Professor Ryuta Kawashima, the genius behind Nintendo's smash hit Brain Train series turned down the chance to become a millionaire of the game's royalties.
"Not a single yen has gone in my pocket," said the self-confessed workaholic professor. "Everyone in my family is mad at me but I tell them that if they want money, go out and earn it."
Royalties from Brain Train Age for the Nintendo DS alone have reached 2.4 billion yen (22 million dollars), with 17 million titles sold worldwide since its debut in Japan in May 2005.
Professor Kawashima is entitled to half of those royalties while his employer, state-funded Tohoku University, gets to get the other half. The professor's annual salary is 11 million yen (100,000 dollars).
Kawashima pours his portion of the royalties into funding research. He has built a 300-million-yen laboratory at the university's Institute of Development, Aging and Cancer where he works, and another lab worth 400 million yen is due to be completed in March.
