Seniors Can Also Play Video Games

Could you recommend one or two video games that are a little more suited to a pensioner who lives alone, such as a strategy game or a grown up sim. Not interested in shoot-'em-ups, fantasy games or ones that require me to join an online community, just something I can play on my video game accessories.

You can play some of the greatest games ever written, including Sid Meier's Civilization, Will Wright's Sim City, and Sports Interactive's Football Manager. All of these are challenging, none requires high-speed twitching, and you can play them for a long time by pausing/restarting or saving/reloading the current game.

The latest releases are not free, but older versions are still playable and widely available in cut-price versions or second hand.

Other games from the same stables are also worth a look, including Sid Meier's Railroad Tycoon games and, from the Sim series, SimTower.

If you like puzzle games, try PopCap for Peggle*, BeJewelled and Plants vs Zombies (there are online versions and free-trial downloads) or look around at Pogo.com, where plenty of seniors play. Also, AOL, Microsoft MSN and Yahoo all have big collections of casual games.

Not many games have been written specifically for seniors, but that started to change in 2005 when the first Brain Training game was launched in Japan for the Nintendo DS. I'm convinced they work, and playing this type of game could have benefits (see Study: Computer games, memory training for seniors can save billions in Medicare). The Masters of Healthcare website has published a list of 100 Awesome Anti-Aging Brain Games (Online and Off). And the video game accessories of Nintendo DS are so cheap.

Nintendo’s video games give some games that adapt to the seniors. Because some Nintendo DS games depend almost entiely on skill, and almost every game is winnable. And the cost of video game accessories is so little.