Welcome to the quick start guide to Sega's Brain Age or, "Nounenrei: Nou Stress-Kei Atama Scan" which will hopefully help out anyone importing this game and don't know Japanese!

Profiles

Running the game for the first time, you start off by recording your details in a profile where you have to enter the following:

Signature
Gender
Dominant Hand
Date of Birth (Month/Day)
Year of Birth (i.e. 19xx)

The Tests
Each day, you go through two tests; a brain stress test and a a brain age test.

For the brain stress test, you need to know the order of Japanese syllables unfortunately. i.e. 1 => 'a (?)' => 2 => 'i (?)' => ... 6 => 'ka (?)' => 7 => 'ki (?)' etc. It's really just Brain Age's "Maze Connect" test except this one keeps things moving about!

At the end of the test, you are given the results as a percentage. The first one is your brain stress which means the lower it is the better. The second is how your reaction compares to the average Japanese person so the higher this number the better. You can tell how good your overall result is by looking at the smiley face.

So how are the two values calculated? Well, it basically compares how long it takes you to pick out each circle you need.

As for the brain age test, you only need to tap the numbers in sequential order, i.e., 1, 2, 3, 4. Simple. The test is split into two halves however; the first part the circles stay where they are while the second part they are scrambled with each tap you make. In both halves of the test, you have to tap from 1 to 25.

20 is not the optimum age here however because it varies depending on your real age.

Once you're done, you're given 4 ratings. First you have your brain age which is followed by 3 other ratings; Activeness (???), Energy (???) and Wits (???) rate. You can see what the average rating is to the right hand side during the brain animation at the end of the test and compare it to that.

These values are determined by...

Activeness (???)
Checking if you memorise the positions of where all the circles are while you're searching for the one you need.

Energy (???)
Your reaction time in picking out the circles you need during the second half of the test.

Wits (???)
Your overall reaction time in both halves of the test.

Next you the 3 ratings are plotted as a triangle chart. The red represents your results and the blue represents the average found in the sample data.

Exercises and Mini Games
Finally, there are the exercises that you can do to improve on your ratings which are pretty much self-explanatory. These are divided into reaction (brown), activeness (red), wits (blue) and energy (orange).

And what are the aim of these exercises?

Reaction Exercises
Aims to improve your job performance by making you do two things at once. In these exercises, you have to keep dragging the dog down so that he doesn't bite the man while you're trying to complete the task at hand.

Activeness Exercises
Aims to improve your memory and recognition abilities allowing you to adapt to changes more easily. This one is similar to the Brain Age word test where you have to say out loud the colour of the words but in this case, you say the names of the objects in JP. If you really want to try, the words are English but with Japanese pronunciation... bat (bat-to), glove (gu-ra-bu) and ball (ball-ru).

Wits Exercises
Aims to improve your information processing abilities like that of a computer so that you can sort information quickly and naturally.

Energy Exercises
Aims to reduce the stress on your brain by relaxing it with some fun games where you don't have to think too much. One has you blowing into the microphone to send the balloon dog up while avoiding the bombs.

Main Menu
And that's it really! The main menu shows Brain Scan, Training, Multiplay, Graphs and Options.

Have fun :D