“Brain power” – Dr. Kawashima’s Brain Training: How Old Is Your Brain?

[For this guest post, I am happy to welcome back Iain Farrell, who previously wrote about Sonic 3 and Mercenaries. You can find Iain on twitter as @iainfarrell.]

**Dr. Kawashima’s Brain Training: How Old Is Your Brain?** (Nintendo, DS, 2005/2006)

If by chance you’re old enough to remember, and you’re reading this so it seems likely you are, cast your mind back to 2005. Nintendo are on a roll. The Game Boy Advance has been a phenomenal success going through a host of popular iterations and they’ve just followed that with the DS which will go on to be a huge hit. Announced at E3 in 2004 I was lucky enough to be there. It wowed crowds with novel features like a touch screen and clever demos showing how the built in microphone and touch screen could be paired with the stylus to create new ways to play. We talked excitedly in demo rooms about the new Metroid game they teased which then took an unreasonably long time to arrive.

The hardware looked quite different to the design that ended up shipping, and in a pre-smartphone world the idea that people would connect to a wireless network and Picto Chat with each other seemed a bit of a stretch.

In addition to the new features was the ability to bring your library of games from the previous generation with support for GBA games, all bundled into a package with an extra nostalgic hook. The form factor was a throwback to the Game and Watch of the 80s.

All this context is important because the DS was bonkers in the best possible way. Little did Wii know that they weren’t done being crazy just yet.

The capabilities of the system invited all manner of cool software only possible on DS like The Rub Rabbits, Hotel Dusk, a portable library of 100 books and games where you’d need to close the lid to continue. This spirit of experimentation was never more present than with the 2005 release of Brain Training, or Brain Age as it was known in the US. It brought to prominence the research of Dr Ryuta Kawashima, a Japanese scientist who has devoted their career to neuroscience. To massively over simplify the premise of Brain Training is that we need to exercise our brains just like we exercise other parts of our body to keep them working optimally.

I adored Brain Training when it came out. I would take my DS everywhere with me so I could practice and give my grey cells a workout on the bus or tube. It’s worth remembering that the game was everywhere at the time. Patrick Stewart did the ads for it, they were on in the breaks during Countdown. My grandma and her sister, both in their 70s at the time, went out and bought one without any input from me. It was a moment for sure, but like all games, sooner or later it dropped off my daily schedule*. Starting to brain train again after over a decade away a few things stood out immediately.

Firstly, my brain was not up to the task in the way that it had been before so while I’m not a scientist, I can at least say that playing this game regularly made me better at playing this game.

The other thing I noticed was how bad the touch interactions feel on the DSi compared to modern devices. There have been many times when I’m hurriedly scribbling numbers to complete a game and I tried to write the correct number but the game misinterpreted it and I lose a point. It doesn’t really matter in the grand scheme of things but I can imagine that the recent Switch version does a better job. I’ll need to try and report back.

Over the course of a few days I built up my skills again, getting my age down to 25. Opening my DS every day has been a treat, the good doctor greeting me with encouraging words and a nice big stamp to mark on the calendar when I’d completed my training. Regular play opens up new modes as well as nice little touches like asking you what you ate for dinner and then asking you to recall days later. He really just wants to keep your brain healthy! I also enjoyed remembering that saying “glasses glasses” on the start screen makes him do something fun – if you have access to a system, try it.

The look and feel of the game is very barebones. It’s a coloured in wireframe for the most part but I do really appreciate the way that Dr K is rendered like a Virtua Fighter character. It’s an aesthetic that feels like it’s due a mainstream comeback at some point. The recent Bloodborne PS1 release has proven it can be compelling in 2022.

Shortcomings of the system due to age aside, Brain Training is a treat. In an age when everything is connected to everything else it doesn’t ask you to connect to an online service or tweet about your progress to “leverage” some sort of network effect. It exists only to make you better at the thing it thinks you should be better at and I really like that. It encourages time spent working on you. A simpler and more primitive version of quantified self but one that is probably healthier. If you can find a copy and think you might enjoy it I’d encourage you to grab it now. As with all older games they will eventually go up in price and so the best time to buy was probably a week ago. I’d also recommend the family friendly Big Brain Academy. It’s a giggle too and great with kids.

*I once made a solemn vow to play Splatoon 2 every day until I die but that didn’t stick either. Brain Training is in good company.