Both Brain Training games are coming to America and Europe. The first one, called Brain Age: Train Your Brain in Minutes a Day, will be release April 17th for the small price of $19.99. At this price they should fly off the shelves. Will it be a success like it was in Japan? Will it bring older players to the DS? We’ll see in the weeks following its launch.

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The second game, called Big Brain Academy, will be released a month later, May 30th.

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Continue reading for the Official Press release

Brain Age: Train Your Brain in Minutes a Day

What is Brain Age?

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 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.

Why is brain training good for you?

We all know as we grow older our bodies change and it becomes important to regularly exercise to maintain health and fitness. Our brain is no different. “Use it or lose it,” as the adage goes. New research indicates mental acuity may be strengthened, like muscles, with brain exercises.

That’s where Brain Age comes in.

But how does Brain Age work?

The Brain Age exercises are designed to stimulate your brain. Solving simple math and logic problems quickly, and reading aloud, have been proven to be effective methods of achieving this goal.

The distinctive Nintendo DS Touch Screen lets users write their answers with a Stylus pen, just as though they were writing on paper or using a Personal Digital Assistant or “PDA”. Furthermore, the Nintendo DS’s voice input identifies particular words you’ll speak during the Stroop Test.

Brain Age tracks your progression through each exercise with easy-to-read line charts. Consistently using Brain Age each day will open new exercises to test your ability.

Baby Boomers and test-prepping school kids alike want to challenge themselves and find ways to stay sharp. Brain Age acts like a treadmill for the mind. With the simplicity of the Nintendo DS, and Brain Age’s challenging and rewarding exercises, everyone can stimulate their DS brain, improving speed and accuracy of their game play.

Features

· The programme sets up a specialised regime especially for the user

· Use the built-in calendar to track and record your progress

· Results are displayed in easy to understand graphs

· Obtain a certain number of marks to unlock additional tests and challenges

· Also includes the popular sudoku numbers game

· Voice recognition system; answer certain questions with your voice

· Play with your friends using the DS wireless communication - only one game card is required, and up to 16 players can join in

· Send a free demo version to a friend through wireless download

Big Brain Academy

Enrol at the Big Brain Academy for the ultimate mental exercise regime. Find out how fast you can think; test your ability for logical thought; and turn that dull daily train journey into an intellectual keep-fit session. With Big Brain Academy, you can have fun while giving your brain a rigorous workout, playing across a series of mini-games designed to stimulate your mind. You can practice the challenges, go straight for the test, or even take on your friends.

Test yourself across five categories: Think, Memorise, Analyse, Compute and Identify. Each category offers three different types of game, adding up to 15 different kinds of brainteasers - and there are three different difficulty settings to push your cranial power. Whether you’re calculating the number of cubes contained within a structure, identifying quick-fire images or solving simple yet fast-paced maths problems, Big Brain Academy really gets the old grey matter working! Answer questions as quickly as possible against a 60 second time limit, and discover just how your brain measures up, as the friendly Dr. Lobe gives you the results of your performance.

Features

· Give your brain a vigorous work-out with 15 types of challenges across 5 categories

· Up to 8 players can play against each other, sharing one Game Card, with players ranked according to their reaction times and accuracy

· Earn bronze, silver or gold medals depending on your performance

· Send a demo of the game to friends using the Nintendo DS’ wireless technology

· Colourful, fun presentation mean these brainteasers are fun to play