Alex lent me his NDS the other day so I could duel Keith in Brain Age, and I handily lost the match as well as 2 rematches; even though Keith had a handicap of using the incorrect orientation. My excuse is that it was my first time playing and my brain isn’t trained, even though Brain Age is incredibly popular in Japan and now North America. T mentioned that one of our friends, Mike, was able to complete the activity that we played in 8 seconds. That is, to answer 35 addition, subtraction, or multiplication questions with operands less than 20 as quick as possible.

8 seconds may seem pretty incredible but I think it is doable; although I was no where close, with my best being between 35-40 seconds. I had several problems though, first my writing wasn’t recognized in some instances, and I got thwarted all three matches by 8×3. FYI, 8×3 does not equal 11.

If I were to overcome those problems, I don’t think I could reach 8 seconds. But we brainstormed a couple of ideas on how to speed it up. First, after playing the game a lot; it devolves from actual math to memory association. If you see a certain series of characters in a row, you will know instantly what the answer is. Secondly, you pipeline as you would in say DDR; which is a geeky way to say that you are looking a question or two ahead when you’re writing the answer to the current problem.

Now, if you can do that, you can get a great score. But guess what, you don’t “train” your brain and you don’t get any smarter. Brain Age is a scam, even the other parts of it (Sudoku and counting syllables) won’t help you to consider, for instance, who to vote for in the next election. Yes, Brain Age will not help you to vote against George Bush #3.

Posted by Kevin in Blogs Tags: dumb, games, nintendo