''Body and Brain Connection'', also known as ''Dr. Kawashima's Body and Brain Exercises'' in PAL regions, is an puzzle video game developed and published by

Namco Bandai Games is a Japanese multinational video game publisher headquartered in Minato-ku, Tokyo. Its international branches, Bandai Namco Entertainment America and Bandai Namco Entertainment Europe, are respectively headquartered in Irvine, California and ...

for the Xbox 360's

Kinect Kinect is a line of motion sensing input devices produced by Microsoft and first released in 2010. The devices generally contain RGB cameras, and infrared projectors and detectors that map depth through either structured light or time of flig ...

platform. It was released in Japan on November 20, 2010, in North America on February 8, 2011, and in Europe on February 11, 2011. The game features mental problems, such as math questions, in order to keep the user's brain active; in order to answer the questions, the player must perform various physical motions. It received mostly mixed reviews from critics.

Gameplay

''Body and Brain Connection'' is a puzzle game which asks mental questions but requires that the answers be performed through physical actions. The game's goal is to reinforce the mental answers by having them be drilled into the player by playing with motion controls. When the player starts the game, it allows the player to take a test which lasts for about ten minutes to determine their "Brain Age", much like the

Nintendo DS The is a handheld game console produced by Nintendo, released globally across 2004 and 2005. The DS, an initialism for "Developers' System" or "Dual Screen", introduced distinctive new features to handheld games: two LCD screens working in tan ...

video game ''

Brain Age ''Brain Age'', known as ''Dr Kawashima's Brain Training'' in PAL regions, is a series of video games developed and published by Nintendo, based on the work of Ryuta Kawashima. Video games The ''Brain Age'' games, known as ''Brain Training'' in ...

'' does. The player is guided through the brain age tests by Ryuta Kawashima, who also appeared in ''

''. Games are usually short exercises that last only for a few minutes. Some of the games include a math game which requires the player to make hand motions in either a "greater than" or "less than" sign and a game which makes the user kick a ball into the goal with the right answer for a math question. Multiplayer is included with the game.

Reception

''Body and Brain Connection'' received mostly mixed reviews from critics; it received a 57.5% from

GameRankings GameRankings was a video gaming review aggregator that was founded in 1999 and owned by CBS Interactive. It indexed over 315,000 articles relating to more than 14,500 video games. GameRankings was discontinued in December 2019, with its staff bei ...

. GameSpot's Chris Watters called the game "shallow and flawed" for its lack of content, but noted that it successfully used

in a "novel way". '' The Daily Telegraph''s Tom Hoggins noted that the game successfully created a new genre called "mathercise", a portmanteau of exercise and mathematics, but felt that the game was weaker than ''Brain Age'' because it was attached to a console. Sarah Ditum in '' The Guardian'' criticized the game's single player as "slightly sinister" for the mean comments the game makes after bad playthroughs, but praised the game's multiplayer a fun minigame collection. ''

GamePro Gamepro.com is an international multiplatform video game magazine media company that covers the video game industry, video game hardware and video game software in countries such as Germany and France. The publication, GamePro, was originally la ...

''s Eric Neigher praised the game for bringing something new to the brain-training genre, but criticized the game as not "living up to its potential" and having games too similar to others in the genre. G4 Canada's John Powell felt that the minigames were uninspired, despite his praise for their use of the Kinect system.

Notes

References

{{Portal bar, Video games 2010 video games Brain training video games Kinect games Bandai Namco games Xbox 360 games Xbox 360-only games Multiplayer and single-player video games Video games based on real people Video games developed in Japan