A mobile game that makes you smarter

It's official, playing mobile games not only helps kill time, it can help boost your brainpower too!

Brain training is the next big thing in the pocket gaming world, with multimillion selling titles such as Professor Kawashiwa's Brain Training on DS clinically proven to help keep your mind young and supple.

And now, thanks to Upstart Games, you can look forward to giving the old cerebral cortex a workout via your mobile phone too. Based on G-mode's best-selling Right Brain Paradise (which actually launched in Japan way back in 2003), I.Q. Academy is the first of four new games specifically designed to exercise the brain's right side, and improve spatial, visual and cognitive skills in the player.

The games include specially designed puzzles to gauge a player's responsiveness and accuracy in performing tasks such as recognizing shapes and patterns, predicting a series of actions, and other activities aimed at improving spatial resolution. The game then rates the player on the basis of performance, varying the puzzles on each replay to encourage further training and improvement.

Sceptical? Research findings by 'The Games for Health Project' (www.gamesforhealth.org) indicate that game playing can have a positive effect on maintaining mental acuity and fighting senile dementia. And getting smarter needn't even be hard work – I.Q. Academy's innovative pick-up-and-play control scheme promises to make the games accessible and fun for players of all ages and abilities.

Based upon the phenomenal success of these games in the Japanese market, we're predicting big things for brain-training here. In fact considering how damn smart the Japanese folk must be to invent the concept, it's our patriotic duty to play just to keep the British end up!

I.Q. Academy is expected to launch in Europe and the US in the next few months. You don't have to wrack your brains to keep up with the latest news though – simply click the Track It button above, and we'll let you know when we hear more.