Dr Kawashima's Brain Training for Nintendo Switch

All things considered, Dr Kawashima’s Brain Training for Nintendo Switch certainly isn’t as good as its predecessors. With its letter and number recognition problems and the Switch’s controllers not detecting arm movements accurately, there are some minigames that players will definitely be put off by. But its unique new additions that utilise the Switch’s IR camera are a real joy to play – and more than anything, even if it’s not perfect, it’s just lovely to have Dr. Kawashima on the Switch at last.

Regardless of what it may or may not do to your brain age, this is a disappointingly low effort remaster with serious technical issues and a lack of interesting content.

Dr. Kawashima's Brain Training for Nintendo Switch is a solid return for the series, mixing classic minigames with a handful of new ones that use the Switch's various capabilities – and which exclude those with a Switch Lite. Just as with the original, it's going to be easy to drop in for a few minutes a day and test yourself, but this isn't really doing much more than the DS games.

The fact that, in the year 2020, people still recognize the name of Dr. Kawashima is a massive testament to how huge the original game was. Dr. Kawashima's Brain Training on the Nintendo DS managed to capture a huge, worldwide audience, and it broke through age barriers and appealed to one of the largest gaming audiences of all time - it really was that huge. Nintendo is hoping to achieve the same level of success all over again, with Dr. Kawashima's Brain Training for Nintendo Switch. Though honestly, I'm not hopeful that they'll achieve the same results.

Brain Training is back and as portable as ever!