Nintendo DS Big Brain Academy

Big Brain Academy has two single player modes of game play and consists of several mini-games. Each mini-game lasts for 60 seconds and your score appears to be based on how many puzzles within 60 seconds you complete correctly, how many puzzles you fail, and the difficulty of each puzzle.

Practice Mode

Practice mode allows you to choose 1 of 15 different mini-games in 5 different categories. Each one has 3 different difficulty levels. It keeps track of your high score for each level and awards medals based on your score.

Test Mode

Test mode progresses through 5 different mini-games, selecting one from each of the 5 different categories. As you progress within each game the difficulty increases. Your score is the total of all 5 mini-games played in the test.

At the end, you get to see a fun little graph (shown at the right) of how well you did in each category, along with your total score. Dr. Lobe, also give you a brain classification, such as a doctor or an artist. I'm assuming this is based on a comparison of how you did in the categories. For instance, an accountant should do better in the "Compute" category, while an artist would probably do better in the identify category.

Versus Mode

Versus mode allows you to link up to 8 players together to compete head to head via the Nintendo DS wifi link. Each player needs their own DS console, but only one Big Brain Academy cartridge is needed to serve all 8 players.

"Dr. Lobe" is the headmaster of Big Brain Academy, and is a fun little character that has several different greetings when you boot up, and offers you encouragement throughout the game. But don't worry, you can skip past most of the conversation by choosing "continue" before he starts his monologue. If you're too slow, you have to page through around 5 pages to progress in the game.