Apparently, people like going to school. Considering the surprise success of Brain Age: Train Your Brain for Minutes a Day and its follow-up Big Brain Academy on Nintendo DS, holding class on Wii is the next logical step. Playable on the show floor at Game Developers Conference, Nintendo showed off the Wii adaptation of Big Brain Academy. Even if you’re not big on learning, Big Brain Academy promises plenty of fast-paced mental exercises that seemed perfectly suited for Wii.

Big Brain Academy adheres to the format used in its Nintendo DS counterpart. You’ll be able to tackle a variety of mental mini-games in five categories: think, identify, memorize, compute, and analyze; there’s also a category offering a mixture of all five categories. Obviously, each category focuses on specific types of activities. For example, one computation exercise displayed a column of numbers; your goal is to knock out figures from the column in order to reach a total number display at the top of the screen. Another had us memorizing the proper order of musical instruments shown on the screen. One particularly challenging task required laying down tracks for a train to reach a finish line; while seemingly simple, the top-down perspective and odd corners made it tricky.

Approximately 30 mental exercises will make it into the final game, with about a dozen showing up in the playable demonstration. You can tackle them via the single player mode; however, we played the newly added Versus multiplayer. Big Brain Academy will support up to eight players split into two teams of four apiece. You can jump into the game by selecting a Mii, then setting the number of activities in the match from 12, 18, 24, or 30. When a match begins, the screen splits vertically, with a meter at the center of the screen tracking each team’s progress. Watching our Mii icon climb high on the competition gauge, our friendly match against a conference attendee grew increasingly intense. Four-on-four play has the potential to be pretty frenzied—an ideal little party game.

You’ll control the game using the Wii Remote as a pointer on-screen. Much like the stylus in the Nintendo DS version, moving the Wii Remote allows you to manipulate icons and explore mini-games on the screen. Pressing the A button will set any selection or interact with whatever exercise you’re playing. Anyone ought to be able to pick up a Wii Remote and start playing, making Big Brain Academy a highly accessible title for non-gamers.

While it won’t win any awards for presentation, Big Brain Academy did look decent running in 480p. Even though Wii isn’t capable of high-definition visuals, Big Brain Academy certainly hopes to make up for it with solid gameplay. Its assortment of mental exercises makes for great multiplayer; however, we’d still like to check out some of the single player features to get a good feel for the game. Start studying, though, as class will be in session late this spring.