Video bowling, tennis, and others provided many hours of entertainment and activity in homes.

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But Nintendo says the Wii's popularity among the over-65 crowd wasn't totally unexpected because the game, which simulates sports like bowling and tennis, is "intuitive ... not intimidating, " said Perrin Kaplan, vice president of marketing and corporate affairs at Nintendo of America.

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The Wii console is the size of a remote control, and seniors swing it in front of a computerized image of a bowling alley or tennis court.

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While its graphics are even less sophisticated than the Wii's, it's even smaller and cheaper than Nintendo's product and the controllers are closer replicas of their real-world counterparts, such as bowling balls, tennis rackets, and boxing gloves.

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He then described what happened when they were at Erith leisure centre, where Mr Norton and his son were having a bowling practice in the tennis courts.

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Similarly, the Wii's tennis, bowling, golf and baseball games require players to act out the physical movements involved in each of those sports, though they do not require as much physical exertion as the boxing game.

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On any given weeknight, there might be young boys practicing with cones and tennis balls, or teenagers from the Rising Stars team bowling to each other and fine-tuning their swings with a pitching machine.

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