Nintendo's fun game trains your brain

Here's a neat twist on the normal bang-and-shoot videogame world.

Nintendo's new Big Brain Academy challenges players with a series of wacky mental tests in areas such as thinking, memorization, computation, analysis and identification.

The questions come fast and furious, giving you 60 seconds to answer and the questions rapidly get harder in 15 different tests that you use the touch screen pad of your DS or DS Lite to answer.

You start out by doing things like counting the numbers in a stack, matching colors and figuring out what object weighs the most. You get letter grades on performance and if you have an ounce of competitiveness in you, you won't put this down.

News N Notes

-- Activision has kicked off a Call Of Duty 2 XBox 360 tournament. Click here to register and compete against others for a chance to win a 2006 Jeep Wranger, Best Buy gift cards and other prizes.

Call Of Duty 2 is the most popular XBox live multiplayer game and more than 500 four-person teams are expected to battle in single-elimination, bracket-style competitions.

-- SyNET Entertainment will release what it says is the world's first full 3D online multiplayer golf game, Shot-Online, in August.

The $29.99 game will combine true golf simulation with role playing, forcing players to deal with emotions, weather and geography as well as developing their player's personality.

-- AIT Solutions has launched a new website to help users protect their laptops from theft.

It provides tools including a "Police Trackable GPS" metal tag bonded to the laptop to deter theft; proprietary GPS software that locates a stolen laptop; and covert removal of important files at the direction of the rightful owner. Files can be silently removed without knowledge of the thief, and returned securely to the rightful owner.

-- PlayStation2 is outselling the new Xbox 360 in six of the seven months since the new Microsoft machine release.

Since the release of the Xbox 360, Microsoft has averaged 246,000 U.S. console sales monthly versus 473,000 monthly units for PS2. Looks like the videogame world is still awaiting PS3 for its next-gen fix.