Brain Age is another one of those games from Nintendo that isn't really a game. To put it simply, Brain Age is a 15-minutes-a-day brain-challenge. I would go as far as saying Nintendo has made sure it doesn't look like a game so that it isn't limited only to the game market. I've been seeing ads for Brain Age in the most random of places - like Newsweek and my parent's copy of Real Simple Magazine. It's paying off. A third of gamers in Japan who bought the Brain Age series are over the age of 35 - an age generally seen as nearly untouchable in the game market.

You play the game with the DS held sideways, which makes more sense in Japan, where you write vertically. It still works though, since it's giving the impression of an electronic book and reading things side by side is more natural due to our eyes' horizontal view.

The idea of the game is to spend a few minutes everyday trying your best at simple challenges. Once completed, you'll be told your brain age. Since your brain's ability to perform is at its best when you're 20, it's the highest brain age score you can obtain. By training everyday, the goal is to have your brain be at the same age you are, or better.

Professor Ryuta Kawashima's disembodied head floats around the screen to give you instructions and take part in useless chatter. He's a funny character, and his little expressions make me laugh, although he's far from visually impressive - which is obviously what this game lacks. It's as though someone put Microsoft Word on a DS.

Head Count is probably my favorite - try to keep up with how many people are inside the house as people move in and out at a fast pace.

Little tests like this one are surprisingly fun and challenging for being so darned simple.

You create a profile with your signature and begin your daily training. There are around 10 different types of challenges you can practice with. Each challenge you complete is scored and put on a graph so you can follow your progress. Here's a small breakdown of a few of the games, that aren't already shown in the pictures:
Low to High: a small group of numbers are shown for a moment then hidden, and you have to click the numbers out of memory from the lowest to the highest.
Calculations x20/x100: Simple math problems are shown on the left, and you have to quickly solve them by writing the correct answer on the right screen.
Stroop Test: Say the color but not the word. Example: The word "Black" appears, but it's colored yellow, so you say into the microphone "Yellow".
There's also syllable count, word memory, speed counting, and a variety of others.

You really can't play this game for hours on end. It only records data for each challenge once a day, and then you can't do any more until tomorrow. So it keeps you coming back because you want to improve. Who knew doing simple math would be so much fun?

It's much more effective with multiple people playing though. Brain Age allows up to four people to play on the same cartridge. Comparing everyone's graphs to one another and trying to have the best brain age is so much more fun than playing it by yourself. Competition always adds a little something extra to the playing field. Sometimes the Professor will have you draw pictures of various things from memory and then compare it to his drawings. And although it's cool to see how much you suck at drawing compared to a computer program, it's so much more worth-while to rip on your friends for how horrible they are at it too.

The game understands hand writing very well, and it's very rare that it messes up the numbers that you write. It happens though. Oh it happens. And when it does? You get pretty ticked about it. It also seems to have a hard time understanding people when they say, "Blue" - although I've found little to no problem with that one. It is humorous watching people start yelling "BLUE!" at the DS, as though raising your voice and shouting makes a computer understand you. The recognition isn't totally there, but once you understand what it does and doesn't like, you hardly have a problem with it.

Brain Age is fun for everyone, and at $20 it goes to show you don't need high-end graphics with an expensive price tag to have fun.

Verdict: Simple and fun. $20 is the perfect price.