Was there ever a bigger surprise success in gaming history than Brain Age? The immensely popular edutainment title debuted with 43,000 sales in its opening month, and while it's a decent debut for this time of game, it certainly wasn't representative of how it would continue to sell. When all was said and done, Brain Age became the 4th best selling title on the Nintendo DS, selling just over 19 million (with an M) copies. It sold better than every Pokemon, Animal Crossing, and Zelda on the DS, which is a monumental feat. But it makes sense in retrospect; the DS was absurdly popular at the time, and in some parent's eyes, Brain Age was the perfect gift for their gifted™ kid to ensure they had the least amount of fun as possible while still technically playing a game. That's not really Brain Age's fault, of course, but it's hard to overlook that there isn't really a game here.

Pretty much all the brain training techniques contained in this game-sudoku, basic math, reading, etc.-are things that can be accomplished without use of this game, or a Nintendo DS in general. Its popularity at the time can't be understated, but the minigames offered here weren't anything special at the time, and the game is completely obsolete now. There's no real reason to come back to this game specifically, unless you have a specific attachment to Dr. Kawashima's low-poly floating head. Mechanically it works mostly fine, although voice and handwriting recognition issues are not uncommon. But there's nothing really wrong with this game, it just doesn't really serve a purpose. There's no doubt that Brain Age has a fair amount of charm, a trait that's common in retro software, but not enough to justify playing it today. It's a neat time capsule to an era that wasn't dominated by smartphones, but anything you'd get out of this game, especially in the modern day...well, you'd be better served finding it somewhere else. Gomen nasai, Kawashima-san.