Product Description

This rethinking of the popular Nintendo DS game will test players brains with fun problems and allow people of any age to play together. The Wii Remote controller's hands-on control makes playing a cinch. Multiplayer versus and co-op play modes also have been added, allowing players to use the title as a brain-training exercise or a raucous party game. In split screen two-player versus mode, the same puzzle problems will appear in a different order -- The first player to get 12 correct answers wins.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #462 in Video Games
• Brand: Nintendo
• Model: 90017
• Released on: 2007-06-12
• ESRB Rating: Everyone
• Platform: Nintendo Wii
• Original language: English, German, French, Italian, Spanish
• Subtitled in: English, German, French, Italian, Spanish
• Dimensions: .57" h x 5.44" w x 7.51" l, .44 pounds

Features

• Brawl with Other Brains! The Wii sequel includes three multiplayer modes for up to eight players. You can also exchange training data with other players over WiiConnect24 and compete against their save data.
• Weigh Your Brain! With 15 new Activities that challenge your brain in single-player Test and Practice modes, Big Brain Academy Wii sees how you measure up in five categories: memory, analysis, number crunching, visual recognition, and quick thinking.
• Train with the Wii Remote! All Activities are designed around the Wii Remote's Pointer, so you can have fun learning from the comfort of your couch with one Wii Remote, or pass around two Wii Remotes for group competitions.
• Mii data compatible.

Amazon.com
The Wii sequel to Big Brain Academy for Nintendo DS includes three multiplayer modes for up to eight players. Players also can exchange student-record books with other players over WiiConnect24 and compete against their save data. With 15 new activities that challenge the brain in single-player Test and Practice modes, Big Brain Academy: Wii Degree sees how players measure up in five categories: Identify, Memorize, Analyze, Compute and Visualize. All activities are designed around the Wii Remote's pointer. Players can play solo with one Wii Remote, or pass it around like a relay baton in group competitions.

Sample activities: The activities in Big Brain Academy: Wii Degree are fun minigames with a ton of variety, and they're meant to be played rapid-fire for a short time as players push their brains to do more than they did the day before. Here are three of the activities included in the game:

• Art Parts: In this Visualize activity, players must complete the sample painting by stamping the missing pieces onto an unfinished scene. When it becomes more difficult, Art Parts flips the unfinished scene sideways or flips it upside-down.
  
  
• Balloon Burst: In this Compute activity, players must pop balloons in rising numerical order. At its easiest, there are few balloons shown at once. On a higher difficulty level, Balloon Burst sends in more balloons, including some with negative numbers.
  
  
• Fast Focus: In this Identify activity, players see a distorted image that slowly returns to normal. Players must select what it is as soon as they figure it out. As it grows more difficult, Fast Focus starts with a more heavily distorted image, so it takes longer to identify what it is.

How to progress through the game: When players start a new game, they'll meet the whimsical Dr. Lobe, who will suggest that they take on the Test mode challenge: playing all 15 activities that span the five brainy categories. He'll tell players how big their brain is based on how well they did and how fast they did it. He'll encourage players to take the Test often and to use Practice mode to beef up their skills in all 15 of the activities. Practice mode also offers three difficulty levels for each activity, and Dr. Lobe will award several medals for high achievement in each one.

Multiplayer: Big Brain Academy: Wii Degree offers three ways for groups to play:

• Mental Marathon: Speed through activities to buy more time to stay in the game. Go it solo or as a team, but if anyone botches an activity, the game is done (1-8 players, one Wii Remote).
  
  
• Mind Sprint: Form a team to compete against a system-controlled competitor that "thinks" like a selected student record (1-4 players with one Wii Remote). Or separate into two teams (2-8 players with two Wii Remotes). The first side to complete a set number of problems wins.
  
  
• Brain Quiz: Play game-show style with up to four teams that compete in a total of 20 activities, since five extra activities are available in this mode. (1-8 players, one Wii Remote)

Mii compatibility: Everyone who enrolls in the academy will choose a Mii, which will walk down the school's hallway and pop up during Wii Remote handoffs to help explain which teammate goes next in multiplayer matches.

Wii Remote audio: Players will get encouragement and hear color commentary from a "Wii Remote Coach" who speaks to the player through the Wii Remote speakers.

WiiConnect24: In Big Brain Academy: Wii Degree, players can send and receive student-record books full of brainy data. By establishing WiiConnect24 ties with Wii Friends who own the game, players can all see their academies affected in several fun ways:

• Compare distant students' test scores with those of the local student body on the Student Scores board. Distant students' records are shown as books.
  
  
• Compete against distant students' brains in Mind Sprint. Players actually play against game-controlled competitors that "think" based on brainy strengths and weaknesses in their student records.
  
  
• The distant player's "Mii student" will walk the hallways with the player's own student body. Players can make WiiConnect24 connections with many students, adding many Miis to their crowd.

Players are encouraged to send and receive each others' records frequently, so that their academies have up-to-date results for competition and comparison. In this way, individual academies can join a personal network of schools and push each other to develop their brains further.

Customer Reviews

Nothing Fancy, But Quite Entertaining
I have a morbid fascination (personal and professional) with ersatz tests of mental agility. I was not disappointed with Big Brain Academy. It's engaging and competitive. My wife has enjoyed the DS version, so we purchased the Wii version as soon as it was available. Overall, we like it and can recommend it. There is nothing fancy about this game. If you have an axe to grind about the visual quality of the Wii platform vice the PS3, stay away; this could have been graphically presented on a Commodore 64. But, as I have written in other reviews, one of the oft missed keys to game development isn't graphics quality, but entertainment. This game largely hits the mark. I think the mini-game is the biggest strength of the Wii platform and this will make a nice edition to our collection of games. Plus, the tasks are simple enough for our children to use, but the game is designed to be challenging to everyone. What are the downsides? Limited numbers of mini-games. There is enough here to keep your interest, and the game will addict SOME (but not all) users. However, for a $49 game, I expect a little more. Also, I find the written text dialogue that gives you feedback about your performance more than a little annoying. In summary, the limited number of mini-games, graphics quality, and player feedback may be factors other users may find "game-breakers", but I like the game and can recommend it to others.

Bigger Brain, Better Play
Last year, the Nintendo DS really changed the way we enjoy video games. With the success of Brain Age & Big Brain Academy, many gamers found a new kind of game to enjoy, the mental game. Since that time, there have been many knock-offs that actually didn't feel like they were as good as the originals did. Games like Mind Quiz for the PSP, really weren't able to bring out the best in the gamer. Now, Nintendo is at it again by reviving the Big Brain Academy onto the Wii generation, and hoping to bring it to a wider audience. The question is, does it deliver a smarter mind, or a dumb waste from the wallet?

Big Brain Academy: Wii Degree for the Nintendo Wii, expands the successful Nintendo DS game, and brings new action to the system. The gameplay here expands well in more than one way. Now, you can challenge gamers in multiplayer action, or online through the WI-FI connection of the Wii. The control in this is very simple, as you go through many new games and challenges, that just requires a simple point and answer display through the Wii controller. There are also new challenges as you try to mass your brain weight towards your goal of 2000 grams. The new games also bring a lot of challenge like balloon burst, as you try to point and pop your balloons from the lowest to the highest numbers available, but it isn't as easy as it looks once you get better, as negative numbers try to outweigh your mind. Another new game included is speed sorting, where you have to deduct which one of four objects is anywhere from being the largest, or which mammal has the most legs. The multiplayer challenges also kick in well, with games like Mental Marathon, a relay race where you pass off the Wii controller as you try to give correct answers, but one wrong answer and the game is over. The graphics aren't much to please over unlike other Wii games, but the gameplay absolutely does deliver all over for those who've played the original, and those who just got thrills up their spine to get the Wii.

All in all, Big Brain Academy: Wii Degree does a great job at bringing gamers young and old together in a game that works well, and expanding the online gaming action that the Wii has just started seeing. It is definitely a must buy for anyone who loves a mental challenge that is different from action games that are more about looks than fun. This brain definitely is worth it.

Graphics: B 1/2-

Sound: B

Control: A-

Fun & Enjoyment: B+ for solo players; A- for multiplayer action

Overall: B 1/2+

So much potential - such poor implementation
With all the research coming out about an active brain staying sharp, it's no surprise that the Wii now sports a brain training game of its very own. Unfortunately, it's just not as great as it should be.

Let me first explain that we own all the DS brain-training games and play them fairly frequently. We definitely believe in the use-it-or-lose-it theory of brain health. The makers of Big Brain Academy on the Wii already had volumes of feedback from the DS game to know what works and doesn't work. They had plenty of time to create a truly spectacular game for the Wii platform.

I acknowledge that they did some things well here. They have fun multiplayer modes. You can cooperatively work as a team to try to get the maximum score. You can compete against each other in a time trial, attempting to get through your tasks as quickly as possible. You can also play in a board game style of situation, where you choose tasks that you know you're good at, trying to get the most total points.

For solo play, they have the standard training and test modes. They break your tasks up into five areas - analyze, compute, identify, memorize and visualize. Each area only has three game types. Unlike the other, DS games, where at least some of the games were enjoyable, I really didn't find any of these to be "fun". Some were downright annoying. For example, in one game they zoom super-close in on a photograph. They slowly un-zoom and you have to guess what it is. Is it a sheep? A grasshopper? This really isn't a test of anything - it's all a matter of when the picture shows something identifiable. Other games like "count the number of red balls and blue balls that go into a bucket, and say which was larger" at least have some sense behind them. There are the face-matching games, the pattern-seeking games, the tetris-like games, and so on. We've seen these all before in other mini-game sets. Usually, though, they are innately fun to play and there are a wide variety of them. Both are lacking here.

You can earn medals while doing the practice games, up through platinum level. If there are multiple accounts in the game, you can also get a ranking - first, second, and so on. However, nowhere in the game does it show any summary of those rankings! In fact, you only see that you earned a ranking at the end of a given game. It doesn't even show it on the game's listing. So if you go through and get 1st place in all the games, and then your friend goes in and gets first place, you'd never know it. To even see the medal listing you have to go into a "book" for your profile, to see what you've earned. There's no way to easily compare one person against another - or to engage in friendly competition to try to one-up each other.

They do have a single listing page where they show the "current test score" for each person. This is the one-number total of a person's test score. This is a nice thing to compare, but for example, say you have two parents in a household with three kids. The kids can't really compete on the whole test against a parent! They don't have the training yet. They COULD try to compete in the "easy level" of a given test. But there's no way to compare that. This was a giant opportunity that the game designers missed out on.

There was also still a bit too much inane chatter that you have to page through to get to the results. There really should be an option to turn that off. It's cute the first time. After the 20th time of the exact same dialogue, it gets very annoying.

I really expected much more from the Wii version of this game. A nice attempt, but they should have learned far more from the DS feedback and been able to resolve many of these issues before shipping.