Video games are clicking with the senior center set

Doris Meyer wasn't going to let a video game or those last three pins get the better of her.

The 70-year-old grandmother of four squared herself in front of the flat-screen TV, drew her arm back and -- crash! -- the last few pins toppled.

"You got it!" teammate Hal Wehner, 74, shouted from his motorized wheelchair.

Until recently, Meyer and Wehner hadn't bowled in years. But the two have taken up the sport again in the virtual world, regularly playing with

Nintendo's Wii video game in the lounge of the Cedar Crest retirement community in Pequannock.

It's a sign video games are catching on with the elderly.

In a partnership with Nintendo, Erickson Retirement Communities recently installed a few of the $250 Wii (pronounced "We") consoles in each of its 20 campuses nationwide.

"It's a marketing stunt to some extent, but it underscores that the Wii console is not just for the hard- core gamer," said industry analyst Michael Gartenberg, vice president and research director for Jupiter Research. "You don't often find a video game that is going to appeal to 6-year-olds and 60-year-olds."

In courting the senior market, video game companies are luring the nation's largest demographic and tapping a growing research field, studying how cognitive activities and games stave off memory disorders.

And it's not just Nintendo.

Over the last few years, several companies, including Vigorous Mind and Lumos Labs, have developed computer games aimed at keeping the mind sharp. This fall, Sony will launch Buzz! The Mega Quiz -- which has attracted gamers of all ages in Europe -- in the United States.

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