Dr Kawashima's Brain Training: How Old Is Your Brain (Nintendo DS)

As far as my health is concerned -taking my Type-1 Diabetes into account of course- I would say that I'm in fairly good trim. I mean I'm not a fitness fanatic like Mr. Motivator, but I do go out for 20-30 minute runs at least 5 days a week, and I try to drink as much water as possible. But according to one Dr. Ryuta Kawashima, exercise is also required for the brain. Yep! If you don't train your brain it'll end up with the beer belly of a 1980's dart player. Dr. Kawashima's Brain Training is a DS game card that was apparently designed to make your mind as sharp as a tack...and as quick as a cartoon character jumping off his or her seat after sitting on one.The Brain Training tour guide begins with Daily Training. First you need to fill in some info, in particular the current date and your date of birth. Then after an initial exam to determine how much belly fat that thing behind your eyes has it's time to start your training. At first you'll only be able to do Calculations x20 and x100 and Reading Aloud, but by collecting stamps by going through these tests every day you can unlock other interesting tests to engage yourself with. For example Triangle Math can be a stern trial with two layers of calculations to do. In general it's a nice setup as it gives you the incentive to come back, day after day, to do the tests; and the numerous graphs allow you to keep up to date with your progress and may even motivate you to work harder...I mean mentally.The tests can be really fun to do, and I've sometimes found the urge to do certain tests twice in a day even though the game will only record the first set. Also I believe they can have a positive effect on your brain. I was pretty good at maths while I was at school, and it showed in the Calculations x20 and x100 tests. After a couple of rusty turns I really started to motor. A lot of times I was actually able to focus my eyes on the next question while I was writing out the answer for the current one, and I've regularly clocked sub 20-second times for Calculation x20.Another test that appeared to show improvements in my head was the appropriately named (no really, it is!) Head Count. I struggled with it at first, but after a few goes my brain picked up on a method to keep count of how many little men were in the house, even when there were some entering and exiting the house at the same time. I didn't enjoy all the tests though. For some reason I've continually struggled to memorize words in the Word Memory test. Those 4-letter words just don't wanna stay in my head, and out of a possible 30 the best I've managed (at the time of writing this review) is only 11. It makes me wanna think of 4-letter words of a different kind!Brain Training can hold game data for up to 4 players. But if you don't want any friends or family recording anything, or they don't wanna take the game too seriously, you can always point them in the direction of Quick Play. Here they can try out the stroop test (saying the colour of the words on screen), some maths problems or a quick Sudoku puzzle. It's a nicely presented mode that gets the player use to the feel of the game, and with no scores recorded here they don't have to worry about putting in an embarrassing performance either. The pressure's off.The final mode to talk about here is Sudoku. For anybody who doesn't know the aim of Sudoku is to fill up all the squares in a 3x3 grid with the numbers 1-9 without having the number appearing twice in any row, column or mini 3x3 grid. It seems like a game aimed at the secretaries who drink Diet Coke on their elevenses; but actually the game is surprisingly addictive. There's a large number of different puzzles to tackle, each one getting progressively harder and somehow managing to drag you in and keep you in until you've successfully completed them. It's actually given me a craving to tackle Sudoku puzzles in newspapers and magazines, although I don't expect that craving to last forever.OK, onto the negatives. I`ve played this game for a good solid month, and I'm not entirely convinced by the accuracy of the Brain Age Check. Some days I perform really well on the test and my score is somewhere in the mid 20's, but then there are days where I perform just as good on the test but only get a score somewhere in the mid 40's, leaving me puzzled as to how the DS card came to such a conclusion. Furthermore I've had the occasional bad day where my thinking was too slow and I gave a few wrong answers, yet I still managed a score in the early 30's. All this has lead to me having a brain age graph of numerous and vigorous up and down points, and has left me uncertain as to what kind of condition my brain is actually in.There are a couple of other flaws to mention as well. When it comes to the microphone the game will sometimes claim you gave the wrong answer during the stroop test, even though you actually and clearly called out the correct answer. It's annoying, but it's even more annoying during the Voice Calculation test when you're trying to pronounce the correct answer of "six." The game thinks you've said "five" or "seven" or "two", but never "six." One time I said "six" to the same question a dozen times and tried pronouncing the number a dozen different ways, but it would still not accept the answer -even though it was correct- and it lead to me gnashing my teeth so heavily I needed replacement dentures afterwards.Also the game doesn't always understand what letters you've tried to write down during the Word Memory test, and can lose you some valuable time whilst you're trying to write down as many words as possible. If you're buying this game boxed and complete then there should be a small booklet in the case showing you how to write the letters on the touch screen so that the game will understand them. But if not you'll be doing a fair amount of irritating trial-and-error writing before you finally get what you want.If you can put up with its notable flaws then Dr. Kawashima's Brain Training is a DS game card worth slotting into the back of your DS or 3DS. The presentation is tidy; the various tests are intriguing enough to tackle again and again; and those Sudoku puzzles are strangely hypnotizing in a good way. Hey, wait a minute...the 3 goes THERE...now I'm making progress again!Final Score: 7/10

I bought this for my Christmas DS lite. Since then I've barely missed a day! I'm really enjoying it; a little workout for my brain every day! Unlike other reviewers I have had no problem at all with voice recognition on the famous Stroop test (the one where you have to say the colour a word is written in, rather than the colour the word says - surprisingly tricky!). I'm also having no difficulty with character recognition when writing numbers on the screen. So I've had a wonderful experience with this. If you do have difficulty with either of these it will impact on your game play as the computer will not register your speedy responses and will mark you down (or wrong).I find the animated head (that introduces the games and gives tips), very irritating, but its a small price to pay. The sudoku is an added attraction for me.You get to unlock more challenges the more you play, which certainly keeps up the interest; for me this has the effect of getting me to spend longer and longer on the programme every day as I feel compelled to do every challenge every day.I started with a 'brain age' of 64 (rather worrying!), and after a month, have reached the holy grail - a brain age of 20!Highly recommended. I also love Professor Latyon and the Curious Village and have bought Pandora's Box (but still too engrossed with Brain training to have started it yet).

This was one of the first "brain games" that I tried for the Nintendo DS. Starting at a rather scary brain age of over 80 years old I thankfully started to make some meaningful progress towards youth thereafter.There are some decent touches of humour - and some not so decent but it started off as great fun and as a first brain game I was pleased with it.However, that is where the fun started to fade away. After a couple of weeks the exercises started to feel repetitive and the attempts at humour were wearing thin.Also issues with handwriting recognition were becoming very apparent and which at times were immensely frustrating. On the whole the stylus input works well but some numbers and letters were constantly not properly recognised. Maybe I have appalling handwriting but I seem to be far from alone with problems in this area with the program.My mental age has improved (at least according to the program) so it may have proved its value and overall I give it 3 stars out of 5 for a reasonable effort. There are however now better such programs on the market and you might want to look at those as well.

We got the game without great expectations and were very pleasantly surprised. It's quite addictive although Dr Kawashima's "jokes" are a bit irritating. We thought that our 11 year old would play most of the games whilst Mum and Dad stuck to SUDOKU (which is incredibly well put together, easy to use and even gives you the tiny numbers in the corners option, so you can save your alternatives.)But the games are fun, not too long, and because he records your brain age just once a day stops anyone from hogging the DS. [That said I want a DS lite of my own please Daddy!]There are memory, quick thinking,and quirky little brain excercises and I will be keeping my training going. Any one who has a child enrolled in Kumon would appreciate this.[It's not so tedious.]Finally it makes use of the dual screen, microphone, character recognition features of the DS, and encourages gentle family competition.

Bought to help my autistic grandson (and me) and for a bit of fun. Needless to say with his savant IQ he makes me feel older than the software does. Great fun and can be embarrassing and amusing, especially when your better half ends up with a brain age of eighty two! Although an older piece of software it is about the best on the market if you want to challenge your mind a bit and sweep out the cobwebs. Good fun as well as useful