Nintendo's first DS title for Wii U is Brain Training
UPDATE: Now available free in the UK for limited time.
UPDATE 13/6/14 10:30am: DS puzzler Dr Kawashima's Brain Training: How Old is Your Brain? is now available to download from the Wii U eShop in the UK.
Nintendo: 3DS will recreate Brain Age success
Mass market software range coming next year.
Nintendo is developing a range of mass market software for the 3DS to recreate the successes of DS casual games such as Brain Training.
Kawashima confirms new Brain Training
Nintendo's noodle work-out heading to 3DS?
Dr Kawashima – the boffin behind Nintendo's absurdly successful Brain Training franchise – has revealed that a third game in the series is currently in development.
According to Kotaku, neuroscientist Dr. Ryuta Kawashima broke the news in his new book, Goodbye Brain Boom.
No precise details are offered as the doc explains he has a confidentiality agreement with Nintendo but he does reveal that CEO Satoru Iwata didn't want to release another game in the series until they could achieve "something special".
Prof. Kawashima's Body and Brain Exercises
Fit or miss?
An extra Kinect game is lining up for the Japanese launch alongside Sports, Dance Masters and Sonic Free Riders on 20th November. It's a new Brain Age game from Namco Bandai. This strikes me as an unlikely pairing. Kawashima's Brain Training is Japan's most popular DS brand; what's this new iteration doing launching with a new peripheral for (and there's no denying it) Japan's least popular console?
Heart association teaming with Nintendo
Announcement due this afternoon.
Nintendo and the American Heart Association plan to make a joint announcement at a press conference in New York today.
BBC: Brain training doesn't train brain
Players get better at the games though.
Brain training games are no better at training your brain than browsing the internet, according to research going into a new BBC programme.
Brain Training heading up DSiWare
Both games due at US service launch.
The first two games that come out on the US version of the new DSi Shop will be the two Brain Training titles, Nintendo of America said yesterday.
Brain Training breaks UK chart record
Full UK Top 40 inside.
Mario Kart Wii hung onto the top spot in this week's UK All-Formats Top 40 as none of the top five changed places, while Brain Training managed to set a new record.
Miyamoto hushed up about hobbies?
Times report says so.
British newspaper The Times claims that Nintendo designer Shigeru Miyamoto has been told not to discuss his hobbies in public.
No Brain Training profits for Kawashima
He turned them down. Family unhappy.
Dr Ryuta Kawashima, known to millions as him what did the Brain Training for DS, has revealed he hasn't made a single yen off the profits.
Pac-Man creator worried about Brain Training claims
Wants to verify them.
Pac-Man creator Toru Iwatani believes it's important to make sure that games like Nintendo's Brain Training series aren't based on poor science.
UK Charts: Rockstar muscles in on top-spot
DS Lite launch shakes up the top 40
England may still be clinging to the hope of a World Cup win, but the dream is over for EA this week as Rockstar moves back into Liberty City and climbs straight to the top of the charts.
One From The Archive - Brain Training.
We all worry about something. Football aside, at this time of year it's skin cancer. And so we slap wads of sunscreen on all our precious bits before we go anywhere near the outside.
It pays to be a coward. My first experience of Brain Training was, appropriately enough, at the London Science Museum. Nintendo gathered us there to tell us about things like BT, Trauma Centre, Phoenix Wright and how brilliant they all were and how broadly the DS was going to appeal. So I sat in the audience, and when they cast around for people to go up on stage and actually undergo some actual brain training, I didn't so much avoid their gaze as roll my eyes back like Storm out of X-Men. Despite the commotion I made falling off my chair, three other worthy show-offs were picked, got up, and promptly failed to do sums like 3x7 for about ten minutes. Man. But you know what? When I started Brain Training in private, I wasn't much better.
It's easy to say that this is just me. Particularly since we already know, conversely, that Ellie Gibson's a genius. With the brains of a diplomat and the hat of a cowboy. But it's funny how stupid we all lazily are. Professor Kawashima, an actual Japanese brain expert, helped along with plenty of enthusiasm from Nintendo boss Satoru Iwata, lands headfirst (disembodied-head-first at that) on DS and it's his aim not only to prove this to us, but also to help us get back to where we should be.
As you'd expect from a Nintendo game, Brain Training is a simple idea very well executed - it just so happens that this one actually smartens you up. When you start off by scrawling your signature atop a game profile and inputting your date-of-birth, you're given various tests to compute your initial brain age. Chosen from a range of about a dozen - some of which remain locked for the first few days - these tests have you doing quick sums, saying the colour a word's written in, ordering numbers low to high and memorising words, among other things. From this the game computes your brain age. To begin with, mine was 80. Which is the worst possible.
Get ready for some mind games.
Nintendo has announced that Dr Kawashima's Brain Training: How Old Is Your Brain, the game that's designed to make idiots and old buffers more cleverer, is heading to Europe this May.
Hospitals using Brain Training
In Japan - where else?
Nintendo's Brain Training efforts have sold stupendous amounts in Japan - we all know that - but according to a report sourced by the Associated Press from Mainichi Daily News, it's not just the stupid children and anxious adults who are picking it up to find out whether their noggin's actually firing on all nerve structures: now doctors are recommending elderly folks in their care give it a go to help stimulate the mind.
We get our hands on and heads round Nintendo's brain trainer.
Games that make you more intelligent are right up there on our list of Things That Should Have Been Invented By Now, along with self-cleaning trainers, helium-based beer and a country-wide network of rollercoasters to replace all trains.
