I loved puzzles as a kid. I couldn't get enough of them word-search books from the supermarket check-out line, Douglas Hofstadter's puzzle column in Scientific American, various plastic and metal gizmos and I completed them all in a flash.
It's a shame they didn't have The Lost Mind of Dr. Brain back then, because I would have gone nuts for it. This CD-ROM describes a freak lab accident that has drained Dr. Brain's intelligence into his lab rat, Rathbone. To get the doctor back to normal, players complete 10 puzzle areas. To get credit for an area, you must solve between 7 and 20 individual braintwisters.
The instructions aren't great, but trying to figure out what's going on is part of the fun. My favorite puzzle area is Train of Thought. Colored balls move along a complicated pattern of train tracks. With five to ten of them moving at once, you click track switches to get the balls to the finish in the right order. Dr. Brain's niece, Dr. Elaina, offers hints.
The Lost Mind of Dr. Brain is recommended for puzzle fiends age 12 and up. One 12-year-old friend of mine rated it "totally cool!" I just wish they'd had stuff like this when I was a kid.
The Lost Mind of Dr. Brain CD-ROM for Mac and Windows: US$44.95. Sierra On-Line Inc.: (800) 757 7707, fax +1 (206) 642 7617, on the Web at www.sierra.com/.
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