Video games are often though of as being for kids and young adults. However, there are lots of senior citizens who have been gaming as of late with the Wii – including those in retirement homes!

It’s no secret that many older people dread the thought of winding up in a retirement home some day. They think that they will live out the rest of their days trapped in some boring building amongst a bunch of other people stuck in the same predicament. However, they may have a different outlook on things now since some retirement homes are starting to use the Wii to entertain their residents.

Once such place is the Sunrise Living Center in England which has seen the Wii become the most popular recreational activity in Sunrise since it was first introduced to the residents a couple of months ago.

The introduction of the Wii to people at the English retirement home began after a member of the Sunrise Living Center staff brought his own console into the establishment. Since that time, the senior citizen residents have taken a liking to the system and Wii Sports games like bowling and tennis are now major hits amongst these elders.

Richard Guy, a spokesperson for the Sunrise Living Center, shed some light on how imperative an active video game system like the Nintendo Wii is to the older people staying at Sunrise. He said, “It's so important that everyday our residents get the opportunity to use those joints and use those muscles, that perhaps if they sat down with a newspaper, they wouldn't do.”

And the residents who are working these muscles with the Wii range in age from 80 all the way to 103. And some of these elders seem to agree with Richard Guy in his positive assessment of the system.

One resident named Barry Edgar mentioned, “It's probably a great help to us in terms of coordinating eye sight and body movement and that sort of thing.” But the physical part of the Wii certainly isn’t the only thing that gets the seniors excited as many of them get really into the competitiveness of it.

A resident named Wren Peach likes to yell things like “triple strike” and “I am the champion” while partaking in the Wii Bowling game. The 82 year-old actually does pretty good at the game as she regularly scores in the triple digits. Gladys Harrington is another fanatic about the console as the 87 year-old doesn’t like to stay in one spot too long but makes an exception during Wii time.

The Sunrise Living Center isn’t the only retirement home that is going to be using the Wii to entertain residents though as the administrators of the Sunrise Company are going to be buying more of these Nintendo consoles in order to disperse them throughout other elderly communities they own.

Their thinking is that if the Wii consoles have become so wildly popular with the Sunrise Living Center, they could have a positive effect on their other retirement communities as well.

This train of thought is definitely not out of line and if word keeps spreading about the success of the Wii in this chain of English retirement homes, then the consoles could possibly be seen in elderly communities across the globe. Who knows, maybe you and your grandma may suddenly have quite a bit in common.