Mother Brain

Mother Brain (Japanese: マザーブレイン) is a fictional character created by Nintendo for the Metroid series. She is one of the most prominent antagonists within the series, serving as the main antagonist of Metroid and Super Metroid.

Mother Brain has been killed multiple times by series protagonist Samus Aran. Her Super Metroid design was originally milder than its final version, resembling an "old lady living in an apartment complex" when designed by Toru Osawa. This design was altered by Tomomi Yamane, who gave her an overall more monstrous appearance. She takes the form of a large brain that sits within a jar, from which she controls the Space Pirates on the fictional planet Zebes. Since Super Metroid (1994), she has had a single large eye.

Mother Brain has made several appearances in other media, most notably in the cartoon, Captain N: The Game Master. Since appearing in the Metroid series, she has received positive reception, but her alterations in Captain N were far less well received.

Super Metroid

Super Metroid (スーパーメトロイド, Sūpā Metoroido) is an action-adventure video game published by Nintendo, developed by its Research & Development 1 (R&D1) division, and programmed by Intelligent Systems for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System. The third game in the Metroid series, it was released in Japan on March 19, 1994, in North America on April 18, and in Europe and Australia on July 28. The game was directed and written by Yoshio Sakamoto, and produced by Makoto Kano, with Gunpei Yokoi serving as general manager.

Super Metroid is a direct sequel to the 1991 game Metroid II: Return of Samus. In the game's story, bounty hunter Samus Aran brought a Metroid larva from the planet SR388 to the Ceres space colony, where scientists believed that they could harness its power. After leaving the colony, Samus received a distress call and returned to find that the Metroid larva was stolen by the Space Pirate leader Ridley. Samus follows him to the planet Zebes in attempts to retrieve a stolen larva. Super Metroid's gameplay focuses on exploration, and its progression revolves around the search for power-ups that are used to reach previously inaccessible areas. The game introduces new concepts to the series, such as the inventory screen, an automapping facility, and the ability to fire in all directions.

Brain

The brain is an organ that serves as the center of the nervous system in all vertebrate and most invertebrate animals. Only a few invertebrates such as sponges, jellyfish, adult sea squirts and starfish do not have a brain; diffuse or localised nerve nets are present instead. The brain is located in the head, usually close to the primary sensory organs for such senses as vision, hearing, balance, taste, and smell. The brain is the most complex organ in a vertebrate's body. In a typical human, the cerebral cortex (the largest part) is estimated to contain 15–33 billion neurons, each connected by synapses to several thousand other neurons. These neurons communicate with one another by means of long protoplasmic fibers called axons, which carry trains of signal pulses called action potentials to distant parts of the brain or body targeting specific recipient cells.

Physiologically, the function of the brain is to exert centralized control over the other organs of the body. The brain acts on the rest of the body both by generating patterns of muscle activity and by driving the secretion of chemicals called hormones. This centralized control allows rapid and coordinated responses to changes in the environment. Some basic types of responsiveness such as reflexes can be mediated by the spinal cord or peripheral ganglia, but sophisticated purposeful control of behavior based on complex sensory input requires the information integrating capabilities of a centralized brain.

Mother

Mothers are women who inhabit or perform the role of bearing some relation to their children, who may or may not be their biological offspring. Thus, dependent on the context, women can be considered mothers by virtue of having given birth, by raising their child(ren), supplying their ovum for fertilization, or some combination thereof. Such conditions provide a way of delineating the concept of motherhood, or the state of being a mother. Women who meet the third and first categories usually fall under the terms 'birth mother' or 'biological mother', regardless of whether the individual in question goes on to parent their child. Accordingly, a woman who meets only the second condition may be considered an adoptive mother, and those who meet only the third a surrogacy mother.

The above concepts defining the role of mother are neither exhaustive nor universal, as any definition of 'mother' may differ based on how social, cultural, and religious roles are defined. The parallel conditions and terms for males: those who are (typically biologically) fathers do not, by definition, take up the role of fatherhood. It should also be noted that mother and fatherhood are not limited to those who are or have parented. Women who are pregnant may be referred to as expectant mothers or mothers-to-be, though such applications tend to be less readily applied to (biological) fathers or adoptive parents.

Brain Battle

Brain Battle was a Canadian interactive game show which aired weekdays on Global. The show premiered on March 26, 2007, and aired a total of 356 episodes as of its series finale on August 4, 2008.

Overview

By the end of its run, Brain Battle aired live in all time zones, starting at 11:00 AM EST, running for one hour. Viewers could enter by calling on a premium rate telephone line, sending a text message, or entering on the show's Web site for free. Initially in between calls, a multi-round game was played with 2 in-studio contestants, usually various forms of word puzzles, but in-studio games were later dropped, with the show only consisting of phone-in games after it. The show's staff also maintained a group on Facebook, encouraging users to interact live with the crew of the show.

Gameplay

In-studio games

Alongside traditional phone-in games, Brain Battle initially used in-studio players in addition to the phone-in games. 2 players competed against each other in 3 rounds of word games. The rounds were Chain Word, where players attempted to guess words that were in the middle of a chain between two other words, Spell it Write, which required the player to guess the correct spelling of a word, and True or False, where players answered true or false questions. In the final round, Say it Again, the winner from the previous rounds would start with $100, and answer questions for 60 seconds or until they get a total of $1,000. Wrong answers deducted $100, though they could not drop below $100.