NINTENDO, the Japanese computer games maker behind playground favourites such as Mario Brothers and Donkey Kong, wants us to think again. The company is gearing up for a £2 million marketing campaign, which will see it take ads in Saga magazine — a title for over 50s — because it has come to the conclusion that targeting young adults is no longer enough.

Improbable as it may sound, Nintendo is preparing to launch Brain Training, a handheld puzzle game aimed at the over 45s, a group of people who until now have not been noted for skateboarding, listening to rap, or carrying handheld computers. Yet the game is crucial to Nintendo’s new “Keep Evolving” strategy, which it will unveil on Tuesday.

Dawn Paine, UK marketing director, says: “The games industry is just going to have to expand the market. Although there has been good growth in terms of units and value over the last 20 years, the proportion of people actually owning games machines has plateaued at around 30 per cent.”

Brain Training, for the Nintendo DS, is devised by Ryuta Kawashima, a brain imaging expert from Tohoku University. Players have to complete a series of puzzles against the clock, which helps to determine their “brain age”. Unsurprisingly, the argument runs that the more you play the game, the better your brain age will become. As well as ads in unusual places, Nintendo is hoping to promote Brain Training through Mensa, the society for people with high IQs.

It also hopes to sponsor newspaper crosswords and Su Doku puzzles and place ads in programmes such as Countdown.

The game was first launched in Japan last May, and has sold more than one million units, with demand gradually growing. Brain Training 2 sold 500,000 units in its first week and while it is not certain that the Japanese consumer is any guide to Britons’ buying habits, the success of Nintendo’s venture gives the company cause for optimism. A game called Nintendogs became an unexpected hit in Europe last year, selling 1.5 million units out of four million worldwide. The game requires owners to take care of an electronic hound by carrying out various tasks. The dog can be stroked via the touch screen and given commands using a built-in microphone. Pooch can be walked too, and if another Nintendog is in range, it will bark.

The pet lovers’ game represents another, and apparently successful, attempt to expand the gaming market by targeting women. Paine says that “the usual proportion of girl gamers is about 30 per cent” but Nintendogs buyers were “55 per cent female”, a marked shift. If that is not enough, other games being showcased next week are Trauma Center, in which you are a doctor who has to conduct operations using the stylus to stitch people up. If that’s too demanding, there is Electroplankton, a curious game in which players fiddle about with animated objects until they feel relaxed — and there’s not a gun in sight. All will be launched in the spring.

Underlying the company’s move is also a competitive threat. Until the arrival of Sony, with its more expensive PSP last year, Nintendo had a monopoly on handheld games. “They needed to respond,” says Ben Keen, a games industry analyst with Screen Digest. “With Sony positioning the PSP as a multi-purpose, general entertainment device, it makes sense to aim for new games genres with titles like Nintendogs.”

Nintendo has a battle on its hands, though. Screen Digest reckons that two million PSPs — which cost £179.99 and can play music and film — will have been sold by the end of this year in the UK compared with 1.3 million of Nintendo’s DS, which costs £89.99. Graphically the PSP is superior and there is evidence that people are buying films to play on the PSP — about 400,000 were sold in Britain last year. The handheld games market is worth £250 million annually.

Although the company talks about ending “the stereotype that gamers are either geeks or simply 18 to 34-year-old men”, it has a battle to prove that it can find a viable market outside that space — and ensure that it is not squashed by Sony and whoever comes to take it on in the future.

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