Prof. Kawashima's Brain Training: How Old is Your Brain?

Brain drain?

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Nintendo's 'Touch! Generations' branded titles have sold copies in their millions. Their success has been phenomenal; Nintendogs alone sold over 250,000 copies in its opening week and has now sold over one-million copies in Europe alone. Now, Prof. Kawashima's Brain Training: How Old is Your Brain, the newest addition to the series, has sold almost five-million copies in Japan since its launch last May and has sold over two-million copies in the US since its release just this April.

It was feared by retailers and Nintendo themselves that Brain Training might not be as successful on Western and European shores as it was in Japan, but these significant figures suggest very much otherwise. Everyone has been bitten by the Kawashima bug.

The cure? You must adhere to Professor Kawashima's prescription: perform each Brain Training activity at least one time a day, seven days a week. Brain Training is exactly that; training. It is not a game per say. What it involves is a series of mental exercise to strengthen certain areas of your brain such as numeracy, literacy and memory. Also, for those Sudoku fanatics amongst you, there are also basic, intermediate and expert Sudoku puzzles as an extra mode for you to play.

The mental exercises are based upon the professional studies of Professor Ryuta Kawashima. It has even been suggested that when a person is playing this program that it truly does improves the mind and its functions. To begin your personal Brain Training program, you will first have to enter in some personal details such as name, age, etc. You will then need complete three quick tasks in order for the floating, polygon-headed Professor to calculate your current brain age. These tasks can be either reading out the colours of fonts rather than the word, counting numbers and even drawing pictures.

Once Prof. Kawashima has calculated the results, there are then nine main exercises for you to complete daily: Calculations x 20, Calculations x 100, Reading Aloud, Low to High, Syllable Count, Head Count, Triangle Math, Time Lapse and Voice Calculation. You can perform every exercise either through your brain training or by playing the quick mode, which is simply an instant access mode to the exercises. All of these are short exercises, perfect for the daily commute or a quick training session before you start your day. This is the essence of Brain Training; it is a program, rather than a game, which simply provides quick daily exercises to improve the astuteness of the brain.

And it works. It truly works.

I cannot remember the last time I ever did any form of maths. Most people within their day jobs work with a till or electronic device of some sort that will do all of our menial counting for us. Within the space of three days of me doing the Calculations x 20 and Calculations x 100 (simple maths equations using all of the major three sums add, minus and multiply) my maths did improve. The sums, although at first foggily recalled from my High School days, became clearer, the pain of thinking subsided and both my speed and brain age improved.

Once you have gotten yourself comfortable with the maths equations you can then move onto the literacy activities. These two activities will have you either reading a passage to see how quickly you can, or counting the amount of syllables in a sentence. All of the activities seem extremely simple and easy but they become totally addictive. They might even improve your mind.

After completing the four modes you commence with, professor polygon will then unlock some the rest of the activities. Low to High have numbers appear in boxes displayed on screen for only an instant. The same boxes, empty, will then be displayed on the touch screen. You will then have to touch the empty boxes in the lowest to highest order relating to the numbers that appeared. Head count is similar to the maths section, although it is a little more advanced and quicker. People will enter and leave a house and you will have to calculate how many remain inside. Triangle maths is a new approach to the simple equations. Time lapse shows you two clocks, one showing a different time to the other and you will have to work out the difference. Lastly there is Voice Calculation, the same as the x 20 and x 100 calculations apart from the fact that you say the answer instead of write it.

All of these different methods of writing and speaking are all to enhance your brain in different ways, touching different parts. To chart and follow your progress there are various graphs for you to monitor and keep track of. On top of that, of course, your brain age will be constantly updated.

Brain Training is something you will want to 'play' daily. It will do you no good if you have gaps within your training program, and you will get a stamp for every day you complete. However, if you feel like your own personal training is not enough, and believe me, some of us need more, you can also play wirelessly with your friends. From 2 to 16 players in fact over single-card play. These sorts of battles will have you trying to solve the Calculations x 20 faster, and correctly, before your friends. On top of this, you can also send demos of certain activities to your friends' DS. This also includes Sudoku puzzles, not only functioning from DS to DS, but also offering downloadable new puzzles from certain wireless hotspots.

There is nothing graphically technical to this game. In fact, Prof. Kawashima's 3D head is the only advanced thing to the game's visuals. The rest is simply black or coloured text. The sound and music is not much different either. There is no background music apart from when in the main menu, and the only sounds you will hear is the scrabbling of your stylus and pinging of selections as you enter answers.

Prof. Kawashima's Brain Training: How Old is Your Brain is an intriguing 'program'. It is extremely addictive... not once have I missed my morning training program. Indeed it has become as essential as breakfast and coffee. This is not a game for Mensa geniuses, but is ideal for those of a general intelligence. What's more, Nintendo tact with games like this has proved successful at attracting new gamers, of all ages, to their software, increasing sales and broadening their audience whilst also offering current gamers with a fresh, new experience that is only available on the Nintendo DS.

Let the 'disruption' of gaming, that games like Dr. Kawashima's embodies, continue...

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By Tobias Rowe