History VideoGame / DrBrain

The third installment, ''The Lost Mind Of Dr Brain'' was released on a hybrid CD for Windows 3.1 and UsefulNotes/MacOS and included digitised speech in place of text instructions, although the game would only work if the user manually set their display colour-depth to 256 colours. The only files written to the user's hard drive were the saved games, requiring the CD to play the game.

* MadScientistsBeautifulDaughter: Well, beautiful niece, actually, as Dr. Brain's niece Elaina appears in the third game.

* MadScientistsBeautifulDaughter: Dr. Brain's niece Elaina appears in the third game.

All three games work perfectly under UsefulNotes/DOSBox (or Windows 3.1 under [=DOSBox=] in the case of the third game).

* HintsAreForLosers: Using the HintSystem reduce your overall game score, and in the third game, it also reduces the value of the puzzles.

** ''The Lost Mind Of Dr. Brain'': Motor Programming, with Dr. Brain himself walking around in a maze and picking up brains. Harder difficulties offer additional subroutines to allow you to collect the additional brains in the maze.

** ''The Lost Mind Of Dr. Brain'': Dr. Brain himself walking around in a maze and picking up brains. Harder difficulties offer additional subroutines to allow you to collect the additional brains in the maze.

* ShoutOut: Solving one puzzle in the observatory in ''Castle of Dr. Brain'' causes the monolith from ''Literature/2001ASpaceOdyssey'' to appear. Once you solve all the puzzles and get access to Dr. Brain's laboratory, a voice clip saying "My god, it's full of puzzles!" plays.

* UsefulNotes/AmericanAccents: In the third game, Rathbone has this kind of accent, depending on the game played. In the Synaptic Cleft game, Rathbone, dressed as a cowboy, has a Texas drawl. In the Neural Maze game, he has a Noo Yawk accent while dressed as a utility worker.

* TheLabRat / FormallyNamedPet: Rathbone in the third game.

* [[MadScientistsBeautifulDaughter Mad Scientist's Beautiful Niece]]: Elaina in the third game.

** ''Castle of Dr. Brain'': A robot hand in a glass box to get three required items. Three heads with different behaviours are available to use (and must all be used on the harder difficulties).

** ''Castle of Dr. Brain'': A robot hand in a glass box to get three required items. Three heads with different behaviours are available to use (and must be used on the harder difficulties).

All three games work perfectly under DOSBox (or Windows 3.1 under DOSBox in the case of the third game).

Sometime after the fourth game was released, the rights to the Dr. Brain series were acquired by Knowledge Adventure, creators of the ''VideoGame/JumpStart'' series, and released four games (''Dr. Brain Thinking Games: Puzzle Madness'' and ''IQ Adventure'', ''Dr. Brain: Action Reaction'', and ''The Adventures of Dr. Brain.'') The Knowledge Adventure games recast Dr. Brain as a twenty-something genius instead of mad scientist in his sixties. The ''Thinking Games'' sub-series had less of an emphasis on educational content and focused more on solving puzzles, while ''Action Reaction'' is a straight up first-person 3D platformer with a few puzzles thrown in.

The ''Dr. Brain'' series of games from are puzzle-based games from {{Creator/Sierra}}. Created by ''VideoGame/QuestForGlory'' co-designer Corey Cole, the series is one of the few examples of {{Edutainment Game}}s which are actually good games in their own right.

The ''Dr. Brain'' series of games from {{Creator/Sierra}} are puzzle-based games and one of the few examples of {{Edutainment Game}}s which are actually good games in their own right.

The third and fourth games (''The Lost Mind of Dr. Brain'' and ''The Time-Warp of Dr. Brain'', respectively) went in a slightly different direction. Instead of offering a linear path through various kinds of puzzles, gameplay was made more "casual", with all puzzles available for play at any time. You had to complete each puzzle repeatedly a certain number of times to "finish" one area of the game, and the end-game puzzle was unlocked only once all areas were finished. However, you could keep playing the puzzles over and over again, at varying difficulties, at any time. While certainly more repetitive than the earlier games, these sequels offered both a more open-ended experience as well as more content for players who enjoyed one or more puzzles and wanted to play them repeatedly. Unfortunately for the more cerebral crowd, a good portion of the puzzles in both games were practically arcade games more than they were any sort of puzzle or at all educational in nature.

Sometime after the fourth game was released, the rights to the Dr. Brain series were acquired by Knowledge Adventure, creators of the ''VideoGame/JumpStart'' series, and released four games (''Dr. Brain Thinking Games: Puzzle Madness'' and ''IQ Adventure'', ''Dr. Brain: Action Reaction'', and ''The Adventures of Dr. Brain.'') The Knowledge Adventure games recast Dr. Brain as a twenty-something genius instead of mad scientist in his sixties. The ''Thinking Games'' sub-series had less of an emphasis on education content and focused more on solving puzzles, while ''Action Reaction'' is a straight up first-person 3D platformer with a few puzzles thrown in.

The first two games, ''Castle Of Dr Brain'' and ''The Island Of Dr Brain'' were made for MS-DOS using 256-colour VGA graphics, support for common sound cards and shipped on floppy disks.

* AmericanAccents: In the third game, Rathbone has this kind of accent, depending on the game played. In the Synaptic Cleft game, Rathbone, dressed as a cowboy, has a Texas drawl. In the Neural Maze game, he has a Noo Yawk accent while dressed as a utility worker.

* ProgrammingGame - Each game has one:

* ProgramingGame - Each game has one:
** ''Castle of Dr. Brain.'': A robot hand in a glass box.
** ''The Lost Mind Of Dr Brain'': Dr. Brain himself walking around in a maze and picking up brains.

** ThreePlusFiveMakeFour

The series began with ''Castle of Dr. Brain.'' Here, the {{Featureless Protagonist}} is applying for an apprenticeship in Brain's laboratory. The entry exam consists of, well, reaching the laboratory, which is hidden deep inside the titular castle. Each step of the way is blocked by a puzzle or set of puzzles. The player must proceed through this linear maze, solving the wide variety of different puzzles in sequence, until the final puzzle lands the player in the laboratory. Puzzles in this game ranged from memorizing sounds and patterns, to jigsaw and word puzzles, and even rudimentary astronomy. It was also possible to change the difficulty of the puzzles, making it easier to finish the game if one or more puzzles proved very difficult. It also made the game accessible to both children and adults, who could experience roughly the same amount of challenge from what are essentially the same puzzles.

* HintsAreForLosers: Using the HintSystem reduce your overral game score, and in the third game, it also reduces the value of the puzzles.

In the second game, ''The Island of Dr. Brain'', the protagonist is now Brain's apprentice, and must travel to Dr. Brain's secret island to retrieve a massive battery, which is to be used to power Brain's newest contraption. Once again the island is a fairly-linear series of puzzles, each one requiring different skills to solve. Almost all puzzles in this game are either completely new, or are advanced versions of the puzzles presented in the original game. For the most part however, the Island is a more difficult game than its predecessor thanks to some truly devious puzzles. The use of a calculator can come in handy. In addition, the game keeps a scoring sheet of all puzzles solved within a single run. The game awards a gold "plaque" for solving puzzles on the highest difficulty, silver for medium, and bronze for easy.

The third installment, ''The Lost Mind Of Dr Brain'' was released on a hybrid CD for Windows 3.1 and MacOS and included digitised speech in place of text instructions, although the game would only work if the user manually set their display colour-depth to 256 colours. The only files written to the user's hard drive were the saved games, requiring the CD to play the game.

The series began with ''Castle of Dr. Brain.'' Here, the {{AFGNCAAP}} is applying for an apprenticeship in Brain's laboratory. The entry exam consists of, well, reaching the laboratory, which is hidden deep inside the titular castle. Each step of the way is blocked by a puzzle or set of puzzles. The player must proceed through this linear maze, solving the wide variety of different puzzles in sequence, until the final puzzle lands the player in the laboratory. Puzzles in this game ranged from memorizing sounds and patterns, to jigsaw and word puzzles, and even rudimentary astronomy. It was also possible to change the difficulty of the puzzles, making it easier to finish the game if one or more puzzles proved very difficult. It also made the game accessible to both children and adults, who could experience roughly the same amount of challenge from what are essentially the same puzzles.

* [[MadScientistsBeautifulDaughter Mad Scientist's Beautiful Niece]]: Dr. Elaina Brain in the third game.