Too Old to Play Games?

by Postal

Some of you may know me; most of you probably do not. I run an alliance in Dark Galaxy, the Old Phartes Alliance [OPA]. No really I do, and yes I do know what OPA means in German (that’s the whole point of the acronym!). As you can imagine we get the always witty lines, “Heh, do you guys smell or something.” “You guys suck.” and the always popular “Ph34r meh uber 1337 haxx0r skills”. Oh how I weep for the future.

How old am I? Let’s just say I actually owned a Pong game. I still have my Atari 2600 (Super Breakout rules). I began programming Basic on a TRS-80 Model II sharing one 5 and ¼ disk drive with the whole class. I can remember when 4 Megs of RAM and a 20 Meg hard drive were more than enough. Worst of all, I can remember a time when you had to get up off the couch to change the channel!!! The horror, oh the horror. You tell kids today these stories and they won’t believe you!

Sure I have underwear older than most players in DG, but does this make me too old to play computer games? No way! I may not always remember where I parked my car, but I can still come up with good strategies and put together fleets to challenge any player around. So what if the hair from head is now growing in places hair was not meant to grow, after over 30 years of gaming I’m still having fun. And when it comes right down to it that’s what it’s all about, “Having Fun”. I can’t wait for the day when my son is old enough to challenge me to a game, and then have my wife yell at both of us “Your not on that damn computer again are you?”

I’m glad that I’ve never let that little kid inside of me die over the years. In fact he has grown, living on a constant diet of Count Chocula (for those who remember) and Kraft Dinner. I don’t consider myself old at all, just experienced. Yeah, that’s it, experienced. And I know I’m not alone out there. There are more of us than you think. So watch out, and for god sakes, “Keep off the bloody lawn you damn kids!”