The Japanese Brain Game Boom

30 Jan 2006 Category: Features, Japan, Products, Technology

The Japanese Brain Game Boom

Prof. Kawashima tests your brain in Nintendo's popular "DS Training" video game series.

The worldwide video game industry is worth over $10 billion. It makes more revenue across the globe than the Hollywood film industry. It’s big business, constantly changing and adapting to new trends.

Japan is currently going through something that many of us are referring to as a “video game renaissance” - more and more of the games that dominate the sales charts here are either remakes of very old titles, or are employing a much more old-school simplistic approach to their game design, concentrating on making the game easy to play. This article takes a look at the current spike in popularity of simple “IQ test-style” games in Japan and attempts to analyse why the creators have had so much success with this particular genre.

Pioneering this trend is entertainment giant Nintendo, who - thanks to over 20 years of experience in the market - are able to effectively aim products at new gamers as well as leveraging their retro-appeal and their image as “the humble game company from 20 years ago” to market products towards adults. To illustrate this trend for more simple, accessible game design in Japan, lets take a look at what is popular here and what is popular in, say, Europe.

European Top 10 for the week of January 23rd 2006 - courtesy of The Magic Box.

Japanese Top 10 for the week of January 23rd 2006 - courtesy of Weekly Famitsu Magazine
© SUSUMU MATSUSHITA ENTERPRISE

Even if you don’t know the games in particular, it’s easy to see from the titles of the games that they represent two very different gaming demographics. Europe for example, has a very strong adult theme in most of their current popular games - words like theft, gun, crime and the sports titles all suggest that the gaming demographic in Europe is after entertainment with a slightly more mature edge.

Japan on the other hand, has experienced a big paradigm shift recently - and even though gaming preferences in Europe and Japan are always a little different, currently they are polar opposites.


Nintendo DS

Uleshka having a go

This is mostly down to Nintendo. Nintendo’s dual-screen handheld system, the “Nintendo DS”, is dominating the game charts in Japan. Out of the multi-format Top 10 in Japan (which includes Sony PS2 and Xbox 360 games etc), an incredible 9 games out of the 10 are only available on Nintendo’s DS system. One game in particular, “DS Training”, can be seen twice in the Top 10 - both versions, a recently-released new version and the older version, are currently rated as the number 1 and number 4 most popular game in Japan, respectively.

“Nou wo kitaeru otona no DS toreningu” - the full title translated means something like “Forge your brain! Adult’s DS Training”.

The game is clearly marketed at adults, saying as much on the box. The game takes the form of a daily “trainer” with an animated host, Professor Kawashima, and attempts to make you more intelligent through a series of regimented, daily IQ tests. At the end of each testing session, the game tells you how old it thinks you are, according to the accuracy of the answers you provided.

The tests themselves range from the light-hearted and fun, to the embarrassingly difficult. Here is a run-down of some of the tests:

Colour Recognition

Yellow! (but the word reads “black”)

Easy? Think again. This is colour recognition with a twist. The game flashes up the names of colours in different colours and you must read out the word, not simply say what the colour of the word is. The DS has a microphone and can understand when you make a mistake. Hard to explain, but have a look at this string of words and read out the colour of the lettering - do not read out the word: green, blue, blue, purple, green, yellow. Not as easy as you would think, right?

Arithmetic

Frantic mathematics

One of the more embarrassing tests gets you to do simple arithmetic - at speed. Using the DS’s pen, you scribble the answers directly onto the screen, answering the problems as quickly as you can.

Memory

Horribly difficult memory test.

The game flashes up a series of random numbers in boxes for a split second, then the boxes go blank. You must then use the pen and tap each blank box in the order of the numbers that they contained from lowest to highest. Having only seen the numbers for a split second, this gets very difficult when the number of boxes increases, up to around ten little boxes!

So that all looks fun - no question about that - but why are these games so popular? I asked a few video-gaming friends for their opinion:

Anonymous Friend 1:
They are marketed a little better than just as a test, they are marketed more as tools which when used regularly will improve the performance of your brain as a whole, making you think faster and more clearly. The instruction manual also includes many charts and graphs so even the simplest of people can see how much clevererer (sic) he is going to get.

Anonymous Friend 2:
This is no new trend. Those ‘improve your brain’ books have been popular for ages, and even more so lately. Also, I think Japanese people tend to really go in for that ‘it does you good’ stuff.

Anonymous Friend 3:
The big swing of the trend started on television, IMO. Shows like IQ Supli and Sarujie got big, and lots of books followed. I think it’s a good trend here in Japan, though, especially in a literary sense, or anything to do with kanji.

Anonymous Friend 4:
The stylus gives the edge, though. Writing with a pen is more ‘interesting’ than typing into a keyboard. Especially a mobile phone keypad.

Nintendo’s rather nondescript headquarter building, in Kyoto

So what is the secret to Nintendo’s success? First of all, Nintendo are very good at working in the domestic Japan market. I feel that they are still a very Japanese company (take from this what you may, but Nintendo’s headquarters are in Japan’s cultural center - Kyoto - not in Tokyo), and are still committed to producing quality entertainment for the home market first and foremost. When I look at their biggest domestic rival, Sony, I see a very different company, producing a very different style of content.

Other than just Nintendo being clever, I believe these are some of the reasons as to why Nintendo - and the “brain games” - are enjoying so much success at the moment and I believe that these are lessons that can apply to many other aspects of the design industry:

  • They have dared to be original
    One of the DS’s greatest strengths is that it is home to lots of original content that you cannot play on other systems. In contrast to this, the DS’s biggest rival - Sony’s handheld “Playstation Portable” - is home to a lot of “ports”, that is, games that exist on other systems and that have been converted for play on the PSP.

  • They have created a new market
    With the success of the DS Training series, Nintendo have introduced the concept of handheld gaming to a much wider audience than before. Now even housewives, retired people and grandparents are playing the DS. The incredible sales numbers are not just due to sheer popularity - it’s because there is a whole new demographic now buying the game.

  • They have watched the trends
    As the Anonymous Friends stated above - this has been something of a growing trend in Japan for a while now. Rather than produce another sequel to a game or put out another RPG into the massively RPG-saturated Japanese gaming market, Nintendo has observed what people want in a more society-oriented way (than say, simply looking at past game sales and seeing what was popular) and have delivered accordingly.

  • They are using their platform effectively
    The DS is a relatively simple system compared to Sony’s PSP. However, the DS’s innovative touch-screen has allowed for a much more involving experience for games that require complex input (example: writing numbers) than that which would be achievable on another system. As “Anonymous Friend 4″ stated above - the DS’s pen changes what is essentially quite a complicated, interactive computer test into something that anyone can enjoy. Everyone understands the concept of the pen, which is why the DS Training game is so accessible to people of all ages - even the elderly. Whilst the game’s graphics and sound effects etc could easily be replicated on, say, Sony’s PSP, the experience would be completely different, due to the lack of pen and touch screen on the PSP.

whole family playing on the train spotted by Mike Sheetal

Well I hope you enjoyed that insight into the Brain Game Boom here in Japan. Nintendo have plans to release the DS Training games in Europe later this year under the name “Prof. Kawashima’s Brain Training: How Old Is Your Brain?”. Happy gaming!

20 Comments

  1. Hello from me !!!!!!!!Protonix

    Posted by: Niko on January 31st, 2006 at 5:41 am

  2. Nintendo’s hq looks so…unreal.

    Posted by: drone9 on January 31st, 2006 at 9:02 am

  3. Incisive as always. I think I’ll buy one of the new slim DSs that are coming out.

    Posted by: claytonian on January 31st, 2006 at 11:04 am

  4. Great !

    Posted by: Fubiz on January 31st, 2006 at 12:38 pm

  5. Sincerly, I feel Fifa 06 is silly, poor, only is fame. Check the interface and options in the NFL Fever and you’ll se what’s a Video Game with QUALITY.

    Posted by: Jorge on January 31st, 2006 at 3:14 pm

  6. 14-5=?

    Posted by: Eriksen on January 31st, 2006 at 8:24 pm

  7. 7!

    Posted by: Uleshka on February 2nd, 2006 at 3:37 pm

  8. You are all nintendo nurdz, get a life

    Posted by: Sum Ting Wong on January 30th, 2007 at 2:47 am

  9. my company introduced a brain game in japan last year. Sales were slow for first 7 months, then there was a big uptick. Japan is so small products can go viral quickly when they catch on.

    Posted by: brian on March 2nd, 2007 at 10:26 pm

  10. thanks for subject. it is very intersting post

    Posted by: nakliyat on February 28th, 2008 at 3:59 am

  11. I really enjoyed the insight into the Brain Game Boom.

    Posted by: Video Production NJ on July 26th, 2011 at 12:27 pm

  12. These brain games would really make your brain works.

    Posted by: Wedding Videographer Philadelphia on July 26th, 2011 at 1:22 pm

  13. It will really worth a while to play with these Nintendo and brain games. It produces real quality entertainment.

    Posted by: Fence PA on July 26th, 2011 at 1:27 pm

  14. There is a growing trend for a while now not only in Japan but ton other countries too. Amazing!

    Posted by: Decks South Jersey on July 26th, 2011 at 1:35 pm

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  17. Seems popular in Japan.

    Posted by: Replica Hermes on September 10th, 2011 at 10:28 am

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    Posted by: christian louboutin on November 10th, 2011 at 12:08 pm

  19. The Japanese Brain Game Boom good post239

    Posted by: air multiplier on April 20th, 2012 at 4:14 pm

  20. The Japanese Brain Game Boom good post1693

    Posted by: bladeless fan on April 21st, 2012 at 6:16 pm

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