Tendo City

Allow me to explain. They were SO intent on including "amazing voice and handwriting recognition" they did it to the EXCLUSION of other methods.

This means one thing.

You can't reliably answer any questions. You will say "black, BLACK, I SAID BLACK!" and it'll say "uh uh" over and over until you groan and suddenly "ding dong!". THAT IS NOT HOW YOU PRONOUNCE THE WORD BLACK! And the handwriting... Yeesh... So my 9's are a little squished together. Any human can tell that is NOT a frikin' 1! BUZZ! BUZZ! BUZZ! YOU IS A MORON!

Why didn't they let us use some sort of soft keyboard? I mean the original tests these are based on are not supposed to test your handwriting skills or anything so it wouldn't affect the tests. As it stands, I'm getting a lot of false negatives and the occasional false positive.

I've been frustrated by a game before, but this is a whole new level of frustration brought about by what I can only describe as "horrid controls that don't accurately translate my thoughts into action the way I expect from an interface". That said, otherwise it seems like a fun way to fritter away the time, only this time without the frittering part. I just wish it understood me!

You lose! :D the writing and the voice is all part of the exersize. i remember reading Iwata say that he is slower with writing than with voice and he's trying to get his speed up.

I've only had problems with two of the test: one where you have to say "blue", which everyone agrees is hard [although my dad had absolutely not problem with it], and the test where you have to memorize twenty or so four-letter words and then write them down [the text recognition is kind of wonky, but if you work at it for a whle it's not too hard to figure out the way it wants you to write the letter]. Everything else isn't a problem.

It's not the tests. I write quickly and I speak quickly, but apparently the system can't understand me. That is the issue at hand. Any human could understand my chicken scratches, but the handwriting thing apparently can not! I've had to totally change the way I write my 7's (top to bottom instead of bottom to top) just to get them recognized, and no that is NOT part of the test. I've seen documentaries on these sorts of tests and nowhere was this part of it. The fact is, the recognition software could use some serious work.

Who writes a 7 from bottom to top? It boggles the mind!!

I always have, and it comes out fine, unless of course you are bad handwriting recognition software. It only seems to concentrate on the gestures and not analyze the final image, so it gets mixed up and thinks I made either a 1 or a 0.

If the test is whether or not I can answer the questions in rapid succession clearly, yes I can. But, the recognition software could use some serious work.

And actually, other than "blue" the main word I have problems with is "black", and the others every now and then. I'll also say that for the most part writing the numbers is pretty clear, but it screws up on a bit too many. Letters is really annoying, because you are running out of TIME and you can't seem to figure out exactly what way it NEEDS you to write "k". Drawing the line and then drawing a < next to it just confuses the spekkio out of it.

The tests done with the game itself are statistically significant, and they have been reproduced by peers. The evidence shows pretty clearly it works, but unfortunatly that's the Japanese version and I guess the thing is pretty good at recognizing kanji.

I dunno, I get the feeling that it was trained using the voice of someone from brooklyn, someone that drops the first consonant off of every word and writes like he just had his hands crushed because protection money wasn't paid up.

I think I should clarify I don't think Brain Age sucks. I just think it's implimentation could use some work. Apparently I'm not alone in this assessment if the reviews at GameFAQs are any indication (and while it certainly may take some brainwork to adapt to new ways of saying a word or writing a character, that was hardly the intention of the programmers of the game).