By Kieron Gillen on April 30th, 2009 at 8:42 am.
Yes, playing the demo of Brain Exercise with Dr. Kawashima first thing in the morning was probably a bad idea. You’ll be aware of DS-sensation Brain Training. Well, this is the neuroscientist behind it presenting another series of exercises which give you super-brains (apparently). It’s a tiny demo, both in terms of content (it’s a quick “how old is your brain” test which is clearly designed to make you think “fuck – my brain’s failing! Better buy the game for a work-out”) and size (a mere 2.2Mb. So small that WorthPlaying presumed it was a typo and listed it as 22Mb). That 56 was my first go. I tried again and did even worse. This is probably a sign for more caffeine, I suspect.
30/04/2009 at 08:56 pepper says:
Caffine, the new cause and solution to all problems in life!
Btw, anyone noticed that the ads sometimes get pretty awkward on RPS?
30/04/2009 at 08:57 Owen says:
Yeah but surely a higher number’s better really? If you’d gotten 14 for example then your brain would only be capable of sarcasm, deciding what black clothes to wear, playing games and moaning to parents. *
A brain age of 56.6 says to me that you’ve got nearly double the ‘brainage’ of a standard thirty-something. Well that’s how I’m going to damn well interpret it anyway!
* actually Kieron. Has much changed?! OOH! Bitchy :)
30/04/2009 at 09:10 enterman says:
The lower the better ;) the number is representing your memory. The higher it is, the worse your memory is. I got a 36 the first time followed by a 24 which was a perfect score :P
@ Pepper: use firefox and you won’t see those ads pesky awkward ads XD
30/04/2009 at 09:36 DMJ says:
But ads pay for the site! By not seeing them, you’re effectively stealing RPS!
30/04/2009 at 09:41 MD says:
You wouldn’t steal a handbag. You wouldn’t steal a car. You wouldn’t steal a baby. You wouldn’t shoot a policeman. And then steal his helmet. You wouldn’t go to the toilet in his helmet. And then send it to the policeman’s grieving widow. And then steal it again! Reading RPS with Adblock is stealing. If you do it, you will face the consequences.
30/04/2009 at 09:55 Rei Onryou says:
I don’t need a 2.2Mb demo to tell me my brain should be getting a freedom pass. 22 is the new 65.
30/04/2009 at 10:34 MacBeth says:
Ugh. Horrible, dated graphics & animation. And why are the bleeps so damn loud? If we (the company I work for) had made that as a Flash game in a three day budget, I’d still be embarrassed to show it to the client.
And I’m not just saying that because even getting a faultless 5/6 and being half way through the last question when you arbitrarily run out of time still tells you your brain age is 35.6…
30/04/2009 at 10:34 pepper says:
The ads are stealing my bandwidth! Well, not really but yeah i have adblock on on most sites, although when i turn it off i notice double loading times, tells something how badly bloated those ads are.
30/04/2009 at 10:45 Colthor says:
I bought Brain Training on the DS, as my memory’s pretty bad. But I never remember to play it.
And that isn’t even a joke.
30/04/2009 at 10:55 DigitalSignalX says:
Seems to be slashdotted.. can’t download from any of the 4 mirrors atm. Was eager to see what no sleep for 36 hours would score.
30/04/2009 at 11:28 Freudian Trip says:
Yeah none of the links work for me either. Apart from a German one that wanted me to call a number to activate the download…
30/04/2009 at 11:35 Lewis says:
Oddly, I got 56.6 on my first go as well. Second try gave me 41.7. Hooray! Only double my actual age!
30/04/2009 at 11:44 Lars Westergren says:
I’ve played it on the DS, and while a fun little game, you probably rejuvenate your brain more (for real) if you do some hard exercise for an hour a couple of times a week.
30/04/2009 at 12:22 Maniac11919 says:
I kept doing better and was thinking of this “brain age” as some sort of score… So I was confused as hell when I got 33 when getting everything right and 74 when missing 4 questions… It’s a strange measure indeed…
30/04/2009 at 12:25 Maniac11919 says:
@Freudian Trip: Click the lower, grey link to download without calling that infernal number. Alternatively, if you wait long enough the second german link should start eventually (20-30 sec). Hope that helps.
30/04/2009 at 12:28 Freudian Trip says:
Nice one Maniac. Now to find out how 7 years of soft narcotics has affected me. When I did a proper test for school I scored 99% on logic and 3% on memory. That was before the years of narcotics. This might just be totally depressing.
30/04/2009 at 12:32 Freudian Trip says:
Well that was rubbish. It’s such a short period of time it’s barely even about memory.
I didn’t even complete the thing and I got a question wrong and I still got 44.5.
30/04/2009 at 15:23 Gap Gen says:
Yeah, sorry, this is off-topic, but how much does a page load pf RPS get in terms of ad revenue?
30/04/2009 at 16:03 Jeremy says:
Wow, so I had to play a mini game just to download the demo. How fast can I click all the links that will finally get me to the file? It only took me 48 seconds.
Apparently I am not smart enough to even install it, I somehow dread seeing what my score is…
30/04/2009 at 16:25 Jeremy says:
I take it all back, I am a genius.
@all who are confused
A lower score is a better score.
30/04/2009 at 16:38 Gap Gen says:
Is there an optimum age, though? I would have thought that a brain age of two isn’t that complimentary.
30/04/2009 at 16:59 MacBeth says:
There certainly should be an optimum age range – roughly anything from latest teens/mid thirties shouldn’t show any significant differences in brain ability that I know of. So assuming there’s a plateau and it drops off on either side, then any given performance should result in two scores, showing you *either* younger or older…
It would make a bit more sense if they asked your current age first, and then modified it away from or towards optimum… but frankly it’s all rubbish anyway. It’s a test of how good you are at that sort of puzzle, and nothing more, just like every other IQ-related test.
Maybe that IS the test… if you don’t realise it’s a rubbish test, you fail… how very meta.
30/04/2009 at 17:03 Gap Gen says:
Wikipedia says the optimum age is 20. Thanks, Wikipedia.
30/04/2009 at 17:11 Jeremy says:
I wish I wouldn’t have known that, now I have a goal and this fun demo has suddenly become very serious.
30/04/2009 at 17:12 Heliocentric says:
In truth after over 14000 earth years of life i feel smarter now than ever. Brain age 42 my ass!
30/04/2009 at 17:12 drewski says:
I had more trouble waiting for the animation to finish so I could actually start clicking than anything. Then again, I’m using a touchpad so I suppose I’d be able to “answer” faster with a mouse.
I would have sucked at that as a kid too so I’m not bothered by the 36.1 result.
30/04/2009 at 17:23 Gap Gen says:
Actually, my mental arithmetic probably started deteriorating at 16, when I started using a calculator exclusively. Now Google can do unit transforms (e.g. “100 km / 45 minutes in mph”), so I don’t even need to do that. My ability to do number things is astoundingly poor. My monetary transactions in shops now consist of me shouting “Aah!” and throwing a shower of change at the cashier.
30/04/2009 at 17:24 Jeremy says:
Helio is a dummy.
30/04/2009 at 20:24 FernandoDANTE says:
File not working =(
30/04/2009 at 21:02 Jeremy says:
Update DX, that’s what I had to do
30/04/2009 at 22:22 Surgeon says:
MD says:
You wouldn’t steal a handbag. You wouldn’t steal a car. You wouldn’t steal a baby. You wouldn’t shoot a policeman. And then steal his helmet. You wouldn’t go to the toilet in his helmet. And then send it to the policeman’s grieving widow. And then steal it again! Reading RPS with Adblock is stealing. If you do it, you will face the consequences.
Apparently you are allowed to urinate in a policeman’s helmet if you are a pregnant lady.
Fact!
Maybe.
30/04/2009 at 22:33 LR says:
23.1 on the first try, yet it still recommends I improve my brain age through purchasing the full version.
01/05/2009 at 02:02 Klaus says:
Stealing? Perhaps what RPS needs is some good DRM.
31/07/2009 at 15:50 Jeremy M says:
It’s a great game, buy why pay money when you can get brain training games for free from Mind360.com