This morning I found a nifty bookmarklet at http://erkie.github.com/ that allows you to turn any website into an old-school game of Asteroids.
You control the little ship using the arrow keys, space bar to fire, and shoot at the various elements of the page – which disappear as you hit them.

I recorded a screencast using spudart.org as an example. It's a bit difficult to make out the ship. But if you change the video resolution to 720, and view it in full screen, it's a little better.

(If you click here, you can try it out on my blog. *gasp*)

There are numerous sources for "brain training games", some online, some for console/handheld game systems – but none are as convenient and as flexible as I would like. The online sources tend to either A) want to charge you money, B) just link to games on other sites with games and don't provide very cohesive experience, or C) just suck. Handheld/console versions aren't free, requiring a monetary commitment upfront.

I would like an online service that provides access to specially made free online brain training games designed to improve brain fitness, improve concentration, improve memory, and most importantly – be fun enough that people would want to come back and play them again. If you know of one.. that'd be great, otherwise I guess I'm actually thinking about starting such a site.

If I were to start my own site chocked full of brain training exercises and games, there would be quick access to all of the games without requiring any sort of signup or registration. Users could register and would be able to track their scores for games, their overall progress, see their scores compared against the average scores of all the registered users, and form teams with friends to "compete" with other members on the team and together against other teams.

The games would be created in Flash, since that's the most common plugin around and would allow the greatest amount of people access to the games.

Here's where I need your help though – I need ideas for creating the games. If you've played "brain training" games before, which ones did you like? Which type of game do you feel provided the most benefits? Which ones didn't you like? Reasons would be helpful too, but I feel like I'm already asking a lot. Also, are there any games that you haven't seen but would like to?

Any comments would be helpful. If you leave a comment and would like to be kept up to date on progress, make sure you check the box above the comment form that says "Notify me of followup comments via e-mail", that way I can respond to the comments on here and you'll be notified automatically.

Play some games! (YES! Exclamation marks!)

Chain Factor

Whenever the number on a disc matches
the size of the row or column that
disc is in, it will disappear.

white dwarf

Collect the green circles.
Touch a blue circle to bank points.
Dodge the red circles.

Onslaught

I didn't grab a screenshot of this one, but it's your basic "Tower Defense" type game.