General / Off-Topic 10 reasons I know I’m becoming an old gamer

MissMeYet · Jun 7, 2015

Interesting article that probably describes a large number of Elite Dangerous players (myself included).

http://business.financialpost.com/f...know-im-becoming-an-old-gamer?__lsa=e9dd-38fe

Deep Blue · Jun 7, 2015

Oh man, so true.
For me, e.g. Star Citizen is way too complex, although I pledged.
Most games I play on easy mode these days. 43 years old btw.

jmg · Jun 7, 2015

Deep Blue said:
Oh man, so true.
For me, e.g. Star Citizen is way too complex, although I pledged.
Most games I play on easy mode these days. 43 years old btw.

41 here. can't wait for star citizen, I'm a backer too. And many items on that list apply to me. I'll add a few :

You remember going from 360k floppies to 1.2m floppies. Heck, you remember floppies period.
Getting a new game meant going to egghead or electronics boutique and buying a box. And they had interesting stuff in them. Like cloth maps and such
you remember upgrading form CGA to VGA
"text adventure" (zork anyone?) was just as viable a game as graphical games.
640k was a TON of memory.
Emm386. config.sys. autoexec.bat. All these make sense to you, and if you had to, you could probably type in the config lines for a SB right now.
usb still seems kinda new ...
Greatest day ever -- 3dfx voodoo add in 3d board. with pass-through vga cables and all.

Abil Midena · Jun 7, 2015

jmg said:
41 here. can't wait for star citizen, I'm a backer too. And many items on that list apply to me. I'll add a few :

You remember going from 360k floppies to 1.2m floppies. Heck, you remember floppies period.

Getting a new game meant going to egghead or electronics boutique and buying a box. And they had interesting stuff in them. Like cloth maps and such

you remember upgrading form CGA to VGA

"text adventure" (zork anyone?) was just as viable a game as graphical games.

640k was a TON of memory.

Emm386. config.sys. autoexec.bat. All these make sense to you, and if you had to, you could probably type in the config lines for a SB right now.

usb still seems kinda new ...

Greatest day ever -- 3dfx voodoo add in 3d board. with pass-through vga cables and all.

And cutting a notch in the floppy so you could use both sides.
Load *.*,8,1
And yeah, 3dfx voodoo2 was awesome.

JonnyC0mbat · Jun 7, 2015

Now does it use himem.sys or emm386? Ah not so happy days making boot disks for school friends.

I remember getting wing commander 2 and a sound card for Christmas and being utterly blown away. Incredible when you compare that to games like ED.

In my day it were nought but green screens and 5 1/4" floppies (said in a Berkshire accent).

Funny how you never forget all the old dos commands.

Aszrayel · Jun 7, 2015

I have to agree with this. Nice post.

Senex VII · Jun 7, 2015

6. Most video game protagonists are younger than me. A lot younger. Some by as much as 20 or 30 years.

Make that "40 or 50 years" and now we're talking.

Hence the name "Senex".

Araviel · Jun 7, 2015

edit: sorry,, apparently what i said could have been offensive. post removed

Krommicus · Jun 7, 2015

JonnyC0mbat said:
Now does it use himem.sys or emm386? Ah not so happy days making boot disks for school friends.

I remember getting wing commander 2 and a sound card for Christmas and being utterly blown away. Incredible when you compare that to games like ED.

In my day it were nought but green screens and 5 1/4" floppies (said in a Berkshire accent).

Funny how you never forget all the old dos commands.

I remember all of that, including playing on a computer that had A LOT less processing power and ram than most video cards out today.
Oh and yes if you did not know any Dos commands, you couldn't do any thing but stare at a black screen with a flashing "C" prompt (point and click.. what is that).

deathmagnet · Jun 7, 2015

Pretty much yep. He forgot to mention carpel tunnel...lol....32. Younger than the first 2 reply's but older than a lot of people I run into on ED.

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Krommicus said:
I remember all of that, including playing on a computer that had A LOT less processing power and ram than most video cards out today.
Oh and yes if you did not know any Dos commands, you couldn't do any thing but stare at a black screen with a flashing "C" prompt (point and click.. what is that).

+1 DOS....

Krommicus · Jun 7, 2015

WOW I must be a ancient one here. I'm 58 and been gaming since asteroids came out in the arcades.

jmg · Jun 7, 2015

Abil Midena said:
And cutting a notch in the floppy so you could use both sides.
Load *.*,8,1
And yeah, 3dfx voodoo2 was awesome.

vodoo2? that's high tech. I'm talk'n voodoo 1.

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Krommicus said:
WOW I must be a ancient one here. I'm 58 and been gaming since asteroids came out in the arcades.

at 58, you were old when pong came out

nighthawk71 · Jun 7, 2015

I seem to be going backwards in time. I was born in 1993 (almost 22 years as of this post), the earliest PC games I remember playing was Doom and NASCAR Racing. I didn't really start using computers more often until the WinXP era. Last November I got my hands on a working Commodore 64 and 1541 Newtronics SDD, following month I got a Commodore 1702 color CRT monitor. I love my C64, just recently got back into C64 Elite after finding a workaround to the disk saving issue, thanks to a member in the Elite subforum.

Krommicus · Jun 7, 2015

jmg said:
vodoo2? that's high tech. I'm talk'n voodoo 1.

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at 58, you were old when pong came out

I was a senior in high school when pong came out. And I was the first one I knew that got a voodoo 1 card when they came out. my buddies thought I was nuts paying that much cash for a video card add on.

Senex VII · Jun 7, 2015

Krommicus said:
WOW I must be a ancient one here. I'm 58 and been gaming since asteroids came out in the arcades.

A mere youngster.

Para Handy · Jun 7, 2015

At uni in the 70's using my mainframe time to play StarTrek and Colossal Cave Adventure ("You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike"). Great fun with reams of paper churning out of the remote terminal. The only graphics in those days was the little grid of characters printed each turn in StarTrek (sensors) or the ascii pictures you could print out (used to be loads pinned around the halls).

shadragon · Jun 7, 2015

jmg said:
41 here. can't wait for star citizen, I'm a backer too. And many items on that list apply to me. I'll add a few :
You remember going from 360k floppies to 1.2m floppies. Heck, you remember floppies period.

I remember notching the tops of cassette tapes to save my data.

jmg said:
Getting a new game meant going to egghead or electronics boutique and buying a box. And they had interesting stuff in them. Like cloth maps and such

Getting a new game meant typing in machine code.

jmg said:
you remember upgrading form CGA to VGA

I was awed by a 9" monochrome screen with 40x25 text characters.

jmg said:
"text adventure" (zork anyone?) was just as viable a game as graphical games.

OURANOS was my first game.

jmg said:
640k was a TON of memory.

Commodore PET 4K RAM.

jmg said:
Emm386. config.sys. autoexec.bat. All these make sense to you, and if you had to, you could probably type in the config lines for a SB right now.

Fortran punch cards that made little X's on a wide printout that formed the Star Wars logo.

jmg said:
usb still seems kinda new ...

Resoldering one end of a serial cable's TX and RX pins so we could transfer files.

jmg said:
Greatest day ever -- 3dfx voodoo add in 3d board. with pass-through vga cables and all.

Greatest day ever -- dial tone on a 300 baud modem.

jmg · Jun 7, 2015

nighthawk71 said:
I seem to be going backwards in time. I was born in 1993 (almost 22 years as of this post), the earliest PC games I remember playing was Doom and NASCAR Racing. I didn't reallt start using computers more often until the WinXP era. Last November I got my hands on a working Commodore 64 and 1541 Newtronics SDD, following month I got a Commodore 1702 color CRT monitor. I love my C64, just recently got back into C64 Elite after finding a workaround to the disk saving issue, thanks to a member in the Elite subforum.

jeze.. I was in college when doom came out. Or at least that's when I played it first.

Cazliostro · Jun 7, 2015

I played Super Star Trek on my mom's computer at work! it asked "are you sure you want to play a game?" ...hell yes!

I still remember a few of the commands... SRS for Short Range Scan! Git them Klingons!

MacKerris · Jun 7, 2015

I'm proud to be an "old" gamer. My daughter's friends all wish I was their dad....lol.