The Elder Gamer.

[Uther Mortigast]

Most of the games that I love take upwards of forty hours to complete. In fact, if I can play the whole game in a day, it's destined to get sold back to my local GameStop, e.g., Halo 3.

Now that I am back in school, I have precious few moments with which to spend playing video games. Still, I go back to my favorites -- and only my favorites -- because time is such a commodity. Thankfully, they all allow me to save my game and pick it up later, so in effect, time really isn't a factor.

I was thinking that my patience to play a game in short bursts over a long period came from my age (I'm just on the idealistic side of 40), but apparently not all of us fogies feel the same way. However, I see that several of you are married, and I am not. I wonder if that accounts for any difference in perspective.

[Adrir]

Originally Posted by Uther Mortigast

Now that I am back in school, I have precious few moments with which to spend playing video games. Still, I go back to my favorites -- and only my favorites -- because time is such a commodity. Thankfully, they all allow me to save my game and pick it up later, so in effect, time really isn't a factor.

I'm suprised, you don't get tons of free time at school?

[Uther Mortigast]

I have an enormous amount of free time, it's just doled out in small quantities over a lengthy period.

[Kodiak]

I'm loathe to consider myself 'Elder' by any means, but I do fall quite squarely in the zone you've defined (CURSES!)

I've found that the Wii has been a great way to keep gaming up to a certain level, as it appears to engage all of us old fuddy-duddies that remember playing with Atari consoles, etc. Even my typically non-gamer girlfriend enjoys the odd game and beats the crap out of me at the Toy Tanks game included with Wii Play.

The definite trend is for short bouts between chores or after cleaning up following a meal.

It is quite rare when I actually do have an opportunity to sit down for any length of time to play a game.

Heck, these days any of my spare time from 'real life work' seems to have me working around here trying to learn about game development so I can do the job I really want to do 'when I grow up' (which I figure will be by the time I'm 40 or 50... )

[Adrir]

Originally Posted by Kodiak

I've found that the Wii has been a great way to keep gaming up to a certain level, as it appears to engage all of us old fuddy-duddies that remember playing with Atari consoles, etc. Even my typically non-gamer girlfriend enjoys the odd game and beats the crap out of me at the Toy Tanks game included with Wii Play.

The Wii is awesome, although I always find myself obsessively playing Wii Fit all the time. Damn that balence board and its awesomeness!

[Kodiak]

I just got addicted to Boom Blox after a 5 day rental. I had to turn it in and walk away, otherwise real life would never have advanced.

[Kodiak]

You know, as a somewhat related note, Elder Gamers are also quite fortunate to have been exposed to the games that have been crucial to the formation of the games industry as we know it today.

My mother found a bunch of boxes in the basement she wanted cleared out of her place to make room for her own stuff. Lo and behold, I found copies of XCom, the original Mechwarrior, my beloved Renegade Legion Interceptor (so mentioned in my damage thread), the original Wing Commander, XWing, the original MS Flight simulator on 5 1/4'' floppy, Logo writer, and the list goes on...Including a copy of the old racing game Death Track, which I believe is probably the actual inspiration for these Death Race movies...at least the story line is very similar!

Ahh, those were the days.

I'm now fondly taking up place in my own basement to preserve these relics.

Does anyone have any ideas how they could be made to run again? Are there MS-DOS emulators that can run a program from the 80's and not completely freak out on a Mac or Win XP/Vista system?

[TG1]

Originally Posted by Kodiak

Does anyone have any ideas how they could be made to run again? Are there MS-DOS emulators that can run a program from the 80's and not completely freak out on a Mac or Win XP/Vista system?

try DosBox, I tried it once on Sam and Max, worked decently enough.
As I mentioned once in another thread I really miss the adventure games era, the days when Sierra and Lucasarts were on top

[Kodiak]

Thanks TG!

I'll give that a shot!

[Adrir]

Originally Posted by Kodiak

Does anyone have any ideas how they could be made to run again? Are there MS-DOS emulators that can run a program from the 80's and not completely freak out on a Mac or Win XP/Vista system?

Couldn't you simply boot into DOS?