw the painting before! (This just in: I'm going to release a series of books called Adult Male Urination Training which teaches you how to work your frontal lobe by aiming correctly and your temporal lobe by remembering the last time it burned so much. It'll make millions!)

In any case, Ertain's game seems a lot cooler than the books. Basically, a classical painting is displayed in the top screen, and the player (with lines for guidance) can render it in any manner they choose on the bottom screen. For instance, when you use the color pencil tools to spruce up a work, and erase something with the erase tool, little eraser shavings will appear on the screen, which you can blow off with the DS microphone.

The watercolor and oil painting tools will allow you to mix colors with the stylus for that hand-painted look. You can choose among different paper types, as well to give the picture different textures. By playing mini-games, you can expand your painting subject matter and pictures. Once you're done, you can have your painting analyzed and criticized by different virtual people, from the perspective of beginner painters all the way to first-class pros. While you paint, you can listen to the soothing sounds of Agematsu Mika, a professional South American harp player. The game releases on July 27th for Nintendo DS.

Ertain is one of my favorite small Japanese developers. I can only hope this will hit a home run for them in the same unexpected way Brain Training did, though I doubt it. It would be nice if the company hit the big time, because their stuff, ranging from an actually competent strategy game for the GBA, a gladiator training game and a stand-up comic game, is beyond unique.