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With the recent release of Nintendo’s Big Brain Academy come, of course, the TV ads. Big Brain Academy intends to follow in the steps of Brain age, giving you small mental tasks to perform and then rating you based on some secret formula (we hear it compares you to Reggie’s score). But after seeing this Japanese TV ad for the game, it doesn’t look very convincing.

Those tests seem they would be much of a problem to anyone above 6 years of age. Suddenly that show Are You Smarter Than A 5th Grader doesn’t seem so bad, dont you think?

[Japan Probe]

Japan’s been dominated by the Nintendo DS for a long while now and we all know all these non-games or serious games are to blame. It all started with Brain Age and now there’s everything from dictionaries to cook books to stock trading tutorials.

Most of these titles will never see the light out of Japan but if you are curious nonetheless, Neo Samurai (no, not that samurai) has a top 12 list of Japanese non-games, go check it out.

[Neo Samurai]

Talk about a change of style, Silent Hill producer, Akira Yamaoka, is taking a small leave from sexy rotten nurses and heading for the Duchess’s to have some tea, or something like that. His latest project is a DS game titled Otonaryoku, which roughly translates into “Adult Power”. Its a non-game which teaches you how to improve your relationships by training your interpersonal skills like social rules and proper manners.

Will Silent Hill influence this game? Bow deeper or Pyramid Head will have your ass!

[Joystiq]

Nintendo has already made sure that the DS is the cheapest Wi-Fi internet browser around with the Opera browser. Now they are gaining ground in the multimedia battlegrounds. An MP3 played, much like Japan’s Play-Yan, will be coming to Europe this October to the tune of 30 euros (read: very cheap). Unlike the Play-Yan, the ‘Nintendo MP3 player’ has no video playback functions. Many had complained that this feature was less than intuitive on the Play-Yan. Still this piece of software boasts some pretty nice features:

• Works on the GBA slot (actually might work on a GBA)
• The device uses SD cards for storage, up to 2GB cards supported
• Skinable interface
• Standard MP3 player interface
• The unit has its own headphone jack

I was wondering why it needed another headphone jack, it seemed quite pointless. But after asking around I came to know that the wiring on the DS isn’t very power efficient when using the headphone jack. It does the web thing, the music thing and the video thing if you import, and it also has awesome games. Your turn PSP, are you gonna raise or fold?

[DS-X2]