1984 · Rhythm

Brain Strainers

Brain Strainers is a collection of two separate games/learning tools.

Released: 1 June 1984
Platforms: ColecoVision
Genres: Rhythm
Developers: —
Publishers: Coleco
Modes: Multiplayer Single-player
Themes: Educational
Country: United States

About

Brain Strainers is a music video game released for the Atari 8-bit computers and Commodore 64 in 1983 and ColecoVision in 1984. It contains two sub-games, one of which is a clone of the popular 1970s audio game, Simon. It is notable for being one of the earliest music video games to employ pitch-based gameplay in the Clef Climber portion of the game.

The articlegameplay, story, development, reception

Gameplay

Brain Strainers consists of two musically themed sub-games: "Follow The Leader," and "Clef Climber." The intention of the game was to provide an educational video game experience. Skills that were targeted were eidetic musical memory and tonal accuracy.

"Follow The Leader" is an eidetic music game designed to test the player's memory. Here, a pattern of musical notes are played and four colored panels light up correspondingly. The player then has a few seconds to repeat the sequence back to the computer. If the sequence is repeated correctly then the computer generates a longer string of notes to perform.

Reception

The game was recognized by Antic magazine for excellence in educational software

Ahoy! unfavorably reviewed Brain Strainers for the Commodore 64, stating that it "is a strain all right, but more on patience and interest than gray matter". It praised Clef Climber's graphics but criticized the documentation, which "must have been translated directly from Japanese, and poorly at that! What is the point of Clef Climber?