Joystiq

After the monumental success of the first Brain Age on the Nintendo DS, it's no surprise that Nintendo would revisit the Brain Age series again. At this week's Media Summit, the press got to play around with their sequel, the cleverly named Brain Age 2. Upon powering on the DS, we are visited by the floating, disembodied head of Professor Kawashima, who is back to once again help us train our small and unhealthy brains with a variety of tricky minigames.

One of the immediate things that I noticed was that the hand-writing recognition has gotten way better. My writing is pretty horrible, so I was stoked to see that feature improved upon. The developers mentioned they put a lot of time into refining the recognition engine The minigames themselves were the variety of mathematical and word-based tests that you'd expect out of a Brain Age title but seemed a little more entertaining than the ones included in the previous game. The best part in my opinion though, had nothing to do with training your brain. As you complete tasks, you earn tickets that you can then use to play a Brain Age version of the NES classic, Dr. Mario. Now that's what I call a reward!

Look for Brain Age 2 on the Nintendo DS on August 20th and check out some new screenshots below.