How to play Brain Games online
Important: Brain Games does not use the joystick. It was made for Atari’s 12-button Keyboard Controller, a numeric keypad, and every game is played by pressing its buttons. The emulator on this site does not emulate the keypad controller, so you can start the cartridge and see its screens, but you cannot really play it here. The console switches still work:
- Start a game: F12 (the console’s Reset switch)
- Choose a game number (1–19): F11 (the console’s Select switch)
- Difficulty switches: F4 (left) and F9 (right)
The six games
- Touch Me (games 1–4): the computer plays a sequence of tones and you repeat it on the keypad. One tone is added every round. The game ends after four mistakes or when you complete a sequence of 32. Some versions use buttons 1–6, others 1–9.
- Count Me (games 5–8): the same idea with digits instead of tones: remember the growing string of numbers and type it back in order.
- Picture Me (games 9–10): for one player. Four objects appear for a few seconds (4 seconds in game 9, 1.5 in game 10), then get scrambled, and you have 20 seconds to put them back in the right order.
- Find Me (games 11–14): four objects are shown and one is different. Spot it before the timer runs out: 20 seconds in games 11 and 13, only 5 in games 12 and 14. Two players race for the same answer.
- Add Me (games 15–18): add up a row of digits and enter the total in time. Games 15 and 17 give four digits and 20 seconds, games 16 and 18 five digits and 5 seconds.
- Play Me (game 19): each keypad button plays a different note, turning the controller into a small instrument. The manual included a songbook, and with two keypads you can play duets.
Touch Me and Count Me can be played by one or two players taking turns. In the timed games, Find Me, Add Me and Picture Me each round is a set of five puzzles, and the time you have left is added to your score as a bonus.
What the difficulty switches do
In Touch Me and Count Me the switch decides how much help you get. In one position the computer replays the whole sequence each round; in the other it only plays the newest tone or digit, so you have to keep the rest in your head. In the timed games the switch sets whether you get the full remaining time as bonus points or only half of it. In Play Me the switches do nothing.
History
Brain Games came out in October 1978. Touch Me takes its name from Atari’s 1974 arcade game of the same idea, the concept later made famous by the handheld game Simon. Sears offered the cartridge in a Back to School Pak together with BASIC Programming and two keypad controllers. Reviewers have found it rather limited despite its many options, but it had an unusual second life: a 1984 book on clinical memory treatment suggested using it for memory retraining, because it combines sound and picture cues.
Similar games to play next
- BASIC Programming – the keypad cartridge sold with Brain Games in the Back to School Pak
- Basic Math – Atari’s early arithmetic cartridge
- Hunt & Score – a memory matching game from Atari
- Codebreaker – a number-guessing logic game