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If Nintendo is remembered for anything with the DS, it is extending the market to new gamers with titles like Brain Age: Train Your Brain in Minutes a Day, Big Brain Academy and other Touch Generations titles. Continuing in that fashion comes Flash Focus: Vision Training in Minutes a Day. The title of the game is a major give away to the game’s basis, but the likeness to Brain Age does not end there. While Brain Age managed to push the market to new consumers and gamers, does Vision Training do the franchise justice?

Vision training is a simple compilation of quick games designed to test your hand eye Coordination, peripheral vision, eye movement and momentary vision while also teaching gamers about the parts of their eye and the functions that each part does to help you see. The games themselves all feature the touch screen and very rapid gameplay like that seen in WarioWare. Unlike WarioWare, the games are not as goofy and take a more serious route. A few of the games consist of counting the amount of times a certain letter appears as a multitude of letters moves along the screen, repeating a number that is flashed on a screen, and spotting the circle that is placed under one of three cups and twirled to try and confuse players. There is also a heavy emphasis placed on sports games: a majority of the vision training games are based on sports games. In Baseball, a pitcher throws a ball and you are to time it correctly as it flies over your plate, hitting it with a touch of the touch screen. In Basketball, men will slide onto the court and you are to touch the characters who are wearing white jerseys. In Boxing you are to punch your coach’s gloves.

Flash Focus even features a way to rate how old your eyes are by testing you in four different games, which you have the option to do every day or skip if you so choose. The game requests that you do it at least three times a week to keep an accurate check. Obviously, these games aren’t exactly a great way of gaging how old your eyes are, but like anything, a good practice now and then cannot hurt. After you finish your training for the day, the game goes through a so called “eye relaxing exercise” in which a female voice takes control and begins to ask you to do to roll your eyes in one way or roll your head in another. This came as a pleasant surprise; after I had played Flash Focus for the first time my eyes were killing me after straining to do well for the first time. Luckily, after the first play through, I didn’t have anymore problems and was glad that this section could be skipped.

For those who have played Brain Age, Dr. Ryuta Kawashima was featured in the game via a crud graphical representation that greeted you everyday with a witty pun or interesting bit of knowledge. Flash Focus features the same idea, but this time with an 8-bit man with no name nor personality. While it seems silly to complain about a game not coming with a lovable avatar, after Brain Age introduced American audiences to the Brain Training games, some things should be taken as necessity. A lovable character introducing all the new games is a must.

Brain Age also featured Sudoku puzzles when players became bored with the regular game. Flash Focus, on the other hand, features naught a trace of anything other then the main training mode. This came as a huge disappointment, as the main mode can only be played for about 15 minutes a day before you run of games to play.