Yesterday Max got a new Nintendo DS Lite. He traded in his old Game Boy SP and with a gift card he got for his birthday and some credits he had for games he traded in previously, he had all but $35 of it covered. He also got the Big Brain Academy game. This is one of the Brain games that Nintendo has introduced recently. These brain games give you these mentally challenging puzzles to exercise your brain. You do the various challenges and the game gives you a rating in the form a brain weight. The better you do the heavier your brain. Sofia has had an original DS for over a year. One of the great things about the DS is that has built-in wifi and many of the games allow you to play against other players with DS’s. The nice thing is that some of the games let you wirelessly send a copy of the game to other machines for players who don’t have the game so you can play against each other. When Sony introduced the playstation portable a few months after the original DS a lot of people thought it would beat the DS hands down. After an initial rush however, the DS has consistently outsold the PSP by a huge margin. The reason why is the games and game-play. The psp has a bigger screen with better graphics but the game-play sucks. The DS has the dual screen setup with the lower one being a touch screen. This allows designers to come up innovative new game designs like nintendogs, Mario kart DS and now the brain games. In spite of the simpler graphics (maybe because of it) the designers have put more effort into designing interesting games. Ever since Max opened up his DS he has been playing big brain academy. Much of the time he has been playing with his sister. There is no shooting, no racing, no violence. Just brain challenging fun. Having seen the way many of the DS games draw you in with cool games and an innovative interface, I think Nintendo has a much better chance of success than Sony when the new WII and Playstation 3 come out this fall. The PS3 has great graphic capabilities but the games are the same as all the other games that have been around for years. The Nintendo WII has a new motion sensing controller that may fundamentally change the way video games are played. The DS costs have as much as a PSP but is a lot more fun. And isn’t that what games are all about?