A full game playthrough for Dr. Kawashima’s Brain Training: How Old Is Your Brain? on the Nintendo DS. This is the first game in the Brain Age series.

This playthrough shows all minigames, as well as the “story” from start to finish (as far as there is one) and some side-content (drawing, baby!).

For more information, continue reading below.

Starting off, yes – the 1/1/2011 date is incorrect. I don’t know why my DS is at that. Probably factory settings somehow.

Additionally, yes, that’s me talking during the ” ” minigame, although it’s sped up and distorted.

After the intro, you’re taken into your first brain training; “Calculations x20”.
Solve 20 simple sums by writing the answer on the touch screen. A very basic training exercise.

Then there is “Calculations x100”.
I’m not showing it in the video, as it’s simply an extended version of the first minigame.

Additionally there’s “Reading Aloud”.
I chose not to include this either, as this is simply reading a story. No background music, no animations, just plain text. On top off that the stories really aren’t that fun to read. Trust me, you ain’t missing out.

5:50 Low to High
Remember the set of numbers and tap them from lowest to highest. This gets really difficult once you reach 9 squares and nearly impossible at 10 squares due to the short amount of time you get to see the numbers. Thought I did pretty decent here tbh.

8:32 Syllable Count
Count the syllables in the sentence provided on screen. The way I do it is by repeating the word in my head and counting on my fingers. Try to count along if you want.

11:30 Head Count
Count the amount of people currently inside the house. This minigame is pretty fun imo.

16:40 Head Count (Hard Mode)
This one is significantly more difficult, as there’s now people entering/exiting the chimney (weird, I know), meaning you have to pay attention to 3 spots at once.

Calculations x100 (Hard Mode)
This is simply a harder version of the original, this time throwing equations into the mix. Once again, I didn’t show it here, but it’s about what you’d expect.

20:57 Triangle Math
One of the trickier math exercises. It’s hard to explain, but I’ll try my best.

1 2 3 ←3 top numbers
there is each “+” or “-” below it

1+2 & 2+3 = 3+5= 8
or 1-2 & 2-3 = -1 – -1 = 0
or… 1+2 & 2-3 = 3 + -1 = 2

this concept but with bigger numbers

23:54 Time Lapse
Calculate how much time has passed between the two clocks. This one is kinda hard for me cause like many people I’m now used to digital clocks.

26:25 Triangle Math (Hard Mode)
Without a doubt the trickiest minigame in the game. It’s like the original, but this time with FOUR numbers, which means you have to do 3 calculations each time.
It gets even worse when there’s minus’ thrown into the mix as you really have to think for a bit.
Sorry if I took a while there. If you’re bored, just try and figure them out yourself while I am trying as well.

29:19 Voice Calculation
This is basically the harder version of Calculations x100, but this time it’s controlled with your voice and there’s only 50 sums to solve. As you can imagine, the DS’s speakers aren’t the best, so it sometimes places a whole different number than what you said, or none at all.
Because there is no sound I added some calm music to it.

31:25 Brain Age Check
This consists of 3 minigames, with the 4th one being speak-only (Stroop Test, it’s what I played at the beginning of the video.)

The first one is “Word Memory”, where you get 2 minutes to remember as many words as you can. The picture shown after is not present in-game, and is merely for reference.

Second is “Connect Maze”, which is similar to connecting dots in a book to get an image.

Lastly there is “Number Cruncher”, which I kinda messed up at, which is a shame cause it’s my favorite of the three.

Finally, I show Kawashima’s full catalogue of tips that he presents throughout the game.