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

jmg

J
shadragon said:
I remember notching the tops of cassette tapes to save my data.

Getting a new game meant typing in machine code.

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

OURANOS was my first game.

Commodore PET 4K RAM.

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

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

Greatest day ever -- dial tone on a 300 baud modem.
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HA!
ok, you proved it.. you're older than me.
I almost forgot the PET-- that I guess really was my first computer. I was in third grade at the time -- my school let a kid in each grade take one of the PETs home each weekend.... by the middle of the year everyone was tired of it, I had it practically every weekend. AHH, nothing like an integrated computer/keyboard/monitor. And tape machines. Loved it.
 

JeffBea

J
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.
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Ah, I bought a little thing that did that notch. I think it was called "nibble notch". I brought it to school so I could notch all my friends floppys.
 

Tarman

Tarman
dc83 said:
Heh. You guys are making me feel so young now. Thanks.

I'm 32.

Edit: And you're also taking away some of my despair at growing old: clearly I've got a few years of gaming yet before I have to give up and switch all the way over to kayaks and hiking in the mountains. :)
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Don't sweat it kiddo. :D

I still play games, still crank up the music. Ageing happens but getting old is a state of mind. Plenty of old suckers younger than me; I pity them.
 

Para Handy

Para Handy
Tarman said:
Don't sweat it kiddo. :D

I still play games, still crank up the music. Ageing happens but getting old is a state of mind. Plenty of old suckers younger than me; I pity them.
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Ditto ... Due my pension this year but inside my head is a 20 year old wondering "WTH just happened?"
 

jmg

J
You're old if this brings a smile:
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- - - Updated - - -

That was supposed to be an elite ship in ASCII art. Didn't translate well
 

lefty1117

L
Has anyone backed the new Bard's Tale IV kickstarter? I did it without a second thought - never would have passed middle school math without learning how to use graph paper due to the Bard's Tale games ... lol

There are some KS tiers that come with cloth maps and printed manuals, etc., the good stuff that they used to make back in the day.

Anyone remember games like F-15 Strike Eagle and Gunship, Falcon 3.0 - those games came with two hundred page manuals with spiral spines to keep it all together!
 

M00ka

M00ka
Being an old gamer (56 years young as they say) sometimes does have amusing side effects!

When my daughter was still in high school I was heavily into a certain FPS - BF2 and was part of a very serious clan whose average age was around 35. Anyway, she came home from school one night and gleefully told me about a conversation she had with some of the "hard core" gamers in her class. They were all ing about getting trounced in a BF2 match by a clan. When they mentioned the clans name, my daughter laughed and 'politely' told them that her father was part of the clan and was in fact one of the players that kicked their so much. She then made fun of them for the rest of the day for getting their butts kicked by a bunch of old farts :D

Another side benefit is that both my children grew up with a father that played games. My daughter now has a degree in Computer Game design and my son is half way through his degree in game programming (yep he will be a neck beard lol).
 

darius359au

darius359au
JeffBea said:
Ah, I bought a little thing that did that notch. I think it was called "nibble notch". I brought it to school so I could notch all my friends floppys.
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Ive still got my notch nibbler sitting around in my junk drawer, (full of computer bits and bobs i've accumulated over the years :))
 
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Katejina

Katejina
I'll be reaching 30 in a few years, but my parents both bought into early technology, so gaming and internet has been ingrained in my family for as long as I can remember. Few can say they fought over the computer to play Free Ski. My father worked with Macs and he would often let me play some Mac games (yes, they existed). Hyperion and Escape Velocity were my favorites.

And none can forget nsfw uses for floppy disks. Oh low limited we were back then...
 

Hell Razor5543

H
I remember coding on a Sinclair ZX81 with a 16K add-on module. Later, when I baby sat for a friend, I took my 128K Spectrum round in a cheap briefcase, which had enough space for the computer, tape recorder, cables and several games. Happy days!
 
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Wullail

W
You remember coding and compiling code on a ZX-80 and also remember playing MAZOGS for hours on the ZX-81 pre-ram pack , nothiing quite like only seeing 1.5 squares around you, trying to get to the exit, not knowing when a stack of black blobs is coming towards you.
 
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EdzUp

EdzUp
Hell Razor5543 said:
I remember coding on a Sinclair ZX81 with a 16K add-on module. Later, when I baby sat for a friend, I took my 128K Spectrum round in a cheap briefcase, which had enough space for the computer, tape recorder cables and several games. Happy days!
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Ah the fabled rampack wobblers, I loved the 8bit era and the 16bit era much more than today's games. Heck I still fire up Elite Multiplayer to play multiplayer 1984 Elite :)
 

Borgkube

Borgkube
I'm 61 and I remember playing Space Trek and the Colossal Cave on the DEC PDP-11 mini computer in college before I even got my first PC. I still have my working 586 PC with the Voodoo 2 card that I fire up some of the old games on. Who needs DOSBOX.:):D
 
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