If you've ever played a Brain Age game, then you've probably seen the digitized version of Dr. Ryuta Kawashima's face, and you probably are a lot smarter after trying one of his games. Did you know, however, that Dr. Kawashima himself turned down the opportunity to become a multimillionaire?

As you can probably guess, Mrs. Kawashima wasn't happy. More after the jump!

Even celebrities make mistakes, apparently. A report written by Sense About Science talks about the many factual errors celebrities and artists have made during the past year while endorsing products of a scientific nature.

For more information, check out the full article!

UK-based video game retailer GAME reports very profitable times this year. According to the company, a considerable chunk of their money flow came in from Nintendo's Wii and DS console tag team, whose games were also among GAME's top sellers. More details on this matter follow in the full article.

Having trouble sleeping? You don't have to rise from your bed all wasted if you have a Nintendo DS at hand. We'll show you how to fall asleep with this short list of games that can relax your mind.

Don't get us wrong, these games listed are by no means boring - some of them are actually incredibly addictive. Read all about it in the full article!

People whose brains are feeling a wee bit lethargic due to the recent summer vacation may want to check out Brain Age 2: More Training in Minutes a Day for the DS. This brain stimulator is now available in video game stores and should save save many a lazy gamer's brains from feeling too sluggish during classes.

"The point of the original Brain Age was to jolt users' brains out of complacency by challenging them with a variety of fun activities," Said George Harrison, senior vice president of Nintendo's marketing and corporate communications.

Brain Age 2 now features 15 modes including simple exercises such as repeated subtractions, unscrambling letters to form words, and playing on a virtual piano among many other activities (many of them not seen in the previous game). Sudoku puzzles are also packed in Brain Age 2, just enough to jump start lazy minds.

If you happen to notice that kids younger than your age are smarter than you, then it's a good idea to plonk down a few dollars for this title. If you can afford a few more, then get that snazzy yin-yang themed DS along with Brain Age 2 as well.

A new Nintendo DS color will be released this month bundled up with the new Brain Age 2: More Training in Minutes a Day. So what's different with this color? Well Nintendo seems to have decided that a split screen should have corresponding color coordination: the new DS's upper and bottom halves will have different colors.

The upper half of the DS will be cherry red, and the lower half will be matte black. Nintendo compared it to a yin yang, which is appropriate for the nature of the DS split screens. Of course with the split screens and split colors bundled with the new Brain Age you might also get split personality.

The new Brain Age will have 15 new exercises to strain your brain. It includes training in math, memorization and music. The new Brain Age bundled with the Yin Yang DS Model will be available on the 21st priced at US$ 149.99.

We can only imagine how awesome it would be to be Nicole Kidman's DS. To be on hand to cater to her every intellectual whim, to hear her laugh at her mistakes, to simply have her in the same room. Ah, the stuff of dreams (and restraining orders)!

As we mentioned earlier, Nicole Kidman is Nintendo's big European star, promoting Brain Age 2 (aka Brain Training) in the UK. Thanks to the YouTube powers of curvess2, we now have a video of the ad feauring Miss Kidman having a delightful time finding out her brain age.

Some notable things here. She has a brain age of 52, and the way she says "Scissors" is absolutely delightful. Without further ado, here's the video.

DS and Wii owners, your attention please. Just in time for Father's Day, Nintendo has a few suggestions on what to give dad on his day. You may want to take down notes because dad may be sick and tired of receiving the same old tie, or the same old shirt. To get your brain juices running in thinking up of a nice gift, here are some suggestions to chew on:

Brain Age: Train your Brain in Minutes a Day: Your father may find this Nintendo DS gem quite useful in avoiding memory gaps. He may also thank Brain Age for making his brain sharp enough that nobody's going to one-up him at work. That goes for you too, unfortunately.

Wii Remote: Your dad may love getting his own Wii Remote. Personalize it, heck, paste a cheesy sticker that says "DAD" in big letters on his Wiimote.

Big Brain Academy: Wii Degree: You can take the Father's Day challenge together at Nintendo World New York, from 1 to 5 P.M. on June 16. You may want to get this chance to bond with your dad.

Software discounts: Just in case he's hankering for some games on his Nintendo Wii or DS, it'll do him some good to make a short trip to Nintendo store, if you happen to be living in that area. He may even buy you that Wii or DS game that you've always wanted.

Virtual Console: We all know that our parents were kids too. With that in mind, you dad may become sentimental when he gets the chance to play games that he has known and loved in his days. If you have a Wii, what could be better than getting games from the Virtual Console? It's not a bad deal considering that the prices start at, 500 Wii Points; it may also put him in such a good mood he'll let you drive his car on Saturday night.

UK-based retailer GAME has something Nintendo DS owners may want to hear out, as they announce National Brain Awareness Week from March 12 to 18. In line with this event, GAME announced that they will be selling copies of Nintendo's highly popular Brain Training title for the DS for only £ 16.99 (US$ 33) along with a a Black/Pink DS Lite and Brain Training game package for only £114.99 (US$ 222).

As an added treat, GAME will also be hosting a competition over at the site. Winners of this said contest stand to receive one of five DS Lites, along with a copy of Brain Training.

Brain Awareness Week is a yearly event coordinated by the Dana Alliance for Brain Initiatives, a branch of the Dana Foundation based in New York. The Dana Foundation is a steady supporter of activities and publications in science, health, education, and neuroscience - some of you may be familiar with their Cerebrum quarterly magazine, published by the foundation's Dana Press branch.

The Dana Alliance, on the other hand, is a non-profit organization manned by 260 leading neuroscientists with the mission of increasing public awareness on topics like the benefits and progress of brain research.

NintendoWorldReport has four pages of details from the presentation of Nintendo's Takeshi Shimada at the Game Developers Conference (GDC) 2007. Shimada presented "Rethinking the Development Timeline: The Reason Brain Age Was Developed So Efficiently" to explain how it's possible that a game can be developed in only three months. Here's our summary of the event.

Interesting insight for gamers. This isn't just for developers. We share this info with you, our readers, because this is interesting stuff for gamers, too. You invest in a Wii or DS (or plan to buy one), so why not take a quick look at what lessons Nintendo developers are sharing with other first-party and third-party game developers?

Lesson #1: Invest in technologies before you need them. When the Brain Age project started, the developers realized that they needed handwriting recognition and voice recognition tools. Fortunately, it turns out that Shimada's middleware team had already been scouring the market for possible handwriting and voice tools around the DS launch.

The lesson: even though it's not obvious which games will need which development tools, a development team has to be willing to invest in technology and to "mature" or develop that technology. Because you already have the tools in place, you can work faster. And the "maturing" of the technology benefits the gaming industry as a whole!

Lesson #2: Game developers need to have massive sharing of vision. A big portion of game development is "simple" management: leadership, scheduling, communication, and planning. A significant portion of Shimada's presentation looked at how different teams worked quickly on various tasks and sent in their results to the other teams. For example, for handwriting recognition for Brain Age, they needed as much test data as possible, so they created software to collect and analyze a large quantity of writing samples from DS touch screens, and this in turn led to the next step: making the handwriting software fast and able to recognize sloppy writing.

Future development tools for the Nintendo Wii. Shimada also talked a little bit about four Wii development tools for first-party and third-party game developers:

• NintendoWare, a tool developed by Nintendo and HAL that emulates Wii hardware on the PC. This way artists and developers can test what they're doing instead of loading the code onto a Wii development kit.
• Fur-shading middleware. The need for this kind of tool is pretty self-evident: fur is not always an easy texture to incorporate into a game.
• Predictive input. Basically, the game guesses what you're about to input based on your prior motion. This should make the intuitive use of the Wii controllers (Wiimote and Nunchuk) even more intuitive (many games, like first-person-shooters, would benefit from this).
  
• Text-to-speech. Just a little something they're exploring for the Wii.