'Can someone be too old for games?'

On last week's mailbox Billy Hindley got in touch with Games Master to say he thinks shooters like Black Ops should make use of betas a little more.

This week <BALEX style="LINE-HEIGHT: 15px; MARGIN: 0px" b="" miller<="">, the voice of Nintendo in his friend circle, asks NGamer if a person can be too old for Nintendo, or gaming in general.

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Me and a lot of my friends are avid gamers, and pretty much every lunchtime at school we talk about video games while racing on Mario Kart DS.

Sometimes someone says something to do with Microsoft or Sony being the best, and I'm usually the only one who puts Nintendo into their viewpoint.

When I mention Nintendo, one of my friend's favourite responses is: "Oh, I'm too old for Nintendo now," and when he says that, it gets me thinking - can someone possibly be too old for Nintendo, or even games in general?

Fair enough, there are games that people are obviously going to get too old for quite quickly, such as My Horse And Me, because they're aimed at younger audiences.

But then you have games like Mario Kart that everyone seems to love and no one could ever be too old for. Or then there's things like Brain Training, which is aimed at a more mature, adult audience (no, not in that way), meaning it would be quite hard to grow too old for it.

I usually bring these points up and then my friends discard them as 'exceptions'. And after this, I usually stop, because arguing over the same question gets boring. But do you think it is possible to be too old for video games?

NGamer says: Too old for games? Impossible. Well, unless you're so frail you can't lift a DS. As you say, you can definitely be too old for a certain type of game, but we're happy to see people of all ages have a go at gaming.

Just so long as Nintendo consoles don't get swamped by games aimed specifically at mature gamers, that is - there's only so many crossword compilations or Wii Fit Plus clones we can take, you know.

CVG says: Short answer: no. Long answer: Noooooooooooooo.

We, like many others, like to think of Nintendo as the Pixar of the video game world. Though it may seem like their works are produced and geared towards children they are so thoughtfully produced that anyone, of any age range, can enjoy it.

For most of us Nintendo's game are a permanent part of our 'gamer DNA' (Achievement unlocked: coined a lame new marketing term). So regardless of how old we are we'll play a new Mario, Zelda or Donkey Kong.

To re-use a slightly creepy axiom 'you're only as old as you allow yourself to be'.

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