I spent every. single. day. playing Brain Age in elementary school for like 2 years straight. My times tables? Immaculate. Connecting letters to numbers? A breeze. Sudoku? Child's play compared to my mathematical prowess. Go ahead, ask me what 2 x 7 is. Still don't believe me?

My prefrontal cortex has expanded so far beyond human comprehension that my head is exactly like Sheen's in that one episode of Jimmy Neutron where he becomes mega smart. Even MENSA had to turn me away for being too mathematically skilled, which I can understand with jealousy being a disease and all that jazz. Any reviews that state that this game doesn't teach anything or improve your brain power are coming from those that are simply smooth-brained and cannot fathom the concept of completing the Head Count and Low to High mini games without their neurons short-circuiting. I can understand how these preschool-tier mini games are mentally taxing and labor-intensive on the common man, but I implore that any self-respecting individual with a thirst for knowledge consult Dr. Ryuta Kawashima's disembodied head on how to enhance their prefrontal cortex, lest you continue to live your life with a flaccid hippocampus.

Lets not even get started on my artistic skills since I started Dr. Kawashima's daily mental exercises. Even though his drawings are rather sub-par for a college graduate, mine are what The Louvre has been BEGGING to have on their measly walls. Between you and me, I think Dr. Kawashima gets jealous of how much more detailed and talented I am at drawing than he is, because more often that not he HAS to give some little bullshit critique on my work. I could draw a giraffe PERFECTLY and he'll be like "Erm you need to focus on the neck...". Like alright buddy, keep that same attitude when I ride to the highest echelon of artistry and sell a booger on canvas for $540 million bucks. Like I said before, jealousy is a disease, and if you dedicate your days to playing Brain Age, that jealousy seems to infest your closest colleagues and peers.

This all having been said, Brain Age is just simply NOT ENOUGH if you're an average Joe or Susan. If you're desperately seeking arithmetic growth for reasons major or shallow, you MUST also play Brain Age Express Math, Sudoku, and Arts & Letters for the Nintendo DSi, as well as Brain Age 2, Brain Age: Concentration Training, and Dr. Kawashima's Brain Training for Nintendo Switch. It is imperative that you play these games consecutively everyday for a minimum of 20 years before you see even a modicum of change in your prefrontal cortex, and that minimum is being on the generous side of my estimation. Now I know you're all DYING to ask me how these subsequent games helped me achieve my mathematical and artistic mastery in life, the truth is: I simply did not need the additional training to get to where I am today. My desire for the highest tier of academic prowess was kickstarted when I was in utero, therefore I came into this world with an IQ that cannot be humanly measured, and these additional games are merely children's building blocks. No I will not elaborate further on my IQ, please respect my privacy.

I do have to extend my most sincere thanks to Dr. Kawashima, not only as a fellow contemporary of intelligent society, but also as a colleague and formerly a teacher-- as I strongly believe in my heart of hearts that I have surpassed the teacher, and now he is MY student. If anyone has read this review and has been thoroughly enlightened by my statistically correct and impressive perspective, I highly encourage you to embark the pursuit of mathematical and creative genius by playing Brain Age for Nintendo DS.

TLDR (for my folks that cannot read more than a paragraph without a major crisis ensuing); I am smarter than Dr. Kawashima and (maybe) you could be too if you play this game and it's successors.

Pros: Comprehensive work plans and exercises to help meet your desired Brain Age goals, silly little pictures to keep you engaged in your prolonged learning regimen, funny noises to accommodate the elementary-level inteligence you will harbor when you first play Brain Age, and Dr. Kawashima gives you encouraging words most of the time.

Cons: Dr. Kawashima RUDELY falls asleep on you if you study late into the night, do not expect Dr. Kawashima to respect your creative talents... he can never just give you a compliment for some reason.

As someone that has played Mother and knows this game like the back of my hand, I played this patch to determine whether I could recommend this or not to friends of mine that haven't played Mother yet. I can firmly say that I do NOT recommend this patch at all. Believe me, I went into this play through with keeping a first-time player in mind, but even then it was hard for me to justify and recommend the changes this patch makes.

Mother 25th Anniversary Edition aims to fix some of the main issues players experienced when playing the original version of the game, such as the random encounter rate, the vagueness of the overworld map, navigating areas such as Duncan's Factory, and the sprite designs. While a majority of first time players seem to like these changes, I find a majority of them a major flaw in this patch and it doesn't even really feel like a Mother game to me.

To start, let me give some credit where it's due on some things. I'll say that the random encounter rate is a major setback that I think almost everyone that's played the original Mother game can agree on. There's been times where I haven't even moved a pixel and I ˆstillˆget into a battle, which is lame as hell. I do appreciate that this patch tweaked the encounter rate to where it's not so bad. Personally I don't think the original encounter rate is unbearable to play by any means, but I do understand where other players would put the game down entirely for this reason alone. That said, it almost felt like there weren't enough enemies this time around, and that encounters were scarce. For example, I hardly ran into any zombies in the Cemetery or Rosemary's House, making these areas feel more barren and useless than the original.

This patch also adds additional XP and money during battles, making leveling up easier to achieve as the game progresses. On some level, I do think the XP boost is a bit too hand-holdy for first time players in the sense that battles go by a lot quicker, and I didn't feel that this patch provides a decent challenge for the player to feel rewarded after defeating tougher enemies. I'm also someone that believes that the original game isn't as grind-focused or "insanely difficult" as other players say it is and that players don't need to spend hours grinding for XP in order to progress, so that's why I feel the XP boost makes the battle system more dumbed-down than it should be. Maybe part of it stems from the Starmen.net walkthrough advising to grind to ridiculously high levels of XP to progress, or maybe some people haven't played other NES/Famicom RPGs enough to realize that (excluding Mt. Itoi) Mother isn't so brutal... but who knows.

One other benefit of this patch is that it applies Tomato's translation of Mother's script from the original Famicom version of the game, which falls in line more with the quirky script that players are familiar with when they play Earthbound and Mother 3. Personally I like both Tomato's and Phil Sandhop's English translations all the same, but I know there's some players that find Sandhop's translation a bit dull or dry. Tomato's translation captures the essence of what makes the Mother series so entertaining and sometimes heartwrenching, and for that I can't complain.

With my positive points listed above, unfortunately the con's I have definitely outweigh the pros. For starters, the graphic overhaul. Mother absolutely did not need updated graphics to match the clay models, and the colors are oversaturated & harsh compared to the OG's muted tones. Again this is a major personal preference of mine, but I think the Peanuts-esque designs of the original character sprites are super charming and synonymous with the world taking place in America. Even the lettering in this version is too chunky and awkward to read. I don't mean to be harsh to whomever did the updated graphics and sprites since I know they want people to experience Mother as much as myself, but why fix something that isn't broken?

Another con is that the overworld map feels too simplified & hand-holdy at times, and I find that the shortcuts take away some of the exploration and curiosity from the original game. Like, a big factor in a RPG is exploring the environment around you, and this patch takes away that factor by adding obvious shortcuts to areas that you would otherwise need to explore, such as adding a direct shortcut from Ninten's house to the Zoo, or adding path tiles and extra trees to the entrance of Mt. Itoi. The original didn't feel super vague with where Ninten and the crew needed to travel to, and this patch feels like the player is too inept to travel beyond a clear path is laid out. The only time where this simplification is beneficial is when Ninten goes to Duncan's Lab, but anywhere else it's not needed. Also, I don't understand why the Cemetery or Snowman got expanded, considering neither area is hard to navigate in the first place. If it was added to give the player more area to explore, I still wouldn't understand why due to the fact that you're not in these areas for a long time.

Perhaps my biggest complaint falls back slightly on my previous point about the XP system, but this is in regards to how characters level up. This patch levels up Ninten's crew by some extra points when they join the team, which feels like overkill when you factor in that this patch already gives you an additional XP boost. In fact, Teddy is already level 25 when he joins the party, whereas in the original he was at level 18. Teddy is the strongest playable character in the game (aside from Pippi), and leveling him up in the original game was already quick and easy... so this additional leveling boost feels pointless & again takes away the feeling of a decent challenge in gameplay. In turn, it also renders the plot of Mother as weak and uninspired.

By the time I got to Giegue/Giygas, it felt like my play through was just one big slop to trek through with little to no reward. Mt. Itoi, famously known to be untested by the time of Mother's release, was not nearly the death trap it was in the original & I felt no sense of accomplishment for my party when they won battles. Again, I strongly feel this takes away the point of having these kids overcome the things that they feared in order to save America from Giegue's plans. How can the gang feel empowered to face Giegue and save America when everyone in the party basically had a cakewalk getting from Mother's Day to Mt. Itoi? I find this especially irritating when you consider Lloyd's perspective of being bullied as a weakling, but in my playthrough of this patch Lloyd had too many bottle rockets that didn't even really need to be used, since the XP boost made it easier for him to hit enemies without addition weapons. Lloyd was anything but weak in this patch despite me not even grinding much in the first place, and it made his arc in the story feel pointless. Granted, the overarching theme of Mother explores feelings of abandonment by a maternal figure (see, Ana, Giegue, and to an extent Ninten with his father), but it also teaches Ninten, Lloyd, Ana and Teddy to overcome their individual setbacks by earning the strength to fight back... which is to say, there really wasn't much of a fight in the first place in this patch.

I can't imagine a first-time player experiencing much of these themes when the game more often than not hands you a victory on a silver platter, and it's for this reason alone that I wouldn't suggest the Mother 25th Anniversary Edition patch to someone that wants to play Mother for the first time. Like I mentioned, the graphics and shortcuts are more of a preference-based complaint, but when the game loses the challenge that it prides itself in... that's where you lose me. At the very least, play the original Mother rom or play the GBA port (which I will review at another point in time) before playing this patch. If you're still having to use the Starmen.net guide to get you through this patch... I really don't know what to tell you lol.

Having played the GameCube version of Luigi's Mansion years ago, I had the 3DS port sitting on my menu screen for years & figured I had time to kill. I won't touch on the story in this review and leave that for when I review the GameCube version, but I was pretty surprised with how quick this game can be to complete.

For a remake developed by Grezzo, graphically it's a downgrade & this game should've been a port for the Switch instead. Running the game at a lower resolution was the first mistake with this port, and I found some scenes to actually lag in this port compared to the GameCube version (ex. the doorknob scenes, entering new floors of the mansion). The upgraded character models were to be expected and they looked as good as they can for a late 3DS entry, so there isn't much to write home about on that level. Like Grezzo's Ocarina of Time remake before Link fights Ganon, Luigi's Mansion 3DS lost some of it's original dark and gloomy lighting in this port by making scenes in the mansion brighter than the atmosphere originally intended to be. Those graphical flaws aside, I did appreciate the upgraded Gallery area in E. Gadd's lab, and the option to re-vacuum ghosts for timed records. Also, adding an achievement list was a fun incentive to me to thoroughly scope the mansion for any hidden gems and get the highest rank possible.

For my play through I opted for the Dark Moon flashlight and gyro controls to vacuum ghosts, and split in the middle with how I feel about these changes. The biggest change with this play style was how much easier it was to get the blue money ghosts, whereas in the original version it was more challenging to get the flashlight to stun lock them. The added charge of the flashlight also made it easier for me to suck up multiple ghosts at a time, which gave me much needed hearts. That said, the gyro controls were a hit or miss for me for the majority of my play through. Not sure if it's an issue on my end or what, but it was as if the gyro controls were lagging with my actual point of direction when I was vacuuming ghosts. More often than not, I had to use the D-pad to level Luigi's vacuum back down since the gyro controls kept forcing the vacuum to face upwards, despite me holding the 3DS in a normal position.

With the above control scheme mentioned, my biggest gripe with the 3DS Luigi's Mansion is the control scheme ˆwithoutˆ the Circle Pad Pro. The c-stick on the GameCube controller was designed to have Luigi do 360º turns when he moves, and this is most useful when he's vacuuming up ghosts from different corners of the room. I played the 3DS version without the Circle Pad Pro with my 3DS XL, and found it more tedious to have to angle Luigi in the right position with the control pad before being able to suck up ghosts... which messed with my overall depth perception more than it should have.

On a side note, as a massive Gooigi enthusiast I unfortunately did NOT get an opportunity to play this game co-op style-- rendering that green freak of nature useless for my play through. I hope to see Gooigi as a reoccurring playable character in future entries in the Mario series, for he is a beloved iconic character that deserves much more screen time.

With these points in mind, I can't say I would recommend this version of Luigi's Mansion over the original. It's not awful by any means, but it's definitely the inferior way to play.