Brain Age: Train Your Brain in Minutes a Day! DS
  • Publisher: Nintendo
  • Release Date: Apr 17, 2006
Brain Age: Train Your Brain in Minutes a Day! Image
Metascore
77 out of 100

Generally favorable reviews - based on 58 Critics What's this?

User Score
8.2 out of 10

Generally favorable reviews- based on 45 Ratings

Your Score
0 out of 10
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  • Summary: (Also known as "Brain Training For Adults" and "Dr. Kawashima's Brain Training") Brain Age: Train Your Brain in Minutes a Day for Nintendo DS is a fun, rewarding form of entertainment everyone can enjoy, as it helps players flex their mental muscles. Brain Age is inspired by the research of Professor Ryuta Kawashima, a prominent Japanese neuroscientist. His studies evaluated the impact of performing certain reading and mathematic exercises to help stimulate the brain. Brain Age presents quick mental activities that help keep your DS brain in shape. Activities include quickly solving simple math problems, counting people going in and out of a house simultaneously, drawing pictures on the Touch Screen, reading classic literature out loud, and more. You can also play sudoku, the number puzzle game which has become an extremely popular feature in U.S. newspapers. On your first day of exercise, you will take a series of tests and get a score that determines how old your brain is. This number is called your "DS Brain Age". By performing daily exercises just minutes a day over weeks and months, the better you'll get at the exercises and the lower your DS Brain Age will become. [Nintendo]… Expand

Critic Reviews

Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 40 out of 58
  2. Mixed: 17 out of 58
  3. Negative: 1 out of 58
  1. Detroit Free Press
    100
    What impressed us most was the possibility that a player just might get hooked on Conrad or Bronte and this little handheld game might actually spark someone to put down the electronic gadget for a while and pick up a literary classic.
  2. NintendoWorldReport
    85
    The polygonal, disembodied head of Ryuta Kawashima acts as your personal coach, and his quips are actually pretty amusing. Challenges are stripped down to just include what's necessary, and there's not much to fault, in that sense.
  3. The New York Times
    72
    Brain Age is meant to be played only a few minutes a day; the exercises lack enough variety to be played for very long.
  4. Computer Games Magazine
    30
    Don't be fooled: Your score is not an accurate measurement of intelligence. But whether you buy this game is. [July 2006, p.91]
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See all 58 Critic Reviews

User Reviews

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Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 23 out of 29
  2. Mixed: 2 out of 29
  3. Negative: 4 out of 29
  1. EvanB.
    10
    This game is worth getting just for the Sudoku puzzles alone! The training is unlike any other DS game out there...I still go back to this one after months of having it unlike an adventure game that I have conquered! Great family game!… Expand
  2. Watermelon789
    8
    Brain Age is like those game that came out of nowhere , and have a different scheme. Is lacking, not to many diversity , just finish to unlock all the content and nothing more. My big complain even if i enjoyed a lot , is that if you finished school and one of your families member gives you as a gift this game, please , is like having an insult.… Expand
  3. Eric
    7
    Addiction at first, later boredom.
  4. julianozuca
    4
    To enjoy Brain Age you may have to learn to write again, and that almost reduces the entire experience to frustration.

    The Good: Nice ideas f    or an innovative dual screen use; good time comparing graphs and drawings with other users; sketching individual stamps is great; funny interaction with doctor Kawashima! Sudoku.

    The Bad: Sometimes it just can't recognize your handwriting, and losing points for that is EXTREMELY frustrating; graphs are limited to one month per time, so you can't follow your progress in a long term; normal and hard modes are mixed in one graph, making your average fall when you try the hard mode.

    Good brain training programs, an overall delightful bright sound and the funny doctor's head floating around the screen don't keep Brain Age from being frustrating.
    The major problem here is the not-always-good handwriting recognizing system. Every now and then you'll find yourself scratching the screen here and there while watching the time going by without being understood; or being misunderstood, resulting in lost points anyway. In a nutshell, the pieces fall apart because of a structural defect.
    A little extra encouragement would have been nice too--like giving prizes for reaching higher age levels or completing sudoku--but it's not there. Add to that the disheartening mix between normal and hard modes in the graphs generation and we've got more problems than qualities.

    On the other hand some training programs like Low to High and Head Count and some tests from the brain age check feature like Connect Maze work pretty fine and are well-executed ideas, but that only sum up for a final disappointment feeling.

    In the end there's only a bitter taste in your mouth because it's easy to recognize a good opportunity wasted under technical issues.    … Expand

See all 29 User Reviews