Nintendo started a new trend by releasing DS Brain Age over a year ago. They have sold nearly five million copies of three Nintendo DS brain training games since the series launched in Japan. The games are based on the work of Dr. Kawashima, one of the country’s top researchers into brain imaging.
Brain Age hasn’t been released for BlackBerry, but we’ve found some other brain training software that has. Last week we brought you Filao’s Advanced Brain Trainer. And now we’ve found another great title from Magmic.
Magmic’s BrainUp
Magmic’s Brain Up is software designed to “train, strain, sharpen, and tickle your brain”. This is accomplished through a variety of mini-games designed to hone your skills at important tasks. You start the game as a lowly amoeba, but as your brain capacity increases through playing the various challenges, you get promoted to smarter and smarter creatures in the animal kingdom.
Evolving as You Get Smarter
There are 4 categories of challenges: memory, visual, math, and word. Each category has several games, and new ones become available the better you perform. The games are quick-paced and fun to play. Some of the games seem harder than others, but everybody probably has their own strengths, which is why you need to practice them all.
Remember the Symbol Order
Your guide along the way is a little green alien named Cortex. Cortex is there to explain the games, celebrate when you do well, and commiserate when you do poorly. I made him cry.
Magmic’s games typically look great, and Brain Up is no exception. The game has a clean interface, cool screen transition effects, and great graphics. On some of the word games, I had a little trouble reading the font at first, but after I played a few times, I was able to read it just fine. My favorite game was probably also the simplest game; it was equation chaining where you just type the answer to simple math problems as they are presented.
Equation Chaining
Count the Edges
With Brain Up, Magmic has released a solid entry into the brain training genre. Will it actually make you smarter? I don’t know, but you’ll have a blast finding out.
