Nintendo Announce Brain Age Release Date

Nintendo has just announced the forthcoming dual launch of their Japanese smash-hits for the DS - Brain Age: Train Your Brain in Minutes a Day and Big Brain Academy.

Brain Age: Train Your Brain in Minutes a Day (releasing as Prof. Kawashima's Brain Training: How Old Is Your Brain? in Europe) launches on April 17 in the US and Q2 in Europe. Big Brain Academy launches on May 30 in the US, with a European release date still to be confirmed.

"Young or old, everyone looks for ways to get a mental edge," says Reggie Fils-Aime, Nintendo of America's executive vice president of sales & marketing. "Our brain-training series, led by Brain Age, builds on the popularity of word and number puzzles and acts as a treadmill for the mind."

It all sounds a bit like hard work (i.e., no fun) to us, but we are dying to see what all the fuss is about in Japan. Nintendo is clearly hoping to repeat the success that it's had in its homeland with these titles in America and Europe. Whilst there are plenty of naysayers in both of these territories, who feel that the titles are just ‘too Japanese-y’, SPOnG would like you to rewind just a few months back to October 2005. We seem to remember that it was the same naysayers who doubted Nintendogs would ever take off in the west. ‘Nuff said.

It’s interesting, and slightly sad, that Prof. Kawashima and his cheeky little face have been dropped from both the title and box-art of the US release of Brain Age. Plus the title has been inexplicably changed from Brain Training to Brain Age. SPOnG can only wonder what kind of twisted logic goes on in the minds of the execs at Nintendo of America’s high-powered sales and marketing pow-wows. Or if they just do whatever Reggie tells them.

Prof. Kawashima is not a made-up Nintendo character, but a real, prominent Japanese neuroscientist. His studies, which led to the development of these games, evaluated the effect of performing reading and mathematic exercises to help stimulate the brain. SPOnG feels that Nintendo is perhaps missing a trick by NOT involving him closer in the marketing of his games in America and Europe.

There is much talk of targeting Baby Boomers (i.e., your mum and dad) and non-gamers with these titles, which is perhaps not as far-fetched as you initially might think. The craze for the brain-training series in Japan has largely been fuelled by older folk, who traditionally would be considered to be uninterested in videogames.

Also the canny addition of Sudoku to Brain Age (which you can see here, clearly flagged on the box) is sure to appeal to an older market, who will consider the product a ‘new electronic puzzle game’ as opposed to a ‘videogame’. Players even turn the Nintendo DS sideways to make it feel more familiar, like a book. The more often users challenge themselves, the better they become at the tasks and the lower their estimated DS 'brain age'. Although SPOnG’s 80-year old Nan is still pretty much 'marbles intact', and we’re not sure if she’d like the fact that having an 80-year old brain is seen in the game as something of a handicap!

The second title in the series, Big Brain Academy (known as Brain Flex in Japan) offers players 15 fun activities that test their brainpower in areas like logic, memory, math and analysis. The coolest feature with Big Brain Academy is the fact that eight people can play with a single game card, and each activity takes less than a minute to complete.

Nintendo has also announced the price of these games for the US market. They are to be released at the budget $19.99 price point, which makes a lot of sense, seeing as they were released as budget titles in Japan. We await confirmation of the UK/European RRP with baited breath.

SPOnG will be watching closely as Nintendo roll out their advertising and publicity campaigns in America and Europe over the next few months. In light of the news from last weeks New Ways To Play event at London’s Science Museum, where Nintendo UK announced their intention to partner with MENSA and SAGA, we are also interested to see where these titles will be stocked at retail.

Are we likely to see Prof. Kawashima's Brain Training: How Old Is Your Brain being advertised alongside step-in baths and arthritis-beating brass jewellery in the back pages of the Sunday Telegraph Magazine and The Daily Mail's Femail at some point soon? Stranger things have happened.