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Brain Maiming: New Sudoku game
Nintendo sends word regarding a matter of gray importance: Sudoku. Not to be confused with the murderous little Japanese girl that crawls out of the television on a weekly basis (that would be Sadako), the puzzle game has addicted many with its gentle massaging of that most intelligent and squishy of organs, the brain. With 400 different puzzles (all selected by the original creators of Sudoku), however, Sudoku Gridmaster is likely to be less of a massage and more of a brutal mashing. Not content with sticking some Sudoku puzzles in the upcoming Brain Age, Nintendo is releasing a stand-alone title featuring four difficulty settings and input via the touch screen. If you're keen on subjecting your brain to that sort of thing, make a mental note of Sudoku Gridmaster's June 26 release date.
Japan gets more Simple games
If you've never heard of the Simple series of DS games, allow me to bring you up to speed: They're simple games. Well, that was easy. Now that we're on the same page, we can note that two new titles in the successful franchise are headed towards Japan. The first one to hit is Simple DS Series Vol. 7: The Illust Puzzle & Suuji Puzzle. Oddly enough, the game that follows is Vol. 5: The Trump.Though the IGN article provides no simple explanation as to why the volumes are being released in a strange order (it's possible that they just got the numbers wrong), it does mention some of the gameplay you can safely expect. The Illust & Suuji Puzzle is a variant of, you guessed it, Sudoku. There's just no escaping the onslaught of Sudoku, it seems. In fact, we may have to start calling it a "phenomenon", an unpleasant turn of events considering that we struggle on a daily basis to correctly spell big 'ole words like that. The Trump, on the other hand, capitalizes on a different kind of phoneme entirely--card games! It's set to feature 17 different kinds of card-based activities, which should be more than enough to addict those with a fondness for aces and spades. Best of all, both Simple games will incorporate multiplayer support for up to 4 players. Won't someone please pick these up and release them in the West? At the right prices, we're sure they'd turn out to be quite a pheromone.[Thanks, Daniel Warpool!]
America: Nintendo will make you smarter
Nintendo have officially announced that the Brain Training series is coming to the North American DS under the wordy moniker, Brain Age: Train Your Brain in Minutes a Day. Though it doesn't specify exactly how many minutes a day, we feel that it's probably safe to assume that if you own a DS, you can't possibly be that dumb. As for Gizmondo owners, well...Ah, but we jest! We know that everyone enjoys a bit of mental gymnastics, be it word conundrums or tricky mathematical enigmas. Brain Age looks to provide just that via an easy interface and the guiding hand of Japanese mad neuroscientist, Professor Ryuta Kawashima (his work inspired the game). Our dear friend, The Reggie, also chimes in to point out that Brain Age is like a trip to the gym for that squishy thing inside your skull."Our brain-training series, led by Brain Age, builds on the popularity of word and number puzzles and acts as a treadmill for the mind."Brain Age hits on 17 April and is followed shortly by Big Brain Academy, which releases on 30 May. The latter title is the second one in the Brain Training series, offering some more cerebral challenges and even multiplayer capability. The Brain Training games have already sold more than a million copies each in Japan and we expect it to do just as well on this side of the pond. We'd be stupid not to buy it.[Via Joystiq, thanks to everyone who sent this in!]
