If there's one thing we can all take for granted in this crazy mixed-up world we live in – apart from the fact that I won't win the IT Week World Cup sweepstake (I plucked Switzerland from the hat, since you ask, which was two quid well spent) – it's that we'll all get old, grey and infirm eventually. And, worst-case scenario, suffer from a touch of incontinence, cataracts, and a dodgy ticker. Another thing that may happen, of course, is that your once sharp-as-a-dandy's-'whistle-and-toot' brain comes to resemble that of a Big Brother contestant. Well, there is an answer from across the globe... maybe.

A new invention from Japan - you know you want to read more when you see that – promises to exercise your brain and stave off the inevitable. Nintendo, Sony, Namco: all the big boys are cashing in with a new selection of video games designed for OAPs, and with good reason too. In a country that is slowly turning into the demographic equivalent of Eastbourne, the grey yen is worth quite a lot. With the lure of eternal youth, or at least turning the mental clock back a few months, they're lapping it up in the land of the rising Stannah stairlift.

One of the most popular is Dr Kawashima's Brain Training from Nintendo, and the firm has shifted well over two million copies of this mental awareness and memory enhancing game in Japan.

The speed at which you complete the series of arithmetic, reading and memory tests enables the game to calculate your brain age, according to Nintendo, and as if one cult Japanese invention wasn't enough there's also a version of Sudoku included. So next time your brain goes blank when you're trying to remember your password, or that meeting with the CIO slips your mind, don't say I didn't warn you.

And for those cynics among you, Dr Kawashima is actually top brain expert (despite being rendered in the game in cartoon form, which slightly undermines his gravitas) so you'll be in good hands.