Professor Kawashima’s Brain Training

This week will see the release of another addition to Nintendo's Touch Generation series.

Simply titled Brain Training, it does exactly what it says on the tin. It helps train your brain by giving it arithmetic puzzles to work out, and also other stimulating tasks such as reading aloud classic literature via the Ds built in microphone. These things all equate to help stimulate the brain, as the main goal of the title is to get your overall brain age down to a younger figure.

The games themselves were created by scientists as a way to help delay the onset of Dementia, and has therefore taken the Japanese market by storm having sold over 5 million copies in total. The BBC is currently reporting that the title is being used in classrooms across Japan, though not in your typical class room full of hyperactive children, but in-fact in classrooms filled with Japan's older population.

This audience is generally one that hasn't had much, if any experience at all when it comes down to video games. Though this is an audience that's flocking to try out this title. A member of the class explained to the BBC their reasoning behind attending these lessons:

"I'd never seen these kind of computers or games before," says Shikoko Koyama. "I saw an advertisement about this class and I thought I'd give it a try. But I don't really get it," she added with a grin.

As I'm sure you can tell, this is a title that has graped the imagination of both older and younger gamers, something I cant remember a software title doing since Tetris. These types of titles all bode well for Nintendo's current philosophy of providing simple 'games' that bring something new to the video gaming industry. This in turn helps expand the market by introducing a wider audience. As you can see with a title such as Brain Training this has worked in Japan, now what is going to be interesting is to see if the game can attract the same diverse following when the title is released in the UK.