A Golden Age!

Now I dont do forums much, but my sons have been giving me some stick about pc gaming and age!! So I'd like to ask a question, just hopefully to prove I'm not the only oldy in the gang as it were!? I have always enjoyed gaming and recently found CE which to me is a real gem.

My gaming started as a teen with the sinclair zx spectrum in the early 80's, for those of you not familiar it had a massive 48k memory, colour, sound and the games loaded by a tape cassette player or if you where rich enough there was a microdrive!
As time and tech moved on I became a big fan of Imperialism 1 @ 2 by Frog City and then the Civ series, Settlers, AOE etc

So I was just wondering if anyone would like to share their approx age (a clue will do!), early gaming, favourites etc
If I get no response I guess my sons are right and old gits don't game(except me lol)

With kind regards

Zet

 

I am 34 years old, and still game daily. In fact, I play games more than anything else in my life. My first taste of gaming was an Apple IIc. And I remember having to type the entire game into memory and save it to a floppy disk to use.

 

I'm not embarassed by my age -- I'm 54. I actually started fooling around with IBM and HP mainframes (via audio coupler and an old olivetti terminal/printer) in High School. BTW, those old terminals used paper tape to store data and programs -- you think that cassette was an awful way to store programs, paper tape was far worse. Even punch cards, in spite of the danger of dropping them and mixing them up, was more reliable. One of the teachers just handed off the manuals to a couple of students. I taught myself BASIC and so on with the help of some mimeograph cheat sheets.

Later, when I was in college, I fooled around on some PDP and VAX minicomputers, and got myself a Commodore Vic 20.

I actually started with Chess and board games, and even D&D 1.0 before I became what you could call a "computer gamer". But I certainly am one now.

 

Heh, I am soon to be 47. I started off with an old mainframe typewriter/terminal in high school. I remember playing a Trek game and having paper rolls of my entire game. You definitely aren't the only old fart playing games, my best friend is around 8 months older than me and is still playing computer and console games. I did get him started though. But he was playing D&D before I got him into computer gaming and I think he still plays D&D.

 

I'm in my mid-thirties as well. My first computer was an Apple IIe. I also game incessantly, although I find myself favouring strategy and turn-based games more than twitch shooters nowadays.

Given that video games boomed in the 80's and were, at that time, typically adopted by younger folks, it's might have been odd to be a 'gamer' if you were older than 30, back then. But people who got into the habit have continued to play games, so of course video games are now played by a broad range of ages. You go tell yours sons to mow the lawn if they say you're too old to play video games.

 

If any child of yours tells you that you are too old to game, tell them they are too young and cannot touch an electronic device until they retract that stupid statement or grow up and move out. Fair is fair, and you can play games regardless of your age.

 

Thank you so much for all your great replies.
The look I got Alephred when I told the youngest lad he could mow the lawn ha ha .....priceless

 

31 here.. the youngest!? Woohoo! That was a long time ago in gaming forums ^^

I gamed on Commodore's and such when visiting friends, and we got a '8086' pc when I was about 5, so I used that for small little games like BEAST, and CASTLE and such. Then came Ultima 5, a game my mother had bought for herself, which I played to death. It actually taught me english.

 

Well that lasted long <_<
..But that one moment can never be erased

 

I loved the original Dragon Warrior. I replayed it partway a few years back via an emulator, after repurchasing the cartridge at a garage sale for a whopping dollar and downloading the ROM. But it sucked due to the experience of the future games in the series. DW3 was my favorite, even better than 4. It introduced replayability in a way that was not present in any game of the time.

 

As far as what games I started with...
Didn't play many games on my HS mainframes (mostly was teaching myself programming). But I dabbled with the old classics: Hunt the Wumpus, Adventure, and Trek/Star Trek.

In college, there was primarily Rogue and Empire (later renamed to Classic Empire to avoid confusion). On my Commodors (Vic 20 and later, C64) -- typed in a lot of games from magazines, but also Lode Runner, Lords of Conquest, a bunch of Infocom adventure games (Zork, Planetfall, Starfall, etc.), and a wide variety of other games.

That also completely misses all the non-computer gaming I did -- there was some D&D 1.0, Hearts (because it was really big at my college), Cosmic Encounter, Diplomacy, Chess, and all sorts of Chess variants and Backgammon variants, and so on. I even got seriously into Monopoly for a bit (once you learn the tricks, least those that were legal until Parker Brothers rewrote the rulebook, there actually were some sophisticated tactics to the game).

 

Seven was my favorite by far after I finally abandoned the original Nintendo. And again, I emulated the heck out of a garage sale copy I got for dirt cheap. I was going to image the discs, but none of my optical drives could even read them for some reason. But as we know, if you look, you can find it.

Seven had the most grinding capacity of every DW/DQ game ever made. Probably more than the rest of the series combined. Once you get to the tower of (the name eludes me.) and can switch classes, you are basically set to grind for months if not years. You could grind every character through every class besides Hero since it was only available to the actual "Hero" and when done, switch them all to whatever classes you prefer. At that point you are basically unbeatable.

Cheating my arse off, it still took me over a month. But I did it. And to be honest, it was not worth the trouble. The game is not that hard.

 

I may be wrong then. It has been years since I played it.

And sure enough, you are correct. I do not recall if I did this on every character or gave up on useless grinding.
http://dragon-quest.org/wiki/Hero_(Class)#Dragon_Quest_VII

 

GET OFF MA LAWN, YOU YOUNG WHIPPERSNAPPER!

28 here, almost 29, but most people assume I'm well into my 40's because I act like a crotchety old man

My first experience with gaming was an old DOS beast, playing Commander Keen and Space Quest. I later loved Myst to pieces (and figured it all out without help!) When the family got a Sega Genesis and later a Playstation, I turned from the True Faith for a long time until Half-Life brought me back. I immediately latched onto the Age of Empires series, Morrowind, and wasn't half-bad at StarCraft. I still play some 'twitchers' but I find most of them boring and repetitive, so Strategy and open-worlds are where I spend my time.

Also, zetjester, you might want to show your children The Older Gamers guild, where you're barred entry until after you turn 25! (full disclosure: I'm a semi-inactive member of TOG)