Kotaku: Brain Training

Brain Age To Outsmart The 3DS?

Brian Ashcraft — Mon, 29 Nov 2010 06:00:00 EST

Just because Nintendo's Brain Age took Japan by storm in 2006, that doesn't mean it can't do it again. Neuroscientist Dr. Ryuta Kawashima spills the beans that a new Brain Age is in development. More »

Pac-Man Goes Hands-Free With Kinect

Brian Ashcraft — Tue, 23 Nov 2010 12:40:00 EST

While Namco didn't do a stand alone Pac-Man title for Kinect, the Tokyo-based game company does have a special cameo for pellet muncher in its new brain training game, Brain & Body Connection. More »

When Cheating Makes Brain Age Fun

Luke Plunkett — Sat, 10 Jul 2010 01:30:00 EDT

Brain Age isn't the most enjoyable of DS games played straight. Playing it through an emulator that lets you substitute answers for stupid doodles sure fixes that. More »

Nintendo announces release date of first batch of DSi Ware games

tim rogers — Tue, 16 Dec 2008 17:00:00 EST

Famitsu Dot Com reports today that Nintendo has decided that today is the day to allow Famitsu Dot Com and only Famitsu Dot Com to reveal the release date of the first batch of DSi Ware titles. More »

Brain Age Works, Says Science

Michael McWhertor — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 20:00:28 EDT

Researchers in Scotland have tested the effects of Brain Age on schoolchildren. The results? Good! The organization Learning and Teaching Scotland tested daily usage of Brain Age — known there as Dr. Kawashima's Brain Training — on some 600 students at 32 schools throughout the country, tasking them with 20 minutes of (non-)gameplay prior to standard lessons. More »

What's The Biggest-Selling Game In Europe This Year?

Luke Plunkett — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 07:30:00 EDT

Fans of our British sales charts will have some knowledge of the selling power of the Brain Training games, but really, they've only got part of the picture. They don't know how well it's been selling on the continent, and on the continent, it's been selling like ~~hotcakes~~ hot crepes. According to chart trackers GfK, over the first six months of 2008, the original Brain Training was the top-selling game in Switzerland, Belgium and The Netherlands. Germany's top-selling game over the same period was the sequel, More Brain Training. Spain's #1 was Brain Training, while it's #2 was...More Brain Training. Just so you know, the first Brain Training was released over two years ago, while in Europe, even the sequel's been out for over a year. Egads. More »

There Will Be No More Brain Training

Luke Plunkett — Fri, 04 Jul 2008 00:30:00 EDT

For a game built upon endless repetition, Brain Training's certainly making an impression on some people, because years on from release, the two games are still selling like fancy, heated cakes. So Nintendo are surely working on more, yes? Itprintsmoney.gif and all that? No. Having most likely noticed the fact people can't tell the two games apart, and still buy more of the original than the sequel, it's been announced by Nintendo (grain of salt notice: Nintendo Europe) that two will do, and they'll just keep on selling them for millennia until our sun expands, killing us all in a blinding flash of white. More »

Smiley Face Game Makes Smiley Face Gamers

Brian Crecente — Mon, 29 Oct 2007 12:00:54 EDT

Reuters has an interesting story up about MindHabits Trainer, a game developed by researchers at McGill University in Montreal which is meant to cut down on your stress, increase your confidence and make you a happier person. More »

Look Ma, My DS Made Me Smarter!

Maggie Greene — Sat, 27 Oct 2007 15:30:41 EDT

Or at least a better at math - so says a small study conducted with primary school students in the Scottish city of Dundee. The wee kidlets were divided into three groups of 30 for the ten week study: one group played More Brain Training every morning for 15 minutes prior to lessons; another group used 'Brain Gym,' which is a series of physical exercises designed to stimulate brain activity; and the final group did nothing. Based on the math test given at the beginning and end of the project, the researchers found the Brain Training group made gains across the board, while neither of the other two groups showed such gains. And there were more benefits to some quality time with the DS in the morning: More »

Majesco Plays With Your Head

Mike Fahey — Tue, 09 Oct 2007 12:20:50 EDT

You know what we could really use on the DS? A game that exercises your brain. That would be awesome! Good thing Majesco is on point, announcing Left Brain Right Brain for Nintendo's handheld, a game that not only trains your head meats but helps develop manual dexterity as well. The game will include 15 different mini-games created to help develop speed, accuracy, association, recognition, memory , and strategy. Played in book-style, the game requires players rotate the DS in order to exercise both their dominant and withered, unused husk of a non-dominant hand. Between this holiday release and the countless other brain training titles for the DS, by the time the aliens arrive they'll look human and we'll all be giant-skulled ambidextrous mutants who have developed precognitive abilities to the point where we'll have the Twilight Zone queued up on loudspeakers for that auspicious event. More »

Brain Age 2 Goes On Tour

Mike Fahey — Thu, 27 Sep 2007 10:30:17 EDT

You people aren't buying enough copies of Brain Age 2, so now Nintendo has to go and send the game on a publicity tour. Not only are they going the Tiffany route with a 50-city mall tour, now they've deployed Brain Age 2 to a Nelson J Salon in Beverly Hills, where I assume they've also provide someone to play the game for the customers as they get their hair done. They'll have booths set up at Alzheimer's Association Memory walks in Chicago, Austin, New York, Washington, and Los Angeles as well. You guys really need to start buying the game before...oh crap, it's too late. They've unleashed the Nintendo Street Team. Oh good, they're only going to the Long Island Fall Home Show this weekend and...the Atlanta Home Show. That's here, this weekend! See what you've done? Why didn't you buy it? Hit the jump to survey the pain you've caused. More »

Jack Tretton On The PSP: "We'll Own The Earth Like We Own The DS."

kotaku.com — Mon, 25 Sep 2006 09:40:46 EDT

You know, someday, I'd love to meet the corporate voodoo strategists over at Sony, because whatever they are bubbling over in their pot, a sip from the ladle is obviously enough to blow your mind clearly right out of your head. More »

Brain Age Does Common Sense

brownlee — Fri, 09 Jun 2006 11:40:27 EDT

Brain Training is a crock. Seriously. No, we love it, but anyone who thinks this is shooting up their IQ is sadly mistaken. Go out sometime. Find a group of real intellectuals. They will be the ones at the far side of the bar, exhaling plumes of meerschaum smoke through their nostrils into the ponderous bellies of extravagant brandy goblets. Interrupt their conversation about Sartre's existentialist manifesto to show them how well you can draw a Koala Bear. They won't laugh at you openly, because they will be intellectuals and therefore fear having their asses kicked; but neither will they invite you to sit down and hand you an ascot. You will be shunned as a barbarian. More »

DS Download Stations Due Soon

Michael McWhertor — Sat, 08 Apr 2006 19:30:37 EDT

Don't forget to head down to your local Best Buy, Nintendo DS in hand, and get your free Wi-Fi download on! DS Download Stations should be finally showing up at your local Best Buy this week with trial versions of Brain Training, Meteos, True Swing Golf, Tetris, Mario Kart DS and Pok mon Trozei. You can also... watch a Metroid Prime Hunters movie. More »

Control Video Games... With Your Brain!

Michael McWhertor — Sun, 12 Mar 2006 17:18:43 EST

"A computer controlled by the power of thought alone has been demonstrated at CEBIT in Germany." Woah. That's the lead-in to Cognitive Labs report on the "mental typewriter" (aka Berlin Brain-Computer Interface), a device that not only makes you look 8000% dorkier, but will let you control your video games and entertainment devices with pure thought. It could also allow the paralyzed control computers and let amputees control artificial limbs, but the real news is that we can finally dump those crappy Wavebirds! More »

Chat up Shiggy

Brian Crecente — Thu, 09 Mar 2006 16:00:10 EST

Shigeru Miyamoto talks Nintendogs, Animal Cross, Brain Training, New Super Mario Bros. (worst name for a game ever) and anything else you want in a web chat with the legend over on Webchats.TV. More »

Video Games Make You Smarter, Better Than Old Folk

Michael McWhertor — Sun, 12 Feb 2006 11:50:12 EST

The next time your wife/girlfriend/mother start that annoying harpy talk, complaining about your lack of attention given to anything but your level 59 Undead Rogue, refer her to this Globe And Mail article. It's almost proof-positive that learning a second language is for suckers (okay, not really) and that video games are the only education you need. More »

Nintendo's Brainy Marketing Strategy

lsmith — Fri, 20 Jan 2006 18:00:36 EST

Next week, according to a Times piece, Nintendo will unveil their new "Keep Evolving" marketing strategy. At the center of the piece's look at the "Keep Evolving" marketing strategy is Brain Training a game that is a series of puzzles and questions and quizzes. Back at the Nintendo Game Summit a group of us spent stupid amounts of time huddled around Brain Flex and ended up talking about the teaser with Perrin Kaplan, who was wondering how do you market a title like Brain Flex. This "Keep Evolving" strategy might be what Nintendo came up with. Brain Training or whatever it ends up being called in the U.S. is one of the games I simply can't wait for in 2006. More »

Pervy DS Brain Training Game

Brian Ashcraft — Mon, 07 Nov 2005 17:35:39 EST

With brain games like Adult DS Training racking up major sales, the salacious sex knock-offs were bound to pop up. With a title that sounds like massage parlor, Lucky Star Moe Drill makes players do a series of math problems and memory exercises as schoolgirls and maids give blow-by-blow descriptions. The evidence that the proper "brain games" actually make you smarter seems questionable, but I can say a 100 percent, without a doubt, playing this game makes you dumb as shit. More »

Between Rounds of Kart, Kaplan Queries Journos

lsmith — Mon, 07 Nov 2005 12:39:04 EST

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In between fierce rounds of Mario Kart DS at Seattle s Chop House, Nintendo's Perrin Kaplan came over to our table and had a seat. After asking what we were most impressed with from the summit (Brain Flex), she wanted to know how to market a game like that (a portable IQ test, more or less). How do you market a game to adults, when the DS in America still chiefly appeals to youth? Should Brain Flex ads appear in Good Housekeeping? Kaplan herself said she didn t plan to buy time on MTV for the game - she s right, the hardcore know about it already and will pick up the brain teasing title and its sibling Brain Training. So, readers, how do you reach an older set for these two games? Send lockbox DS kits to retirement homes? Send those same kits to corporate America and hope to pique their interest? More »

Nintendo DS Reads Your Chicken Scratch

lsmith — Wed, 26 Oct 2005 17:40:59 EDT

Games Industry reports that Nintendo's DS will soon have the abilityt o recognize handwriting. Technology from the Zi Corporation will allow "natural handwriting recognition previously only available to PDA and smartphone users," Milos Djokovic said in a press release. What does this mean, though? Better picto chat? More of the Brain Training (see image) games coming out? More »

More Dic Touching

Brian Crecente — Wed, 05 Oct 2005 09:00:26 EDT

The next wave of brave new non-game DS titles have been unveiled in Japan at a recent conference put on by Nintendo. The games sound pretty interesting and include a Japanese to English follow up to the Korean dictionary with the best game name ever (Touch Dic): More »