Brain Age: Train Your Brain in Minutes a Day!
© 2006 Nintendo of America
This innovative set of brain teasers is the first software title for the Nintendo DS that asks you to turn the DS sideways, like a book. So the right touch screen is where you scribble answers, and the left screen delivers the puzzles or advice. The program also uses the DS voice recognition system in puzzles that ask you to read words. You hope the DS recognizes your voice, otherwise you will encounter a hit or miss process while driving down a road in a minivan. Our testers, ages 10 and 14, found the games to be addictive. After you sign in with your birthday, the game gives you a pre-test. Based on your performance, it begins administering a set of mental workouts. For example, you are given a series of math problems (6 x 7) and are asked to scribble your answer on the DS touch screen. Another puzzle is a set of flash cards, where a color word (like "RED") is flashed on the screen. But the letters may be green. You have to mentally force yourself not to read the word, but instead say, outloud, "green." According to the program, this type of mental twisting will keep your brain limber and in good shape, or as the author of the program says, "An active prefrontal cortex is a happy prefrontal cortex!" There's also a wonderful collection of soduku math puzzles (sort of like crossword puzzles, with numerals). The program includes smart features, including leveling (the better you do, the harder it gets). All in all, a great deliver of rapid fire, factual level content that would be the envy of any school system. The program markets the idea that you can "exercise" your brain to develop your "brain age." Readers should note that this unit of measurement is fictional -- there is no actual "mental age" unit of years. For example, the program implies that a the ideal brain age is a 20 years old. If you score poorly on a few puzzles, you may be assigned a brain score of 60 or 80. Don't tell Grandpa. The next Brain title (Big Brain Academy) uses units of weight. Here's the pitch, straight from Nintendo: "Exercise is the key to good health, both for body and mind-and now there's finally a way to make mental exercise simple, fun, even competitive. Inspired by the work of prominent Japanese neuroscientist Dr. Ryuta Kawashima, Brain Age features activities designed to help stimulate your brain and give it the workout it needs like solving simple math problems, counting people going in and out of a house simultaneously, drawing pictures on the Nintendo DS touch screen, and reading classic literature out loud." According to Nintendo PR, this brain-training series of games is a "cornerstone of Nintendo's aim to expand the world of video games to new audiences." The second title in the series, Big Brain Academy (called Brain Flex in Japan) will offers players 15 additional logic/memory games, for use by up to eight people at once, wirelessly, even if only one person has a game card. This isn't the first set of puzzles for a handheld game system...last fall, Sony released Practical Intelligence Quotient for the PSP. See also Brain Age 2, released August 2007.
$19.99, Nintendo DS
Teaches: math, puzzle solving, memory
CTR Rating: 94%