If you are one of the lucky few who are a member of the Southwest Airlines’ Rapid Rewards program, then you may be receiving a free Nintendo DS Lite and a copy of Brain Age: Train Your Brain in Minutes a Day. This marks the first time that Southwest Airlines has partnered with an outside company to provide a special reward for their Rapid Rewards members. The Nintendo DS Lite and the Brain Age game are being offered to help Southwest Airlines travelers pass the time during their next trip.

According to a press release today, the members were “selected by Southwest Airlines for their longtime loyalty and accumulated miles…the Rapid Rewards Members who received the Nintendo DS and copy of Brain Age have collectively flown more than 79.2 million miles, spent more than 132,854 hours in the air and represent more than 600 years of membership.

Nintendo DS is the world’s best-selling hand-held video game system, and has sold nearly 7 million in the United States alone. DS has games for kids and adults alike. Brain Age keeps users’ minds active with sudoku puzzles, memory quizzes and fun tests in reading and math. Rapid Rewards Members can write their answers directly onto the touch screen of Nintendo DS and stimulate their brains during their flights (as long as they remember to turn off their portable electronic devices before takeoffs and landings).

For eight straight years in a row, Southwest Airlines was honored with first place for Best Award Redemption at InsideFlyer magazine’s 18th annual Freddie Awards. The airline has won this honor each of the eight years that the magazine has awarded it. Along with the Best Award Redemption, Southwest’s other first-place honors include Program of the Year, Best Web site and Best Bonus Promotion. Southwest Airlines serves 63 cities in 32 states with more than 3,200 flights per day.

The worldwide innovator in the creation of interactive entertainment, Nintendo Co., Ltd., of Kyoto, Japan, manufactures and markets hardware and software for its Wii(TM), Nintendo DS(TM), Game Boy(R) Advance and Nintendo GameCube(TM) systems. Since 1983, Nintendo has sold nearly 2.2 billion video games and more than 387 million hardware units globally, and has created industry icons like Mario(TM), Donkey Kong(R), Metroid(R), Zelda(TM) and Pokemon(R). A wholly owned subsidiary, Nintendo of America Inc., based in Redmond, Wash., serves as headquarters for Nintendo’s operations in the Western Hemisphere. For more information about Nintendo, visit the company’s Web site at www.nintendo.com.

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