I rarely play computer games. I don’t have the time, what with a 2 year old who’s potty training and silly long commute times. My little spare time gets devoted to writing, if I have the energy left.
Despite that, an ad on TV for the new Nintendo DS Lite caught my eye. It was not a flashy action packed yokey. Instead it showed a young boy playing Super Mario Brothers on the old NES game console. That made me chuckle, remembering back to playing that same game on same console when I was kid. But the ad comes in two parts; the second one shows a man (meant to be the grown-up kid I guess) playing the “New Super Mario Brothers” on the Nintendo DS Lite. Fuck. I was hooked. I wanted one. I wanted to play Mario Brothers again. And then, before our holidays, my wife goes out and buys it for me, along with the Super Mario Brothers game and that Brain Training one. An early birthday present she explained to me.
We did buy a Gameboy Advance a few years ago. I bought it for Sophie (my wife) so that she would stop using my PDA as a games system. After the initial novelty, we stopped playing fairly quickly. Sophie reverted to playing my PDA again. It wasn’t the games that were at fault, it was the screen. You had to be sitting under a strong light before you could see the screen properly. If you sit outside with it, you couldn’t see anything. I called it the Toilet-boy, because the best place to use it was when your sitting on the toilets with the light on overhead.
The Nintendo DS Lite has incredible brightness. It makes a world of difference. Can play it anywhere. It’s even brighter than my PDA and it feels more like a PDA with the touch screen and stylus. I have Advance Wars for the Gameboy Advance (Gameboy Advance games work on the Nintendo DS Lite too) and it’s such a difference to see it clearly. And over the holidays both of us played the handheld nearly all the time. I guess I’m one of those “Grey Gamers” that Nintendo have been marketing and seemingly managing to penetrate.
The New Super Mario Brothers is fun and playable. I thoroughly enjoy just playing. I have two complaints however; first you can’t save wherever you want, only after a castle level or spending “gold stars”. It’s a pain having to play through three to four levels before you can save. My second complaint is that I can’t get my wife off it. She hasn’t got the knack of Mario yet and finds the whole thing frustrating. She swings the Nintendo left and right as if the motion will save her from a mis-timed jump (a sure sign of a new gamer). But she’s addicted. She has even committed the carnal sin, played it in bed with me beside her trying to fall asleep. Something I wouldn’t have ever dared do myself.
Dr. Kawashima’s Brain Training is great too. However it makes me feel stupid, but I guess in a good way. Sophie is pretty much better at everything than me (besides Mario of course). She’s managed over a week to get the Brain Age of 20 (the lowest it can be according to the game) while I’m still being reported as 40. But the daily training is good, at least for improving mental arithmetic. It’s not perfect however because I started to realise a few cheats. For example, the “calculations X 20″ time how quickly you can do 20 simple calculations in your head. It deduces 5 seconds for each wrong answer. However, when if I’m not sure of the answer, it’ll take me slightly more than 5 seconds so, if I want the best time, I just answer wrong and keep going. Not really in the spirit of it. Still, the point is mental exercise and it’s good at that. I love the little features like graphing and comparing with other users and asking you to draw something from memory and then it compares it with the other users’ attempts. I wonder is there a “Learn French” version of Brain Training?
I’m tempted to buy more games… like Mario Kart that was one of my favourites from the SNES way back when. Still, I don’t think I’m going to become a World of Warcraft player anytime soon. I simply don’t have the commitment for it.
Update: I tried the “Brain Age Check” on Dr. Kawashima’s Brain Training, the day before coming home on my holidays and I got an age of 21! 
Comments (2)
That sounds awesome. I love my bro’s DS, he only got it less than a week ago and it’s pretty amazing. I’ll be buying my own one by the end of the month, if Apple doesn’t decide to release their new phone.
I too want a French learning game, that’s what led me to finding your blog actually. Here’s to them making it.
I must admit, it has relighted the inner gamer in me. I recently bought Mario Kart and I can’t stop playing it. I haven’t tried playing on line yet, but soon I’ll have broadband at home…
It would be cool if there was a French learning game based on Brain Training. I guess I’ll have to learn it the old way.
BTW, I hope now that you’ve found my blog, you’ll come back!