DUNGEONS & DUFFERS (via The Mother Judd):

Games seek to bring seniors to their feet: Nintendo marketing the Wii in retirement communities (Robbie Brown, June 16, 2007, Boston Globe)

At age 81, George Mason donated his golf clubs to charity, retiring forever from the links or so he thought.

"I'd had a heart attack, and I didn't envision myself on a golf course ever again," he said.

But the other day, Mason, now 84, stepped to the tee and clobbered a 200-yard drive onto the fairway of a Par 4.

Don't look for him on the Senior PGA tour quite yet. Mason's triumphant return to golfing occurred on a video game.

Last week, his retirement community, Linden Ponds in Hingham , wired a Nintendo Wii to the 68-inch television in its lobby. Since then, the residents, whose average age is 77, have been golfing, bowling, boxing, and playing tennis and baseball on the video-game system, which lets players simulate the physical movement of real sports.

In senior citizens like Mason, Nintendo sees a new target demographic: the elderly gamer. The video-game maker provided the $250 Wii system for free to Linden Ponds and more than a dozen other retirement communities across the nation. Nintendo hopes these seniors will convince their friends that video games aren't just for kids.