Nintendo got into gamers’ heads with the Brain Age games, and now it wants to you to see the future with Flash Focus: Vision Training in Minutes a Day, a new game for the Nintendo DS that shipped to retail today.
Much like Nintendo’s brain-training games gave gamers’ gray matter a workout, Flash Focus aims to train users’ eyes in areas like hand-eye coordination, peripheral vision and visual acuity. The first time users pop in Flash Focus: Vision Training in Minutes a Day, they take a series of tests to determine their DS Eye Age. As users spend a few minutes each day with the activities, they get better and better at the exercises and their Eye Age lowers to demonstrate their improved focus abilities.
Some of the activities in Flash Focus: Vision Training in Minutes a Day include a variation of the hidden ball “hat dance” seen at baseball parks, watching two symbols flash on the screen, then tapping the touch screen to indicate whether they matched, and Memorizing a target letter and counting how many times it appears in a fast-moving stream of letters on the screen.