Dr. Kawashima’s Brain Training Comes To Switch In Europe And Austraila, U.S. Release Still Up In The Air

Dr. Kawashima’s Brain Training Comes To Switch In Europe And Austraila, U.S. Release Still Up In The Air
Credit: Nintendo UK via YouTube

Gamers haven’t been able to train their brains since Brain Age on the Wii U’s Virtual Console, and while that may only be one console generation ago, that’s a long time in brain years. Fortunately, Dr. Kawashima’s Brain Training For Nintendo Switch has made its way to new territories. Unfortunately, North America is not one of those territories.

Nintendo announced the return of the series a while back, but initially, the marketing was only targeted at a Japanese audience. A little while later, they released an English-language trailer, announcing the game’s release for western territories.

The game is now available for Switch in both Europe and Australia. The game can be purchased digitally from the eShop, coming in at a meager 318MB of space, or gamers can purchase the physical edition, which comes with a stylus. Without the stylus, gamers can, of course, use their fingers to play.

While the name is anything but innovative, the gameplay seems to be. Thanks to the Joy-Con’s IR motion cameras, the game can track player’s fingers, allowing for games like Rock, Paper, Scissors. It also allows players to play traditional games in new ways, using their hands to make signals and so forth. There are also games like Word Scramble, Word Memory, Speed Counting, Sudoku, and more.

There are also games for two players. Birdwatching and Box Counting rely on fast counting and quick estimates. Flag Raising is a memory game, not unlike Simon, where players have to remember and act out a series of gestures with the Joy-Con controllers. There are plenty of games to keep players busy, either by themselves or with a friend.

In Europe, the game runs £29.99 for the physical edition and £24.29 to download from the eShop, which translates to around $40 and $30, respectively. The stylus can be purchased separately for £6.99 (just under $10). It’s probably worth mentioning that the stylus might work well for other games, too.

Of course, those translations into USD only matter if Dr. Kawashima’s Brain Training For Nintendo Switch actually comes to the United States. At the moment, Nintendo hasn’t announced a North American release for the game or anything from the Brain Age series, but that doesn’t necessarily mean anything at all. Without any good reason to withhold it, gamers can probably expect an announcement in the not-too-distant future about the game coming further west. Even if the US doesn’t get a physical release, a digital-only release shouldn’t be any trouble at all for Nintendo.

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