"Haha, the board game designer 'becomes' a brain game expert magically."

"Magically"? I guess Knizia's 200+ published games (many with a strong puzzle component) and his doctorate in mathematics don't qualify him as an expert? Sheesh, the bar seems to be set pretty high here.

I'm glad that the DVD release has spurred some more discussion, I'm on the side of Billy. After all, he is The Perfect Man:

"I ask Mitchell if his off-the-charts visuospatial skills and heightened intuition impact parts of his life away from the game console. “I see things that other people don’t see and hear things others don’t hear,” he says. “That’s usually a good thing, but not always fun. If a door-hinge is going to need oil soon, if someone’s wedding ring needs adjusting, if a letter on a sign way down the road is missing…. I don’t really need that in my life. It can be too much information."

http://www.oxfordamericanmag.com/content.cfm?ArticleID=58

Allen, my point here is that the Brain Training games were released as 'Dr. Kawashima's Brain Training: How Old Is Your Brain?' in Europe (and also under a similar name in Japan.)

Knizia is smart, and I'm excited about the Merscom deal to bring his board games to consoles - which seem like a good use of his name and IP.

But if you look at the screenshots of that game, it looks suspiciously like the developer was looking for another doctor they could use to make a brain training clone, and Knizia's name came up.

For example, 'speed counting marine life' doesn't sound very, uhh, strategic, and at least one of the screenshots is of a vanilla counting game.

Hope I'm wrong, though, haven't played it, and if he gives it enough input, it might be cool :)