Nintendo recently did, what has to be, the best piece of marketing ever. They gave the President of the USA, George W Bush, a Nintendo DS Lite with Brain Age: train your brain in minutes a day for his birthday.
Genius. Pure, unadulterated brilliance.
How better to get your brand name out there than to give your product to one of the most influential men in the United States of America?
The game is pretty good as well.
Please accept our gift of a new Nintendo DS Lite system and a copy of Brain Age: Train Your Brain in Minutes a Day. You now join millions of people around the world who have fun challenging themselves with Brain Age. If you have never played a video game before, don't worry. Brain Age is part of our new Touch Generations brand, which includes games that are easy for people of any age - regardless of their video game experience - to pick up and start playing immediately.
It's obvious you don't have a lot of time to play games, which makes Brain Age such a great activity for you - just a few minutes a day with more than 15 daily training tests will help keep your mind sharp. Training tests include categories like math, reading and memorization.
Rocket Boards is a super fast 3D rocket boarding action. My first "commercial" (shareware) product. Didn't do amazingly well but was a good learning experience
Bubble Bomb is a polished update of a game originally built by Warren Marshal (who works at Epic games - developers of Unreal and Gears of War)
My own update of Bubble Bomb, Bubble Blitz was almost a total rewrite adding loads of new features and a shiny new look.
Seths Puzzle Boxes is a puzzle game with a surprisingly enjoyable story line, unfortunately it's quite short so won't take long to complete, but while it lasts is great fun.
One Response to “Nintendo give George W Brain Age: Train your brain for his birthday” Leave a reply ›
So... I've always felt the need to comment on the marketing behind Brain Age. Aren't there studies confirming that maintaining activity in older brains does not slow degredation and the fact that more mentally active elderly being observed simply had more brain power to begin with and could stand the loss?
While the game might be fun, I just think that it's slightly mis-leading to masquerade as a training device that will keep your mind sharp.
I'd be really interested to see if a) Bush even got the present (that it wasn't intercepted by secretaries who squirreled it away) and b) Bush's reaction. Maybe Nintendo will post an update.