Big Brain Academy

May 23, 2006

Welcome to Big Brain Academy, an institution where your instructing professor is a cartoon brain-part with a mustache and spectacles and your classroom is the touch screen of the Nintendo DS. The goal is to increase your brain weight so as to develop a truly meaty mind. It's the same basic idea as Nintendo's Brain Age, a game that isn't really a game, but a fun way to test your smarts and potentially improve your mind. After fattening up my brain a bit, I'm ready to share my superior knowledge of the title. I'll try not to lecture.

The first thing you should know is that Big Brain is not in any way a sequel to Brain Age, and it isn't made by the same people. Dr. Kawashima, the neuroscientist whose research acted as the base Brain Age, has not co-authored any scientific literature with this game's Professor Lobe. While Kawashima earned his doctorate from Tohuku University School of Medicine, the literally brainy founder of this academy found his calling after staring directly into the sun and yelling defiantly that someday, he would become just as bright. We plan to check his background and credentials before our final review.

As you might expect, Dr. Lobe has his own unique teaching style. So far it can be best described as visual, varied, and a bit random. Big Brain Academy looks quite friendly at first glance, with more of a shapes and colors rather than plain text, numbers, and white backgrounds. It doesn't look like it's designed to only appeal to kids, but it's silly and not too serious -- easy to pick up. There's no hand-writing or voice-recognition, but that means you won't have the game misinterpreting your input. There are definitely challenging activities in here, but the game definitely skews toward the cute and slightly weird.

For example, in order to break the ice with the net-kids, Dr. Lobe might start a lesson with "j00r keW1! Press any button to begin, n00b! LOL OMG!" It's actually worth mentioning that there aren't really lessons at this academy, and you pretty much direct your course of study on your own. Though things could possibly change in the final version, there were currently three options. The one in the middle, Test, is a good place to start.

Your brain will be rated (or weighed) in five categories: think, identify, compute, analyze, and memorize. Each category has three activities to measure your aptitude, with each activity taking about one minute to complete. Thinking games tend to be the most involved; one game asks you to look at animals and objects balanced on scales and determine which one is the heaviest (which can be tougher than it looks). Other games have you matching, solving text math problems by typing in the answer on a keypad, counting 3D cube structures (not all cubes are in view, so you'll have to do some analyzing. One of the more practical games has you counting two groups of change and picking the side with the most cents.

When you're done you'll be rated on your speed and accuracy to determine your brain's "weight", and be given a brain profile. It seems that Prof. Lobe acts as a guidance counselor too, giving what could be taken as career advice. Score highly in computation and analysis and you'll be matched to an investor. Do really badly and you'll have the brain of a caveman. Well, at least you can hunt and gather with the best of them. For me though, the results weren't incredibly consistent. I've been typed as a banker one day and a master architect the next. If I play again after lunch, I might be museum curator or fashion stylist. Going for a high score I actually ended up as Sherlock Holmes, but the one that's stuck is "musician".

The individual games seem to hold up and its kind of fun to have your brain tested, but I'm not convinced that I should pick up a guitar just yet. It seems that the game only saves your highest score, so whatever your profile is attached to that lucky/skilled performance you'll be looking at every time you bring up your profile. The game is a lot of fun to pick up and play, but rather than tracking your progress like Brain Age the emphasis here seems to be on getting a high score (or weight, rather). Whether this will affect its longevity is still up in the air. I'll keep beefing up the old noodle in the mean time, so expect a smart answer to this question in our review -- or at least an answer that incorporates a couple of shamelessly bad puns.