Poll of the Day > Who else needed a 'Sometimes, but there aren't many that are older than me'

(+) Yeah! (+)

Born in between SMB2 and 3 so there's not a whole lot of "older" games for me to play lol
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Sure there are

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Wut?

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wwinterj25 posted...

Wut?

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Wut poll?

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1981 so all games older than me are from the first generation or the first half of the second one.
The first systems I owned were the Atari 2600 and the Commodore 64 with the taperecorder. I still own the former and it's still working fine although it gets fairly little attention. Sadly the Commodore is gone and I have no clue whatsoever what happened with it.
Anyway I never played anything from the first generation that is listed on this site.
I mostly play (S)NES and PS 1 & 2 games.
In the end the poll of the day has sadly a question that combined with the answers seems to assume players are 10-1 years old and not 30+ making it hard to answer with these options. My option should have been:
"I play retro all of the time because I'm too demented to play newer stuff."

1986 for me. I don't play NES or older games, so all of the yes options are out, and so was the last option.

I wound up voting "no I only play newer games on new systems," but thats a weird choice, since the SNES is hardly a new system and i'm perfectly willing to play SNES games.


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I was born the same year the Atari 2600 was released (and I predate it by about 7 months). So the only games older than me are from the First Generation, where consoles didn't even have interchangeable cartridges, just preloaded games.

As far as I know, I have never played a single game older than me.
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'83, so pretty much all the games older than me suck...

...except maybe Chess, and Monopoly. And possibly Go, but Go can Go suck its mum

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Yeah, I don't like the options, because I was born in '79. There were a few games released before I came along, but I play retro games all the time, so it doesn't feel right to say I only play only "newer" systems. That being said, I don't play stuff older than me much at all, although it does happen occasionally.

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there are literally 10s of thousands of games older than you.

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Lokarin posted...

'83, so pretty much all the games older than me suck...

...except maybe Chess, and Monopoly. And possibly Go, but Go can Go suck its mum

Pac-Man doesn't suck.
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I is smart posted...

Born in between SMB2 and 3 so there's not a whole lot of "older" games for me to play lol

There are tons. The first arcade boom was in the 70s. You could argue that you don't like the older options -- which is fair, because a lot of them were more simplistic and repetitive in design -- but you were born well after a massive rush and even partly through the NES which had more.

Revelation34 posted...

Pac-Man doesn't suck.

What about Ms Pac-Man?

ParanoidObsessive posted...

I was born the same year the Atari 2600 was released (and I predate it by about 7 months). So the only games older than me are from the First Generation, where consoles didn't even have interchangeable cartridges, just preloaded games.

As far as I know, I have never played a single game older than me.

So 1977? You mean the year after Breakout? Wait, you never played Breakout?!

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Lol is right, TC.

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Zeus posted...

So 1977? You mean the year after Breakout? Wait, you never played Breakout?!

Not AS Breakout, no.

The 1976 release was arcade only, and I wasn't going to arcades as an infant. And by the time I was going to arcades, the days of games like Breakout (and Pac-Man, and Defender, and Galaxian/Galaga, etc) having cabinets there were looooong dead.

There WAS a version of Breakout on the Atari 2600, but a) the console versions of arcade games were usually different from the arcade version back then, b) it wasn't released until after I was born, and c) I never played it anyway.

I have played Arkanoid and Brickles, but those are technically different games, and they both came out after I was born.

I think the oldest arcade games I've ever played (in arcade form) are Pac-Man and Centipede, and those were both 1980s. Which I think is true across the board for me - even games that were released in the 70s (like Asteroids and Space Invaders) that I have played, I only played ported console versions that were released in the 1980s. I don't think I've ever played the original version of any game released in the 1970s. And like I said, my earliest console games were all on ColecoVision or Atari 2600, which were both second gen consoles (and the first ones to have cartridges), and both of which were released after I was born.

And no, I haven't played old PC games either - I've never played Spacewar. I've never played Lunar Lander. I've never played Hamurabi. I've never played Akalabeth. I've never played Pong (at least in its original form).

So yeah, I don't think I've ever played a single game that existed in the same form before I was born. Only later ports, rereleases, or clones.
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I can remember gaming in 1984 on Atari at 6. If I missed a game, that's ok.

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ParanoidObsessive posted...

The 1976 release was arcade only, and I wasn't going to arcades as an infant. And by the time I was going to arcades, the days of games like Breakout (and Pac-Man, and Defender, and Galaxian/Galaga, etc) having cabinets there were looooong dead.

You'd still see Pac-Man machines throughout the 80s. They weren't all replaced by Ms Pac-Man. And older machines might not have always hung around in arcades, but you'd still them in casual dining restaurants (like pizza joints).


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Zeus posted...

You'd still see Pac-Man machines throughout the 80s. They weren't all replaced by Ms Pac-Man. And older machines might not have always hung around in arcades, but you'd still them in casual dining restaurants (like pizza joints).

There was an ice rink where I lived at the time that had original Pac-Man. They had some others too but I don't remember what.
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Zeus posted...

You'd still see Pac-Man machines throughout the 80s. They weren't all replaced by Ms Pac-Man.

I never really saw one. I only ever saw Ms. Pac-Man. (At least until they started doing some of those retro-cabinet mini-arcade style games for home use like Wal-Mart sells, but I'd argue those don't count.)

Then again, some of the first arcade games I ever really saw/played were games like Rampage, Gauntlet, and the original Street Fighter, so that gives you a sense of time scale for when I was exposed to them.

I think the oldest arcade game I've ever seen was Donkey Kong, and even that was iffy because it was in one of those NES collection cabinets where they did a rerelease of older games as an all-in-one deal. Those were around about the same time as the Spyhunter cabinet (some time in the mid-80s or so).

I also remember that my local Ground Round had Golden Axe, which makes me sad because I never appreciated Ground Round enough as a kid, and they're mostly all gone now (and what few are left aren't really the same at all).



Zeus posted...

And older machines might not have always hung around in arcades, but you'd still them in casual dining restaurants (like pizza joints).

I never did. I feel like, if I remember right, the only arcade game I ever saw in a local pizza place was the original TMNT arcade game. And maybe one of those built-in gun games that were either based on Schwarzenegger movies or just very clearly inspired by Schwarzenegger movies and stuff like Rambo: First Blood Part II (with those big meaty guns with force feedback when you shoot).

Maybe you could find them in places like a Chuck E Cheese, but I literally never set foot in one until I was in my late 30s. So I mostly just wound up playing Let's Go Jungle!, and not being able to play Mario Kart because the cabinet was broken.

A lot of this might also depend on where one lives, I suppose.
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ParanoidObsessive posted...

Then again, some of the first arcade games I ever really saw/played were games like Rampage, Gauntlet, and the original Street Fighter, so that gives you a sense of time scale for when I was exposed to them.

I guess you really got into things late?

ParanoidObsessive posted...

Maybe you could find them in places like a Chuck E Cheese, but I literally never set foot in one until I was in my late 30s. So I mostly just wound up playing Let's Go Jungle!, and not being able to play Mario Kart because the cabinet was broken.

That's not casual dining, that's an entertainment center. If anything, it's closest to an arcade that serves food.

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Zeus posted...

I guess you really got into things late?

Depends on how you define things.

Late for the era of arcade popularity? Yes - arcades were pretty much dead by the time I'd ever really had the option to go to one. I mostly only got shitty run down arcade rooms in bowling alleys or some of the arcade parlors on the boardwalk at the Shore. Or at my local grocery store - that's basically where I played most of my earliest arcade games. I'd go off and sink a handful of quarters while my mom was shopping, and then I'd go pester her for more. Other than Chuck E Cheese (which, like I said, I never went to as a kid), I can't really think of any real arcades anywhere local.

Late for me personally? I wouldn't say so - I was like 10 at the time. I can't imagine too many people were going to arcades much younger than that, unless they had weird or really permissive parents.

For gaming in general, I started somewhere around 5-6, which was pretty young for the time period.



Zeus posted...

That's not casual dining, that's an entertainment center. If anything, it's closest to an arcade that serves food.

Yeah, but I brought it up as an alternative because, like I kind of said, I couldn't really think of that many "casual dining" places near me that had arcade games at all (let alone Pac-Man specifically).

I remember my one local Ground Round had Altered Beast, but that wasn't until 1988 or so (it didn't come out until that year, and I didn't go back to Ground Round all that much after that). One local restaurant/banquet hall had the TMNT cabinet I mentioned, and one local pizza place had two cabinets before it closed. But no others did.

Oh, and a local borderline-bodega deli had Tron, which I loved, because it was Tron. But that place was a dump. And may actually be part of the reason why I tended to associate arcade games with dumps and run-down places, because those were mostly the only places that still had them. And even those seemed to dry up eventually. I don't think I've seen an arcade cabinet in the wild for decades at this point, outside of movie theaters and Chuck E Cheese.

I vaguely remember someone who used to be here on PotD actually used to work in an old style arcade/bar in NJ, but even they mentioned it was unusual and acknowledged there weren't really any other similar places anywhere close.

I suppose Dave & Busters could count, but that's basically just "adult Chuck E Cheese".
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