The aging gamer...

I've been playing games for a long time - from Space Invaders in the arcade to pong on the TV at home - through the years of DonkeyKong and Atari 2600. I spent countless hours on Civilization, Oregon Trail and many other early PC games. I was a beta tester for a couple of the first MMPOL games (Dark Age of Camelot and shit...what was that other one - the futuristic one...) Anyway. I've been around the block and played most any game that came along.

I have never been one to play a game to death - meaning I never really cared about beating the big boss at the end of wolfenstien 3D and I don't really care what % of secrets I found at the end of each level. I just...play... Which is why I guess I'm not into the WOW or Everquest - spending hours killing squirrels in the woods to buy the 3rd level bow just doesn't turn me on quite as much as a good hack and slash, a good strategic battle or well placed headshot from my campground in counterstrike.

Back in the days of coax networks I would host geek fests (lan parties) with 5-15 people playing Quake and Carmageddon...Good times...Good times...

I mainly play single player, seems like I'm getting old and serve as nothing but fodder when I join the internet games filled with kids that have no full time job and commit 40-50 hours a week perfecting their mojo in BattleField 2 or whatever release Unreal is in nowadays. I'm no longer considered 'leet' because I don't even have a microphone hooked up to my pc so I can't coordinate with my team mates.

But, I still love the games...It's the games that got me started (Mad props to Dave Wortendyke of Troop 78 in Boulder for getting me teletype VAX time and hundreds of feet of 24" tractor feed back in the stone age to play Adventure, Hunt The Wumpus and Hamurabi) and ya know, it's the games that keep me going. I can't keep up anymore, I can't play all the games that come out, I don't invest in the hardware to play the newest thing on the shelf.

My 4 year old is heavily into games now too, he's had his own PC a couple of years and now he flys around the pbskids and nick jr. web sites playing their little games like a pro. He isn't playing to get 100% of treasure on the level, or to beat the big boss at the end (though he does call me over to beat the giant chicken in Wow Wow Wubzy because he doesn't quite have the timing skills to get past it). My 2 year old frequently steals a chance at the keyboard and I've built him his own PC that we'll set up when we find the table space and sometimes they fight like cats and dogs...to play...Just play...

I wonder what my sons will think when they introduce their kids to the games of the next generation. I'm pretty sure they will look back at their days on a little P3 in the living room playing web based flash and java games, Blue's Clues kindergaten and smile remembering the times I spent with them. Then I hope they turn to their own games again and play...just to play.

I started this article thinking I'd write a list of the top 10 games of my life, what my favorites were and why I thought they were so good. But, I won't. I'll just say this.

To the coders and the writers - the developers and the administrators that got them where they were. To the brilliant individuals who contributed and those that supported them. To the folks that took us from ASCII graphics to vivid 3d environments. To the people that took us from the cartridge and the casette to the floppy and onto optical media then into broadband web. To the people that took us away from the single seat game and brought back the spirit of head to head and table top play. To these people my hat is off. From the Players of the world. Thank you, keep up the good work. We're still playing.

Urrgh... Gaaaah!

http://www.gegereka.com/

It's all out there somewhere...

I use google a lot for this sort of thing but this site really cuts through the crap. It's a file search engine. Pick a file - any file. *NICE*