Although graphics are limited on a GBA the game does reasonably well. "Sink Ships" has some difficulty in creating graphics so that a sunk ship can be distinguished. Otherwise it's "OK".

My biggest gripe is with the chess game. I'm not the best or the worst chess player but even if I "dumb-down" the chess game it ALWAYS wins. It also can castle, but provides no instructions or any intuitive way for the player to castle. It would be better if it would allow the player to win occaisionally. This makes the chess game very frustrating and not fun after a few dozen games of chess.

Same thing goes for checkers, it makes multiple jumps but doesn't provide a way for the player to do the same.

I've played the Mah Jong game a few times, and it always ends up the same... with tiles left and none match.

The reversi game is a bit better and is winable. I haven't tried the dominos game yet and the others only once so far.

Overall it's a bargain considering the quantity of different games it provides but it lacks the "fun" factor by making games impossible to win.

I've played a lot of computer reversi and this seems to be the best computer opponent possible. It may actually play optimally which means it is nearly impossible to beat at "average" setting and above. I have to play on "easy" and I still lose more than half of the time. My only complaint is that it takes the computer a while to move, which probably has to do with the depth of the "thinking" it does to figure out the best move to dong you with. The games are all easy to figure out if you've ever played them before so you won't find yourself looking at the manual at all. It has memory so you can save your games, character and statistics. I'm pretty sure you can also turn the music off (it's annoying). The sound effects are nice to have but about half of them are ok and the other half are annoying (the game lets loose an Anime style scream every time you lose a game). In a nutshell, the games are smart and hard to beat even on the easy settings (at least for a novice player) so this should give anyone plenty of practice at some great games.

I ENJOY THIS GAME. I LOVE THE FACT THAT I DONT HAVE TO FIND THE GAME AND THEN MAKE SURE I HAVE ALL THE PIECES THEN SET IT UP. I HAVE A VISION IMPAIRMENT AND COULDNT PLAY MAJIONG UNTILL I FOUND THE KIDS TILES NOW A PLAY ALL I WANT. I LEARNED BAGGAMMON AND REVERSI.

This game is the best it has some of my favorite games. You can pick your oppents level of dificulity! The cool thing about Sink the Ships (Battle Ship) is you shoot more than once at a time so the game goes quicker. The chess gets a little boring because you have to move fromm square to square. Dominoes I love on their it has a level of oppent that I am! Resveri is to hard the only level that I can do is very easy and i am very good at it. Four in a Row is my favorite it has the same rules Connect Four and they make the easiest and hardest levels wihich is good for me because I share it with my brother and he is not very good but I am thats what I like about it. I don't know how to play Backgammon and Mah Jog and the game doesn't give a good discreaption of how to play. Finally, the person desinger rocks I made it to look just like me you can put on just about every little detail you need. It is my favorit e game I ever got!!!

The best thing about this title is the variety of stuff you can play here, and the level of game play. Most of the games offered here have several levels of difficulty and the challenge is good for both kids and adults. The games are fun and varied enough to keep players busy for quite a while.

One cute feature is the face creator, that allows you to make an avatar of yourself, making the game personalized!

The Chess game is challenging, and really would be enough to recommend this title on its own. But add in backgammon, dominoes (which isn't that difficult to figure out once you play it a time or two), mah jong, 4 in a row, which is the board game "Connect 4" and sink ships, a cute version of "Battleship," and you have an excellent title, great for long excursions.

Highly recommended!

this is like the best game ever because i love chess, and checkers!!So I gave it 5 stars!Plus my dad love dominioes!

This is a great collection of games. They all play equally well. The graphics here are not mind blowing but they do convey the felling of each game. However Mahjong Solitare lacks detail making a few of the tiles hard to say. Also, the lightness of the tile indictates how many tiles are under it, this can be annoying because by the time you get the last time it is dark indeed.

The game also has a mini playlist that lets you pick your music and this does work well, and is a fun addition.

The difficulty for most games is a relative fair. however as you increase the difficult it the computer takes increasing longer to make a move.

Disregarde the review I just did. It was the incorrect game.
I meant to review the ultimate card game.
sorry

I ordered this game back in Oct.2003. I just received it and it was worth waiting for. I think it is a great game if you like to play solitaire and there are other games too. I just love to play games on my GBA. It keeps my mind strong.

Many times as I've worked in the video game industry, I've had adults come to me, and ask for a game like this, so they could buy a GBA. Prior to this game coming out last year, the only truly adult themed game for people who aren't hardcore gamers was Caesar's Palace. This is a great game, not only for the variety of games it contains, but the quality and attention to detail. It's not as simple as say a black and white handheld dot matrix checkers game or something like that. This game actually challenges you to think, and is perfect to take along for those times where you have to wait or travel. The beauty of this game is that you can pick it up at any time, and also by that respect, you can easily put it down. With the invent of the GBA SP, I saw many professionals come in and buy a GBA SP with this game for their commute, or what not, as it is simpler and less expensive then a comparable Palm system. If this is your goal, then this is the game for you.

I was very dissapointed in this game. The games listed are some of my favorites. First let me say battleship is FUN. It always has been, however the game does have problems with the two flagship games in the line-up. Chess and checkers. The problem with checkers is that it forces moves, if you can jump the computer you have to jump the computer even if it sets you up for a triple jump thats the move you have to make. Now when the game your playing is a strategy game and you not allowed to strategize there is a serious problem. Chess has a lot of move glitches, i've had pawns move diagonally when there is no piece to attack and pawns move vertically and capture pieces to there right or left, lots of problems. As for the rest of the games you get what you expect to get nothing more and nothing less

It's about time that someone thought of doing this for the Gameboy Advance. There's some of us out here that enjoy playing games of this nature and I tip my hat to Telegames for having the courage to release a collection of this type. For instance, there's Chess, Checkers, Backgammon, Mahjong, Dominoes, 4-in-a-Row, Sink the Ships, and Reversi so there's plenty of variety to choose in what to play as well as the Face Creator feature which permits player customization. You can select full 3-D or 2-D views with animation, board types, figure styles and backgrounds. You can pick your computer opponent from a list of 12 different male and female faces with animated expressions, Edit the playlist(from the over 1-hour game music playlist) to only hear what you want and more. Heck, you can even play against a real opponent with one game pak and a link cable to his or her GBA. I really think Telegames did an excellent job with this game. Giving us a good quality collection of games with lots of variety.
If you're into classic strategy games of this sort, you ought to give Ultimate Brain Games a try. It's awesome.

but not what I was expecting. Guess I'm really anxious for the Ultimate Card Games to come out and thought Brain Games would be close to that...

This game is great for the times you want to relax with a game
that is not physical but still challenging. Great for waiting
times in Doctors offices or other appointments that that require
time slots to fill.

Ah, the classics. It doesn't get any better. This is a fun game cartridge with a good variety of classic games.

Pros:
- Good selection of fun games.
- Reasonable range of difficulty from so easy you can't loose to fairly challenging.
- Reasonably good graphics. It is sometimes hard to tell where you have previously shot because of the smoke from a burning ship in the Sink Ships game. The tiles in Mahjong are hard to see without a magnifier, but that can be expected with a game that requires so much small detail.
- Controls are easy and very straight forward.
- Keeps track of your wins and losses even after the power is turned off and the cartridge is removed.

Cons:
- MAJOR FLAW! The backgammon game not only allows, but can actually force you to make an illegal move. This can seriously affect the outcome of the game.
- The music is fuzzy. Even on low volume settings it sounds like you are over driving the amp., or have an impedance mismatch. This is kind of annoying.
- The computer takes its turn so quickly in backgammon that you can't even see what the dice roll was let alone follow the game play.
- Backgammon does not have a doubling cube. This is such an important aspect of the game that it really does detract from the game play.
- It would be nice if you could take back/change a move that was made in error.
- For those primarily interested in the backgammon game - it is pretty easy to win even on the most difficult setting. It won't be much of a challenge, and tends to make you a sloppy player because you can get away with playing carelessly.

All in all, this is a good game cartridge with a lot of fun in store for almost everyone. I certainly would highly recommend it.

I'm 33 years old and married, so my days of burning the midnight oil in front of the Playstation are few and far between. I mainly got my Gameboy Advance for bathroom breaks (yeah, gross, I know), and to save my sanity from endless trips to the mall. However, this game collection has broken the confines of having a minute here and there to play. Most of the games take under 5 minutes to play (good for when you're waiting in the car for a "quick" stop at Target), but even if they don't, you can save at any time. Best of all, MY WIFE LOVES IT!!! She was always a Backgammonaholic, but she hate setting up the board. Now, we just click it on during commercial breaks and go head to head. It was games like these that the Gameboy was invented for.

A great product for those who want an entertaining departure from games with shooting, driving, animals, and other creatures. Each of the 8 games is well done and challenging. My son and I play head2head all the time.

Good work, Telegames!

Considering the price, this gives the adult gamers' collection a real boost. Most of the graphics are average to good, with
"sink ships" (battle ship) being the worst. But even at that, sink ships is still quite playable. This works best for traveling. If you have limited space, you end up with lots of time killing games in one cartridge. My biggest beef is that many of the games are too darn hard. All in all, well worth the money. However, if you want a quality chess game, or a good battleship game, etc.... Don't buy this game with that in mind.

This is one of my son's favorite games. It's great for longer trips since this one cartridge can keep you playing for hours, either alone against the computer, or with only one game pak and a link you can play against a real opponent. My son is 12 and we've had a great time playing it together. It's well worth the money.

Great game! I would especially recomend it to anyone who is traveling. The olny problem is learning how to play. If you don't already know how to play a game, you won't learn by this. Other than that, there really isn't anything else wrong with it. I took it on a trip recently, and it kept me busy the whole time. So if you want fun, buy this!

I thought I might be able to add a little information here. This game pack is great and as others have mentioned, 2 people can play any game either on the same game boy or with 2 GBAs linked together with a link cable. We had a little trouble getting 2 GBAs linked up but for some reason reversing the cable did the trick (plugging one end into the other gameboy).

When the description says "Demo mode" it means that you watch the game play itself. The onscreen help is just rules - there aren't any strategy hints included with the exception of a simple tutor mode in Chess where it will give you simple hints. The background music is annoying - I wish it would remember when you turn it off.

Chess is well done (switch the board to "standard view"). I am not a execellent chess player so I can't comment on the chess playing ability of the game. You are able to take back moves if you get yourself into trouble. Chess additionally includes 100 "puzzles" for you to solve like finding checkmate in 2 moves or whatever. The chess game is not on a clock (which I prefer).

I have played most games of Reversi. I have beat the computer 2 out of about 100 times but I am hopeful I am getting better. The backgammon seems to be pretty easy to beat and there is no doubling cube. We played a couple of linked games of "Sink the Ship". This is like battleship except every round you get 1 shot per ship that isn't sunk. So at the beginning you pick 5 shots to do.

The Mahjong is probably fun but the tiles are too small and too dim to really see. The Dominos game is regular dominos where you score if the dominos on the end add up to 5, 10, 15, 20, etc... Haven't played checkers or 4-in-a-row.

To summarize this is a great time waster and well worth the money. It could kill large chunks of time on a car trip.

Ultimate Brain Games has proven to be worth the money I paid for it. The "Sink the Ships" game is surprisingly fun--more fun than "Battleship". Chess is quite challenging for the limited capabilities of a gameboy game (with 7 other games taking up resources). Majhong, Reversi, and Connect Four are difficult (which is a good thing) and as user friendly as any computerized versions. The game also offers Checkers, Backgammon, and Dominoes as well as a design your own character feature which is mildly enjoyable, but not all that important.

The graphics are mediocre. The music is quite good for a gameboy advance game, but still annoying enough for me to keep the volume turned down.

Ultimate Brain Games is a great cure for boredom. Just pick it up, select a game that suits your immediate fancy, and play. Convenient, challenging, and full of possibilities.

It keeps my 9 year old very busy, by entertaining his brain.

I bought this game for my 2 sons, ages 10 and 12. It occupied the entire cross country flight we recently took. Mom and dad even took turns playing...Lots of variety in games and skill levels and great graphics. Best yet, you only need one game and a link for multiple players to play against each other. It took a few times playing to understand the rules as the written rules are a bit tough to understand, but we figured it out quickly and really enjoyed the games. Much more intelligent than many of the advance games out there and you can even learn some new game techniques...Highly recommended...

A pretty nice little multi-game cartridge. Chess and checkers are the main draw and sport a rather good AI and are clear and good looking graphics-wise. The "Sea-Battle" (*cough* Battleship *cough*) is rather clever in it's approach and animation.

The drawbacks are the dominoes game, which just scrolls through your available bone positions -- no strategy involved -- so it may as well be computer vs. computer. The Mahjong game is not competition based, it's just a solitare version. Dumb.

if the words 'mah jongg' in the list of games caught your eye and you buy the game, you might be disappointed. in fact, this cartridge does NOT include a proper four person mah jongg game, but a solitare version instead where you just match the tiles. *sigh*... i was looking forward to playing the real game. bummer.

if the words 'mah jongg' in the list of games caught your eye and you buy the game, you might be disappointed. in fact, this cartridge does NOT include a proper four person mah jongg game, but a solitare version instead where you just match the tiles. *sigh*... i was looking forward to playing the real game. bummer.

This is by far the best collection of board and brain games I have ever bought. Chess alone is surely the most complex and strongest version compared to all other mobile chess games but you get 7 other nice games in the package. Especially Mahjongg graphics are great and the visuals her and in all other games appear very sharp. The face creator-faces even get animated!
Really impressive an fun -- you can't get wrong with this one!

...until now! This game is just awsome! The Face Creator feature is especially cool and also the linkability to other GBA's - only one cartridge is needed. I urge you to get a copy of this game and take it along with your GBA - anywhere. Saving at any point makes it easy to resume a game wherever and whenever you want! GET IT!

I have been playing this game for about 24 hours, off and on, and can easily see why IGN.com and others are rating it so high. It is really a well designed compilation of entertaining games with loads of features and cool elements. I've even learned how to play chess thanks to the in-game instructions and help. But the most fun is the "Sink-the-ships" game, which is really Battleship but with sailing ships. The sound effects are realistic and the graphics are great. I really enjoy tanking my brother's ships when we play head to head.

I got to play this for a couple hours and it's a dynamite collection of entertaining games. Alot of variety with games I was really wanting to play, not a bunch of cheesy uninteresting games. The adjustable skill levels really help to make it challenging for all ages. The best 2 player game is "sink the ships", which is similar to the battleship-type games. You can realy talk trash to your opponent as you are broad-siding his sailing ships with cannonballs! I even liked mahjong (which I never new how to play until I read the ingame instructions). I probably spent 15 minutes just creating my own face for my ingame player - pretty cool feature.