::A Geek in Korea::

I recently got a copy of Brain Age: Train your Brain in Minutes a Day! used at my local game shop. Right now, I wake up each morning, do my burn through my overnight Nexus War accrued AP, then eat some breakfast. Sometime either in the morning, or when I got to work, I make sure to bring my DS lite with me and fire up Brain Age. It’s not exactly a "game", but more a compilation of thinking exercises designed to quicken up your brain and prevent your mind from going all mushy in your old age.

There is a disembodied head of a Japanese doctor that guides you though the exercises. He tells you how these should activate different parts of the brain as you do what he tells you. The use of handwriting recognition works fairly well to keep the game friendly and easy to get into. Most of the exercises involve  rapif fire math questions and logic problems. Right now, by best "brain age" is something close to my actual age +5. I’ve also started working through the Sudoku puzzles included in the American release. I’m currently blasting through the "easy" puzzles and the interface is outstanding. It works just like a pen and paper Sudoku puzzle, except you don’t need to worry about ripping the paper trying to erase a mistake. Note taking, optional mistake notification, and statistic tracking. The only downside is the fact they didn’t allow for infinite puzzles. Only 100 puzzles, come on? Sudoku can be generated mathematically for infinite puzzles! Don’t think I’m going to buy another Sudoku only game.

This had been imported by some other foreigner gentleman that goes to the same game store I use. According to their save file, they hadn’t played it in a month. I’ve been playing it every day at the moment and still haven’t unlocked everything. Once I burn through the Sudoku puzzles and unlock the rest of the content, I’m not sure if I will keep the game around for its health effects. I will tell you that after an intense game session I do feel like I’ve taken a test that got my brain pumping.

I picked up Big Brain Academy myself in the United States. This game drops the educational angle brain and has a sort of mini-game feel. These games are broken down into different categories like "Think", "Identify" , "Compute", "Analyze", and "Memorize". You have three games in each category, with three different levels. These different levels are tracked for high scores, and you can do a "test" which is a minigame from each category at random. You are assigned a point score, or "brain weight", as well as a profession depending on how you score in each discipline. I tend to range from "Michelangelo" to "Hair Dresser" fairly often. I played Big Brain Academy for about three weeks off and on with other games. Since it is more of a mini-game collection with some high scores, it’s like an educational version of "Wario Ware" somewhat.

Both of these games are part of the "Touch Generations" line of Nintendo games. These are for casual non-gamers that want to give something unique a try on the Nintendo DS. I’ve also purchased Tetris DS, Electroplankton, and Nintendogs (Which I promptly got bored with in a week and later sold) which are also in the Touch Generations line. The whole "selling games to non-gamers" thing works for me because I don’t have time to play long involving games all that much anymore. If something isn’t quick playing and portable I’ll probably get bored playing it. The time where I can sit in front of a television for hours at a time to master a game has passed. My gaming choices as of late have started reflecting this.