Talkman transforms into a pocket tour guide

By Spencer . October 16, 2007 . 1:13pm

The concept behind Sony's Talkman series is brilliant: a UMD disc bundled with a microphone that transforms the PSP into a crude language translator. Even though multiple versions of the game have been released, the series never exploded like Nintendo’s English training game for the DS.

However, Sony isn’t dropping the Talkman. They are continuing it with the radically redesigned Talkman Travel. Max the colorful chatty bird got the axe so Talkman Travel could get a sleek overhaul. Plus they added in handy features for tourists like maps with landmarks on top of canned phrases. The downside is it only supports a few locations: Taiwan, South Korea and Shanghai. Also it’s in Japanese, which means it won’t be nearly as useful as the original Talkman or Talkman Euro which translates English into other languages.