Train Your Brain for Adults may never make it to a stateside release, but you can still take an America released game and traing your brain with a little imagination! And that game is the wonderfully underrated Ping Pals from Ubisoft!
Train Your Brain relies on simple brain excercises that won't make you into a genius, but will instead keep your brain active so that you're protected from degenerative effects (I make no medical claims here, lol).
You can do these activities easily with Ping Pals for Nintendo DS!
How do you replace Train Your Brain's simple math problems?
Play the "guess a number out of 10" game in Ping Pals! You're required to guess a number between 1 and 10, and are rated on how close you are to the secret number! This is an excercise in simple math as you should be constantly calculating the risks and benefits of guessing 2, 5, or 7. Guessing five all the time can be boring, so some risk taking spices things up while you continue to do submliminal addition and subtraction!
How do you replace Train Your Brains reading aloud challenges?
Simply reading aloud actually stimulates a large portion of your brain! Just enter into a chat with one of Ping Pals computer charatcer and read aloud what they're saying. You can only respond in yes or no, but you can add inflections and accents to the computer characters if you want a more exciting and brain-involving experience!
How do you replace Train Your Brain's artistic challenges?
Easy! All you need is two players. One of you makes a random scribble in the drawing mode. You pass it to the next player, who must then decide what the random scribble most represents. In this way you can creatively turn a bunch of lines into anything from a hippopotamus, to an F-14, to a man on a toilet bowl! Once you've figured out what your friend's scribble is, make a scribble of your own and pass it back to him so he can take a turn! Guaranteed fun and laughter! (Note: this is also achievable on the built in PictoChat software of your DS)
How do you increase your vocabulary and memory?
This is something that Train Your Brain doesn't do, but by simply playing Ping Pals Top 10 game, you'll get a chance to practice your memory and vocabulary! Ping Pals challenges you to name 10 things in a category, and although Ping Pals has set answers, naming 10 different foods is tougher than you think! How about vehicles? Or Dinosaurs? This game is a veritable vocab booster!
So while all you Nintendo fans are wiating for Train Your Brain, go and check out Ping Pals for Ubisoft and train your brain!
~Carmine M. Red
Kairon@aol.com