Brain Power

Brain Power is a departure from the single-title cartridges common on the Watara Supervision, functioning instead as a "brain training" mini-game collection long before that genre was popularised by the Nintendo DS. Rather than one cohesive experience, it is a compilation of four distinct logic and reflex puzzles: Mine Detector, Fortune Four, Caterpillar, and Hopper.

The most recognisable inclusion is Mine Detector, a direct clone of Minesweeper. You navigate a grid, flipping tiles to find numbers that indicate how many mines are adjacent to that square. Interestingly, unlike the PC version, the mine layouts in Brain Power are not randomly generated; there are a fixed number of predetermined patterns, meaning a dedicated player could eventually memorise the board. Fortune Four steps up the complexity as a 3D version of Tic-Tac-Toe (similar to the board game Qubic), played on a 4x4x4 virtual grid where you attempt to line up stones across multiple vertical and horizontal planes.

The collection takes a strange turn with Caterpillar, which is essentially a standard Snake clone. While it feels out of place in a "brain" themed game, it provides the necessary "twitch" gameplay to balance out the slower puzzles. Finally, Hopper provides a digital version of Peg Solitaire. You jump pegs over one another to remove them, with the ultimate goal of leaving only a single peg in the center of the cross-shaped board.

While none of these games push the Supervision’s technical limits - there are no massive bosses or scrolling backgrounds here - the collection was a smart play for the budget market. For the price of one game, a player got four staple time-wasters. Because the games are largely static and turn-based (with the exception of Caterpillar), they are among the few titles on the system that aren't hampered by the screen’s notorious motion blur. It’s a dry, academic-feeling collection, but for a handheld defined by its "value-first" philosophy, Brain Power offered more variety than almost anything else in the launch library.