Brain Age: Train Your Brain in Minutes a Day [DS]

Brain Age, which uses rapid fire math and memory puzzles, seems like the ultimate novelty game. It even arrives with a proclamation that playing a short time each day can actually train your brain, just like many repetitions of small weight exercises can tone muscles. We can't vouch for the mental and physiological effects of this non-game, but it turns out to be entertaining enough to keep us coming back for a few minutes each day.

It's like WarioWare with math. One of the elementary puzzle sets fires out 100 simple arithmetic problems; the goal is to write each solution on the touch screen as quickly as possible. Another puzzle flashes a grid of numbers for a couple of seconds, and players must then touch a matching grid of checkboxes in order from the lowest number to highest. Other tasks use reading and handwriting, as well as slightly more intensive memory and math skills.

It's all based on the notion of a brain age, with the optimum being 20. A quick test determines your brain age by flashing the names of colors -- red, blue, etc -- and asking you to speak aloud the actual color of the text. The word 'black' might be written in yellow, which would be the answer. Faster scores indicate a younger brain age, and playing the game every day generates a grid to track your scores, progress, and hopefully an ever younger brain age.

All of the puzzles are presented through an interface that's very light on visual stimulation, the better to focus players on the problems at hand. The disembodied, digitized head of designer Dr. Ryuta Kawashima floats around to give instructions, but during each task you won't see much more than a basic background and letters or numbers.

There are two nice touches; one is that text size and handedness (left or right) orientations are easy to change, and the other is that the entire enterprise replies upon the DS being held open like a book, which proves to be quite comfortable.

You won't only train your brain by using the software -- you'll have to train it in order to get started. The voice recognition is generally good, but we had to enunciate the word 'blue' in a very specific way for it to be recognized. The handwriting recognition scores slightly lower on the scale; our 8s and 9s were sometimes thought to be some other number, leading to lower scores.

The technical issues are frustrating to be sure, but Brain Age is a surprisingly engaging puzzle non-game. Through the progress grid, there's an immediate level of satisfaction (as long as your score goes up) and the multiplayer math is more immediately fun than battling Pokemon. Sudoku devotees even get 100 unique puzzles to tide them over until the all-Sudoku cartridge is released.