Nintendo for geriatrics
p2p news / p2pnet: As a marketing gimmick and a way of attracting new buyers to a game area more usually populated by teens, it has to be one of the cleverest.
‘It’ is ‘Brain Age,’ the game created for the Nintendo DS hand-held and used by Nintendo president Satoru Iwata to garner press at the Game Developers Conference in San Jose, last month.
Nintendo Revolution is up against Sony’s PlayStation 3 and Microsoft’s Xbox 360 and Brain Age will at least partially level the playing field against teen gamers by drawing in a considerably older crowd who’ll pay, Nintendo hopes, to “stimulate” their tired brains.
And helping things along is Dr Elizabeth Zelinski, dean and executive director of Leonard Davis School of Gerontology at the University of Southern California.
“Nintendo’s Brain Age should be just one element of an active lifestyle that includes mental stimulation, exercise and a good diet,” Zelinski is quoted as saying in Game Daily.
And, “Adults with little or no video gaming experience don’t have to worry about complicated button mashing,” says Reggie Fils-Aime.
No complicated button mashing? Thank Heavens for that, one can hear the hordes of geriatric gamers saying.
Is Fils-Aime another doctor? Nope. He’s a Nintendo of sales and marketing guy.
“The game is based on the research of neuroscientist Dr Ryuta Kawashima, who found that certain mental exercises can liven up the dormant areas of the brain and keep you smart, Nintendo said,” states TG Daily.
“Players try the puzzles and are then given the approximate age of their brain. The sometimes shocking results are saved and charted, allowing people to compare with their friends.”
The objective in Brain Age is to get as close to age 20 as possible and Iwata, who helped create Nintendo’s pink puffball Kirby, says he played it every day for three to five months and by the end of the day, “I got my brain age down to about 27″.
He’d apparently started out at age 40.
There you go.
Also See:
Game Daily – Dr. Elizabeth Zelinski Approves Brain Age, April 17, 2006
TG Daily – Nintendo releases brain puzzle game, April 18, 2006
close to age 20 – Brain Training Nintendo Revolution, March 31, 2006
