Brain Age/Walkthrough

Quick Play

Play a quick game without loading, or creating, a game profile. Activities for quick play consist of:

Quick Brain Age Check

This is one of the activities you'll be doing before your brain age is revealed.

This is the Stroop Test from the full Brain Age Check. In the Stroop Test words appear on the screen in different colours, either in red, blue, yellow or black. You say the colour of the word. There are fifty of these and you are timed. Depending on your time, you are then given a Brain Age. This test is less precise than the full check, estimating your Brain Age to the nearest 10 years.

Quick Training

Identical to Calculations x20 in Daily Training. Twenty calculations will appear on the screen and you will answer them one by one. The calculations will test you to add, subtract, multiply and divide. You will then be told how fast you did the task.

Quick Sudoku

Sudoku puzzles are given to you at random. Once you complete them you'll be given a time. Although if you make five mistakes then you have failed. Each mistake also adds 20 minutes to your time. Unlike in Sudoku mode, you cannot save & quit here.

Daily Training

Menu of the Daily Training mode.

Choose a game profile and play the minigames available (unlockable exercises are listed as "???" until you unlock them with enough day stamps). The activities are:

Calculations x20

Consists of 20 rapid fire simple math problems. Only addition, subtraction and multiplication problems appear in this game. All the problems use quite small numbers to keep it simple. The problem with the largest answer is 9x9 (81). An incorrect answer results in 5 seconds being added to your total time.

Calculations x100

Same as above, only with 100 problems instead of 20. Hard mode can be unlocked for this activity, which adds division to the mix.

Reading Aloud

Consists of reading through a small portion of classical literature as fast as possible. You don't actually have to read this aloud as there is no voice recognition for this game, but reading it aloud does help you to pronounce the tricky words and gives you a more accurate score. If you cheat (e.g. just skip through each page and don't read it) the game will say it is unable to calculate your score. Final score is measured in syllables per second.

Low to High

This activity consists of a number of squares that will briefly display numbers between 1 and 10. These numbers must then be tapped in order, from lowest to highest. Final score is measured in points.

Syllable Count

Activity consists of a random phrase being displayed on the top screen and a writing pad on the touch screen. The number of syllables must then be written on the touch screen. For example, in the phrase, "In for a penny, in for a pound" the correct answer is 9.

Head Count

This activity consists of counting people going in and out of a house. To start with, there is a select number of people, these must be counted. A short time later, a house will fall on them. People (which look almost exactly like men's room signs) will then move in and out of the house. After a while, the people will stop and the number of people remaining in the house must be written down. The activity is divided into 5 sections, with each being harder than the last. Hard mode can be unlocked for this activity and it makes the people move faster, as well as enter and exit through the chimney.

Triangle Math

This activity consists of adding and subtracting numbers in a difficult to explain pattern. Hard mode can be unlocked for this activity. Choosing hard mode adds division and multiplication problems to the mix, as well as increasing the amount of calculations that need to be made.

Time Lapse

This activity consists of writing down the time difference between 2 clocks.

Voice Calculation

This activity consists of answering simple, rapid fire math problems by voice. Because of the constraints with the voice recognition, answers to the problems are always 1 digit.

Sudoku

Sudoku helps the brain too and gives you a rest from the other exercises.

This mode is not featured in the Japanese version of the game.

Brain Age contains over 100 Sudoku puzzles, as a separate feature to the main game.

The puzzles are sorted into 3 difficulty levels: Basic, Intermediate and Advanced. Each difficulty level contains 36 Sudoku puzzles, plus 4 tutorial puzzles which give you tips on solving Sudoku.

Each puzzle can be attempted with or without cheat mode switched on. If you use the cheat mode the game will tell you if each square you fill in is correct or incorrect. This does make the game simpler but you are only allowed to make 5 mistakes per puzzle. Also, each mistake made with the cheat mode active adds a 20 minute penalty on to your time.

Multiplayer/Download

Four people can use the same cartridge. You can compare each others scores using the graphs.

This final mode is called "Download" in the UK and "Multiplayer" for the rest of the world.

Brain Age multiplayer is single card, meaning multiple DSes may play with 1 game card.

Calculation Battle x30

This is identical to calculations x20, only there are 30 problems and an incorrect answer does not penalize time, however, instead of just skipping the question, the game will simply force you to try again until you get it right.

Send Demo

The owner of the game can send a quick play demo to another DS. This can be done as many times, to as many DSes as wished.

Sudoku Download

You can download a Sudoku Puzzle Expansion Pack which will update your cartridge with new Sudoku puzzles in both Intermediate and Advanced sections. To do this go to a DS Download Station and follow the instructions Dr. Kawashima gives you.