Brain training games first hit the big time with Dr Kawashima’s Brain Training. It sold over 2.3 million copies in its first year on release and its sequel sold over 850,000 before it was released. However it wasn’t the first game for brain training. Chess and similar games like Go have long been seen as ways of sharping the brain and training it for war.

As our understanding of how the brain works and how we learned developed through the 20th century, scientists become interested how play is an important part of learning. Generally known as informal learning, it concentrates on how we develop and use skills rather than how we remember things taught in classrooms. When cheap computers came along in the eighties and nineties programmers and researchers tried to make interactive learning experiences or educational games. Almost without exception these brain training games were quickly discarded by the children because the researches forgot one important element, that games should be fun!

The first generation of brain training games to really worked were those designed and sold as games by the big game companies. With these, the learning was almost accidental as the makers were interested in making money and to do this they need the game to be fun and appealing. The fact that people learnt things was purely accidental.
Sim City was the first of these accidental learning games. Unlike just about every game before it, there is no way to win or lose in Sim City and within the limits of the game you are allowed to try anything. So different was Sim City that it took its designer, Wil Wright, four years to find a company willing to develop it. Once released though, it was a huge success. As hundreds of thousands of people learnt about urban planning whilst playing the game. They experimented with public transport, industrial zoning and crime management. Subjects most players of the game people had never given any thought to. In 2008, its groundbreaking role in brain training games meant that it is one of the pieces of software included in the One Laptop Per Child intuitive that is providing specially designed education laptops to the poorest children around the world.

As successful as SimCity and its spin-offs like The Sims and Railroad Tycoon, they were not true brain training games. They certainly stimulated the brain and players learnt thing but it was not designed to specifically improve the brain or body of the player.

Prior to SimCity was being developed games console make Atari was developing a system called Puffer, an exercise bike that links to the Atari home computers and consoles. This was the first mainstream attempt at Exergaming. The marriage of exercise and computer gaming. Atari went bankrupt before it was released and despite the occasional attempt by other companies to developer fitness products for gamers, there was no real progress until 1998 when Konami released the arcade game Dance Dance Revolution. Just like in the brain training games, the breakthrough came not from the experts but from a games company wanting to make something fun.

In Dance Dance Revolution the player has to step on a dance pad in the right place, in time with the music. On paper, it seems a daft idea, dancing as a computer game, but it was a huge hit and has spawned hundreds of sequels, spin offs and imitators. Almost immediately the health benefits of the game were seen with some regular players reporting losing up to 20kg and in one case of almost 40kg. The YMCA started to introduce these machines into its centres as a way of encouraging children to exercise and in 2006 the West Virginia school district started rolling the game out to all 765 state schools for use in physical fitness programme. Though the game is certainly healthy exercise and is focus of rhythm has lots of benefits for the brain, like Simcity its only an accidental brain training game.

Dr Kawashima’s Brain Training was the first deliberately targeted brain training game to be successful. It has spawned similar games both on and offline. The secret to the game is its use of mini-games that focus on specific mental abilities such as calculation or memory. These games are done everyday and the results are recorded. Players can look at graphs of their performance and compare it to those of friends. It also gives an estimated ‘brain age’ based on some simple tests with a younger brain age being better. This headline age, often shows an age many years older than the persons actual age but after a few days of playing it noticeably improves. This is probably down to the practice effect rather than any significant increase in brain power.

The impact of Kawashima’s game was in part due to a developing body of evidence that linked keeping an active brain with a longer and healthier life. Studies on nunneries found that those nuns who regular did crosswords, played scrabble or took place in other brain stimulating activities lived longer than those who did not. This has led to claims that brain training games can play an important part in delaying or preventing Alzheimer’s or Parkinson’s disease however research has failed to prove this.

Despite only weak evidence that brain training games have a beneficial effect the genre is becoming increasing popular amongst game makers, hard core gamers and occasional gamers. Companies like Brain Arena offer free online brain games where as firms such as Lumosity and Mind Weavers sell games with a heavy emphasis on the science behind them. The area has also attracted its fair share of snake-oil salesmen making extravagant claims about their products and the repackaging of older, disproved ideas such as Sleep-learning as brain training games.

It is Nintendo who look to dominate the brain training game arena. Dr Kawashima’s Brain Training was one of the early titles in the Nintendo’s drive to sale products to families and people who are not hardcore gamers. With the Nintendo Wii and its unique control system, they have opened up a whole range of possibilities. Already research has shown how Wii Sports burns about twice as many calories as play a traditional console game but not enough for it to qualify as proper exercise. This will be fixed with the release of Wii Fit, a brain and body training system featuring a innovative digital balance board. As well as aerobic exercises, Wii Fit includes brain training though balance and rhythm based mini-games plus control and coordination training through yoga. The Wii Fit includes comprehensive tools for monitoring your weight and measuring your progress. Future releases include Wii Drums, a rhythm training game, to go alongside the already released Dance Factory and Dancing with the Stars rhythm and and games. Other games like Guitar Hero and Band Hero for the PS2, PS3 and X-Box that focus on rhythm skills have been hugely successful, selling over $1 billion worth.

The future looks bright for brain train games as makers work to find new ways to combine exercise, mental stimulation and above all, fun!

For information on how brain training games can help with ADHD, Autism and dyslexic, visit Myomancy.