Do a “brain age” test first
Editor’s note: This article comes from WeChat public account “machine core” (ID: gamecores ) , author: fifth _Klaus.
For Nintendo, the second half of 2019 is an interesting time period. After E3 face-to-face, Nintendo gave such a confident NS game “release list”.
Since July, each month has at least one NS exclusive work “Engulfing” the player’s wallet and time: “Fire Emblem Wind Flower Snow Moon”, “Another Chain”, “The Legend of Zelda Dream Weaver Island” , “Fitness Ring Adventure”, “Luigi Building 3”, “Pokémon Sword / Shield”.
Many players at home and abroad are guessing, will there be any exclusive works in December that will impact the Christmas business war? Then at the end of September, Nintendo played the Brain Exercise NS card without warning.
Although the weight of “Brain Exercise NS” is not as real as those of the older brothers, the “Brain Exercise” series has a special meaning to Nintendo. More than a decade ago, “Brain Exercise”, the “exploding influencer”, unexpectedly became a sales monster that widened the user interface.
Kawashima Ryota
Speaking of “Brain Exercise”, I have to mention that it is a super-long title like “light novel”: “Tomorrow’s DS Tore ニ の 监 Supervised by Professor Takata Kawashima, Joint Research of Future Science and Technology of Tohoku University”.
Looking back at the success of “Brain Exercise”, many people think that a sufficiently attractive game title is also a key part. Of course, discussions and analysis after success often fall into an infinite loop of whether existing existence leads to success.
But objectively, for people who have n’t crossed the millennium for a long time, such words as Tohoku University, Future Science, and Professor Kawashima Ryota really make people curious: What kind of scientific stuff is this?
To answer this question, we must start with Professor Kawashima Ryota.
No one can imagine that this is a game developed by a team of dozens of people in 3-4 months, which can have such an explosive influence and even be used in many Japanese variety shows.
“Brain Exercise DS” fully utilizes almost all the features of NDS. It can both write by hand and “listen” to the player’s words. It spreads well in the player group, and also successfully broke the game circle and attracted a lot of people. A large number of users from all ages, from children to the elderly.
According to Nintendo ’s own statistics, at the end of 2005, in about half a year, the sales of “brain training DS” in Japan exceeded 1 million. Such a good sales momentum has also driven the sales of NDS to a certain extent, achieving A bumper harvest of software and hardware.
Hot iron while hot, at the end of December 2005, Nintendo launched a new work “Professor DS Torenay, Supervised by Professor Takata Kawashima, Joint Researcher for Future Science and Technology of Tohoku University”.
This new “Brain Exercise” can be regarded as an enhanced version of the original work. On the basis of the original work, a variety of small games such as music performance, Chinese character synthesis, 5 × 5 short-term memory, and bacteria elimination are added.
However, although “Brain Exercise DS Enhanced Edition” has introduced more training games and improved the original mini-game experience, it still feels inadequate as a whole, and handwriting recognition and voice recognition seem to be inadequate. There are also often problems that cannot be accurately understood.
But in any case, the success of Brain Exercise DS and Enhanced Brain Exercise DS is beyond doubt.
In 2006 and 2007, these two works were successively launched in overseas versions, and they were also very successful. Western markets have a soft spot for Sudoku in the game, and many European and American players even use “Brain Exercise” as a Sudoku library.
As of October 2007, Nintendo’s financial report showed that the global sales of “Brain Exercise DS” was 9.66 million units, and that of “Brain Exercise DS Enhanced Edition” was 7.53 million units.
Nintendo Financial Report for October 2007
Now, the cumulative global sales of the two titles, “Brain Exercise DS” and “Brain Exercise DS Enhanced Edition”, have already exceeded 10 million, reaching an astonishing 190.1 million and 14.88 million, making them truly Sales monster.
Global cumulative sales as of September 2019
After the NDS version of “Brain Exercise”, Nintendo also released “Brain Exercise DSi Literature / Science / Sudoku Sudoku” adapted to DSi camera functions around 2009, adding to the original framework. “Level Challenge” mode.
Launched on December 24, 2008
Launched April 22, 2009
In 2012, Nintendo launched a sequel to “Brain Exercise” on the 3DS platform, “5 Minutes of Ghosts”, supervised by Professor Takata Kawashima from the Institute of Medical Research, Tohoku University, referred to as “Brain Exercise 3DS Devil Training” “.
“Brain Exercise 3DS Devil Training” introduces the Devil Training Mode on the basis of the original game mode to train the player’s attention and “working memory” ability more specifically.
Working memory is a model proposed by Alan Badley and Graham Hitch in 1974 to describe the structure and processes that the brain uses to temporarily store and process information. The devil training mode in the game is worthy of the name, and the difficulty has increased by more than one level.
Take numerical calculations. The “ghost calculation” in the devil training mode requires players to accurately answer the previous question while calculating the current calculation. A more advanced test is to answer the first two or even the first three The answer to the question. This training method can indeed be well trained for the working memory mechanism.
Write the answer to the previous question while remembering “9 + 0 =?”
Yuanzu brain exercise
Speaking of which, “Brain Exercise” is not an exclusive work of the Nintendo platform,The same classmates of Brain Exercise have appeared on other handhelds, consoles, and even arcades.
Although these works are different from the titles of Nintendo’s “Brain Exercise”, they also highlight a feature of “brain training”, which can better prove their “blood”. These works are also supervised by Professor Kawashima Ryota It is true that the teacher went out of the same door.
After the NDS version of “Brain Exercise” became popular in 2005, Sega brought it to the PSP platform in October of the same year, entitled “Professor Takumi Kawashima Supervisor of Tohoku University” .
Preview of “Brain Exercise PSP”
Although there is no essential difference in the gameplay of this “brain training PSP”, because there is no touch screen, most of the questions are presented in a selected form, and the types of games have been reduced a lot.
The biggest difference between it and Nintendo’s Brain Exercise is that it doesn’t have the image of Professor Kawashima Ryota. Needless to say, this head image is too deeply rooted, and it is very easy to remember, the lack of it always makes people feel that taste.
Subsequently in 2006, Sega also released “Brain Exercise PSP 2”, but it did not set off a wave, and has not continued to launch sequels since then.
“Brain Exercise Kinect” Japanese TV commercial
On the host platform side, in 2010 Bandai Nanmeng Palace once launched a “sports answer new し い 脳 ト レ” on the Xbox 360. At that time, of course, the main game was Kinect’s somatosensory gameplay. The body can not be idle while brain training. With. However, the version without the basic “brain training” gameplay has not been promoted.
In 2006, there was even an arcade version of “Brain Exercise”, titled “な で ん な で smithing”, this arcade versionIt actually supports four-player battles, but playing brain training games in the arcade hall doesn’t feel right.
“Brain Exercise” Arcade Edition
Nintendo’s “Brain Exercise” may be the most successful, but if we discuss Yuan Zu’s “Brain Exercise”, it is really not “Brain Exercise DS”.
From 2004 to 2005, two “Knowledge Educational Toys” cooperating with Ryuta Kawashima was born. This intellectual education toy is the real ancestor “Brain Exercise”.
脳 力 ト レ ー ナ ー
The so-called educational toys refer to educational toys, toys that can help children learn or can promote children’s intellectual development can be classified into this category.
This “brain trainer” focuses on training scientific thinking in numbers. In addition to calculations, it also includes reading numbers 1 to 120 quickly and loudly, and remembering 30 numbers and sequences in 2 minutes. Completely inherited in “Brain Exercise NS”.
In addition to the red version of “Brain Trainer” that trains science thinking, there is also a “Edition of 脳 力 ト レ ー ナ ー 音 読” and “Brain Trainer Reading Edition” which trains liberal arts thinking. This version focuses on training children’s liberal arts thinking skills, including reading pseudonyms and Chinese characters, reading “One Hundred People” and a collection of songs.
As Yuan Zu’s “Brain Exercise”, these two “Brain Trainers” also performed exceptionally, and their cumulative sales exceeded 200,000 sets. They are also considered as terrible monsters in educational toys.
Conclusion
“Brain Exercise NS”, released on December 27, 2019, combines the characteristics of Joy-Con joysticks to launch a lot of good new gameplay, but after all experience, the innovation of this game still cannot be compared with its predecessors. It may be more appropriate to feel nostalgic.
Many of the quick game modes of the “brain training” version of NS support two-player games. It is perfect for parents and sisters of Amway or with their siblings.
It’s not hard to be wrong. Nintendo did not hope to create another sales myth in “Brain Exercise NS”. Instead, it aimed at the use case of the family. I hope that more people can experience the fun of the game than train the brain. Isn’t bringing joy a more effective health secret?