Brain Training
Developer: Nintendo; Publisher: Nintendo
Preview by (29 June 2006)
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HAVE YOU EVER MISPLACED your car keys, or walked into a room only to forget why you went there in the first place? Well read on... Brain Training may just be your answer to thinking young. Exercise is the key to good health, both for body and mind and now there's a way to exercise your brain in a convenient and simple way.
With the demo made freely available to anyone picking up a DS Lite it seems that many people are seeing what the Japanese are so excited about. The demo gives "trainers" three different training scenarios they will find in the full version of Brain Training.
First up is a little test that brings up a coloured word of a colour itself. It's up to you to tell the DS what colour it is, and not what it says. While the voice recognition works well, it seems that the New Zealand accent can be a bit hard for it to pick out words like black that may require you to emphasise the "a" a bit more. After shooting through this process 20 times it will show you how well you have done by giving you an age for your brain. The concept is to do well enough to get that age as close to 20 or your real age as possible.
Next up is the maths quiz. Twenty simple maths equations appear and it's up to you to answer them correctly as quickly as possible. Get one wrong and you are given a penalty in the form of extra seconds put onto your total time. At the end of this you are given a specific speed which is meant to show how quick your brain is. This really opens up in the full version as you can go head to head with 15 other players to see who can be the winner of the Math Battle (easily the geekiest game mode ever created).
Lastly is a Sudoku puzzle. The Sudoku fad seems to have hit the world by storm and Nintendo are right there to cash in on the phenomenon, and if you're one of the many out there who have avoided these little timewasters for whatever reason, prepare to be addicted. The handwriting recognition is damn near flawless and you'll be scribbling in the answers or possible answers with ease within seconds. Again, this is a time based puzszle and your results are shown in speed, however, make ANY mistakes and your time penalty will be adjusted five minutes per mistake. Definitely a good reason to ensure the right answer goes in before hitting that "OK" button.
With the release of Brain Training last week and its successor Big Brain Training being just around the corner, prepare to get both hemispheres the workout they haven't received lately.