If there is anything that could be said for “educational” gaming, it’s that generally it sucks.  Don’t get me wrong, I believe videogames are art, and are a media that is often looked over in importance in today’s day and age, but lets be honest with ourselves here.  What was the last educational game you ever played?  Was it one of the PC “Jumpstart” series, or was it some sort of test trivia game?  Either way, was it anything other than a thinly veiled excuse for an after school remedial lesson?  If so your one of the lucky ones, and just so happened to stumble upon the next Carmen Sandiego, or Oregon Trail.  If not, congratulations, you have played one of the millions of horrible excuses for educational gaming on the market.  In fact, it’s rare for an educational game to even come close to breaching the walls of a top ten list, played or bought.  Because of this, educational gaming has existed in its little low selling fringe market for most of its lifetime.

With such a horrible track record, it is no surprise that consoles have avoided the educational game market for some time.  In fact, there hasn’t really been a major educational title release on a console since the original “Sesame Street teaches ABCs/123s.”  So when Brain Age, and Big Brain academy came out for the DS there were plenty of skeptics who repeated the mantra “Educational gaming can’t be fun.”  Luckily, however, they were dead wrong.  Both games were incredibly fun, and gave the brain a surprising workout.  They both sold surprisingly well, and due to both being portable, and the relatively short length of their game modes, they were able to be played just about anywhere on a daily basis.  So it was only a matter of time before one of these got a Wii port, and Big Brain Academy simply managed to beat Brain Age to the finish line.  But does the game retain its charm on the big screen?

Well lets start at the beginning.  Big Brain Academy is another one in the Wii’s line of minigames compilations.  This time, the theme is school time.  The Wiimote is used in one way and one way only, as a mouse pointer to answer questions.  There are three basic categories of question in this game, Visualize, Analyze, Memorize, Identify, and Compute.  The categories are split very deliberately, and are meant to work five different specific independent parts of your brain. 

Each category has 3 separate games to play, which alter slightly throughout the difficulty levels.  Visualize games are all about sight and will have you spotting differences in pictures, recreating pictures which are flipped and rotated, and guiding trains along a short improvised maze from start to finish.  Analyze games have you answering quick questions like “Which is the smallest?”, comparing block formations to figure out which are identical, and recreating patterns by removing blocks in a “Tetris” like arrangement.  Memorize games do just that, they make you memorize, and include remembering faces, remembering orders of letters, numbers, and sounds in reverse, and following birds in a “shell game” type scenario.  Identify games are kind of wonky and involve quick recognition.  They will have you recognizing faded or partially shown pictures of animals, running a flashlight over a darkened room to see how many animals are in it, or playing a “whack a mole” type game, in which only specific moles carrying specific items need to be wacked.  Finally, compute games will be either your favorite or least favorite games of the bunch, and they include the dreaded school fun killer, math.  The games in the compute category will have you counting red and blue balls thrown into a basket, quickly adding up numbers to reach a desired value, and popping balloons in order of least to greatest.