City of Heroes: Live Forum Archive

You know you're an old gamer when...

Absinth_Incubus

By Absinth_Incubus,
Posted on: 2006-03-24 05:32 in Player Guides

 

Posted

At 41 I guess I could be in the gold club....but I usually play with other old geezers.

you know you are an old player when.....

Your first electonic game was pong and it was new at the time.

Your first computer was a timex 1000.

You used to save programs on a tape recorder.

Your floppy disk had 360K and stored all your programs.

You once debated the merit of an amber screen compared to a green one.

You know how to use a slide ruler to calculate.

Proud Member Of the Paragons of Justice
Kidraid, Golden Guard, War Emblem, Eridani, Greymist, BabyTank and more many more.

My Gallery (There I am KidRaid since Greymist was already taken)

 

Posted

[ QUOTE ]
you have a bind for costume changes for use with your ingame 'twin' WONDER TWIN POWERS ACTIVATE


[/ QUOTE ]

My wife and I have a pair of Illusion Controllers who use that as their battle cry!

Who remembers this line from a cartoon? "My wings are like a shield of steel!"

One of my earliest memories is being at my Grandmother's house, and being mad at the TV because none of my Saturday cartoons were on. They were all replaced by some stupid funeral . . . for President Kennedy.

I was a big fan of the original run of the campy "Batman" television series. The Green Hornet was actually a short-lived spin off of Batman, and starred Bruce Lee as Kato!

I remember when comics raised their price from $.12 to $.15, and had to give a long explanation that the costs had increased. Of course, my mother threw away all my comics when I was away during in High School.

Our TV was Black and White, and I remember when we finally got a color set . . .

My high school was very special because we actually had a computer. It was a Digital minicomputer with two teletype terminals. We had to save our programs, in BASIC of course, on rolls of yellow punched paper tape. When the termina read the program, you would have to go back through it with a printout to correct all the mis-reads.

The Apple came out while I was in college . . . to program sounds, we had to use commands to a memory location (peek and poke) to direct the speaker diaphram to go in and out. We would set up a subroutine that would repeat that to get anything more than a "tic," and the more delay between "tics," the lower the sound would be.

I remember when we first got graphics terminals for my college computer system. I helped program a game where you would set an angle and force, and a little stick figure would jump off the tallest building on campus and go splat! Then it would describe what other building you hit. Most of the programming was in Fortran or Cobol.

My liberal arts college did not yet have a computer major. Only technical schools had that major. The best you could do is be a Math major. (I was Econ/Math).

My first computer was an Atari 800, with 16K of RAM and a cassette drive to save and load programs. It cost $899 on sale (I saved up for it) plus another $199 for the cassette drive. I replaced the cassette drive with a single sided, single density 5 1/4 inch floppy drive as soon as I could afford the $399 cost. Each disk held 88K after being formatted. My printer was a dot-matrix, and later a daisey-wheel. With Atari-Writer, a word processor on a cartridge, it was my word processor through graduate school. I got the Atari because it had the same processor, a 6502, as the Apple II, but had better sound and graphics. It also had the very first smooth scrolling first person shooter, where you flew through space and shot ships that looked like tie-fighters. The first game I purchased when I got my Floppy disk drive was Zork.

How is that for the "way-back machine, Mr. Peabody?"

LOCAL MAN! The most famous hero of all. There are more newspaper stories about me than anyone else. "Local Man wins Medal of Honor." "Local Man opens Animal Shelter." "Local Man Charged with..." (Um, forget about that one.)
Guide Links: Earth/Rad Guide, Illusion/Rad Guide, Electric Control

 

Posted

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
-You remember the game Adventure on the Atari 2600 (nothing better than your char. being a large pixel)


[/ QUOTE ] Yay! loved that game! lol first game i can think of with a "secret" prize, a pixel that changed colors! I had it for the 1st atari system (was that 2600?)


[/ QUOTE ]

Yes, the 2600. Adventure is generally recognized as having the first ever "easter egg". Atari didn't want the designer to put his name in the game so he hid it in a secret room. Unlike hidden game elements now, this one actually took a while for a kid from Utah to figure out.

 

Posted

One of my really good in game friends got her parents into the game.
Her father is 74.
G5

 

Posted

You know you're REALLY old...

... when you're older than almost all of the people posting in the "You know you're an old gamer when..." thread.

... when you've forgotten most of the things posted by other people in the "You know you're an old gamer when..." thread.

Goodbye and thanks for all the fish.
I've moved on to Diablo 3, TopDoc-1304

 

Posted

Wow I really feel better now!!

- You know you're an old gamer when you recall enjoying Speed Racer and Kimba cartoons, Ultra Man and Ultra 7 original series (yes!!!), the 3 Stooges show, Daktari, Zorro (original series), Batman (TV series), etc, etc

- You know you're an old gamer when your first computer was a Commodore 64, and you were in your 20's already!!!

I use to team with a girl from my SG. I like teaming with her very much and find it very amusing. But I knew I was teaming with a much younger girl when we were in the middle of a mish, and then she wrote "omg gtg parents calling for dinner" and logged immediately after that. My "WHAT????" had no reply. Had to quit mish myself and log because I was running a low lvl ill/ff troller. Later I knew she's 15.

The other day in a TF a guy popped out the most feared question, "hey how old are you guys". Somebody said 29 and the reply went: "Hey you're old man!!" When it was my turn I said "well I could be your dad too". Yeah, your dad or probably your gramps... I'm 44. Wow, that felt really bad... LOL

 

Posted

[ QUOTE ]
My dad plays, and he's 52. Whenever people are talking about their ages, it's like he has an automatic 'I win' button.

[/ QUOTE ]
:P I guess I lose.
14.
And yeah. I have been guilty of going AFK 'cause my mom says its dinner time, or I have to pick up my room or something.

 

Posted

[ QUOTE ]
I still own a Monster manual with the price list in the back. . .and it says, "Dungeon Master's Guide. . . upcoming release."

[/ QUOTE ]

heh mine are all from 1978-1979..Unearthed Arcana, Players hand book, Dungeon Masters Guide, Monster Manual, Fiend Folio, Gods and Demi-gods. Still have my dice also

And you know when your an old gamer when you used to watch the original Godzilla movies on saterday afternoons..oh and cant forget the MA movies on saterdays heh.

Oh and getting into the game programs and changing the physics of the way it played(when you could hak into them easy..old apple comps)

 

Posted

Bah, Unearthed Arcana didn't come out til the '80s. Nor Fiend Folio.

...

Um. Really! I don't remember that! I'm young! YOUNG!

One drawback of the internet is how it has trained so many people to think that one day is a long time.

 

Posted

[ QUOTE ]
Bah, Unearthed Arcana didn't come out til the '80s. Nor Fiend Folio.

...

Um. Really! I don't remember that! I'm young! YOUNG!

[/ QUOTE ]

Ok Ok 1985 it says in Unearthed Arcana Had to look again heh. and Fiend Folio 1982 so I sliped a little...I'm old

 

Posted

HAHAHAHAA ! Old who said that !
What Whiteseeker didn't tell you was he used to watch Lancealot Link Secret Chimp..

I know for a fact I am his Ma.. LOL and proud to be 50

God Bless The USA, In God I Put All My Trust.
Jesus Is Lord!
Dreama lev 50 dark dark defender,Dreama Me lev 37 PB, Yo Baby lev 50 regen scapper M-Arts,
BelairButterfly lev 36 invl tankie,
Catcandoo lev 41 regen/dark scapper

 

Posted

I used to get home in time to watch the orig "Superman"
"Batman"
Casie Jones and "Scarecrow" was my favorite on the short mini of Disney
Oh anyone remember "The Tingler" with Vince Price..? House of Wax. etc....... "Holy Cow Batman" I am old!!!
Oh and who could ever forget "Mighty Mouse"..

God Bless The USA, In God I Put All My Trust.
Jesus Is Lord!
Dreama lev 50 dark dark defender,Dreama Me lev 37 PB, Yo Baby lev 50 regen scapper M-Arts,
BelairButterfly lev 36 invl tankie,
Catcandoo lev 41 regen/dark scapper

 

Posted

*checks birth certificate*

nope not old

 

Posted

You know you're an old gamer when...

There were no DVD's (you went to movies at the theatre, and when they were gone, they were gone unless/until - years later - they might have shown up on TV).

There were no cell phones (and you hadn't yet been suckered into believing you needed one, let alone a new one every year).

There were no music CD's, music was on vinyl records (look it up).

There was still no Internet to speak of (it was originally a way to keep military and university networks going when the Soviet Union took out most of the cities in North America; once that threat was gone, it became viable as a product for home use).

The Soviet Union fell, and you realized the world would probably not be destroyed by a nuclear war after all.

There were no VHS recorders (see DVDs).

There were no home computers of ANY kind (you read books, or went to movies, or played board games with people on your kitchen table - and they were called "friends" then, not "RL friends".

There was no Cable TV, and thus, among other things, no 3-minute movies with rock bands, boy bands, girl bands, or thugs trying to be actors.

Having a digital watch was cool, but they were VERY expensive (I knew a guy who bought one for over $250, and it just told the time and had an alarm function).

You read Lord of the Rings, and Dune, and a thousand other books, just for the love of reading them, not because you'd already seen the movie. You also did not NOT read a book "because you'd already seen the movie".

You watched Neil Armstrong (live) stepping down onto the surface of the moon and it was the most amazing thing you'd ever (or since) seen. Then later on that year, you started high school.

You moved to Toronto from Northern Ontario, and found out about this amazing new science fiction show called "Star Trek", only to discover that it had just been cancelled.

You had a black and white television until your mom won a colour TV in a contest. It (like all TV's at the time) had a dial that you physically turned (from 2 - 13, if memory serves) because there were no remote controls.

"You remember when comic books were $0.35" - Try 12cents for the regular ones, and 25% for the "80-page GIANT!", and you could buy them at the corner store instead of having to get driven to a comic collector store.

You remember your mom crying but didn't understand who "President Kennedy" was (I was 8 years old, and Canadian, so he wasn't our president, but I still remember that vividly).

You can't help but grin when you get asked "how old ru?", because you know you're almost certainly older than the questioner's parents, and have lived through all of the years of the above, but still enjoy the idea of flying around in a superhero game, just for it's own sake.

 

Posted

[ QUOTE ]
-You remember the game Adventure on the Atari 2600 (nothing better than your char. being a large pixel)

[/ QUOTE ]

go here for some free Adventure.

http://www.simmphonic.com/programming/adventure.htm

EveryNighters:

Tar Heel Lvl 50 Inv/SS Tank
Knight of Purgatory Lvl 50 Fire/Ax Tank
Kilmainham Wall Lvl 50 Stone/Stone Tank
Re-Fridgerator Lvl 50 Ice/Ice Tank
Yankee Doodle Dandy Lvl 50 Will/Eng Tank
Teen Tar Heel Lvl 50 MA/SR Scrapper

EvilNighters:

Tar Heel Dead Lvl 50 DD Brute

 

Posted

[ QUOTE ]
Y

There were no music CD's, music was on vinyl records (look it up).



[/ QUOTE ]

Would that be 33 1/3 or 78 rpms?

Oh, also:

You saw 2001 Space Odyssey in the theatersand thought the movie was real exciting because of all the awsome special effects!

Try watching it today with someone who grew up with Star Wars and watch them go to sleep on you and tell you it's the most boring film they ever saw.

You remember Disco Dancing to Charo and back when she was hot.

You know who Dee D. Jackson was.

You remember when Micheal Jackson was black

You remember when diapers were made of cloth

You remember watching 8th Man (Who use to boost his power form SMOKING A CIGARETTE!!!)

You remember when certain TV shows used to tell you they were IN COLOR

You could not make a long-distance call without the operator (There were times when you could not even make a local one either, but I'm not that old )

 

Posted

You own the LOTR Board Game...the first one...

You know what colors Mighty Mouse wears....

You purchased an atari with your own money....

You remember who Space Ghost's friends were...

You watched Birdman before he became a lawyer...

You loved Lorn Greene as Adama....

You read the books from the series Lorn Greene starred in as Adama....

You know who Lou Ferrigno is....

(here's the funny part....I'm 18 heehee.....I can't attest to the atari that's my oldest brothers' he's 33 now)

here's a real winner for you though:

You watched the Beatles on the Ed Sullivan show, or the Muppets first appearance, which was also on the Ed Sullivan show. lol thank goodness for pbs!

PS
Make note of the title change I made hehe

 

Posted

You remember Starbuck as a man.

EveryNighters:

Tar Heel Lvl 50 Inv/SS Tank
Knight of Purgatory Lvl 50 Fire/Ax Tank
Kilmainham Wall Lvl 50 Stone/Stone Tank
Re-Fridgerator Lvl 50 Ice/Ice Tank
Yankee Doodle Dandy Lvl 50 Will/Eng Tank
Teen Tar Heel Lvl 50 MA/SR Scrapper

EvilNighters:

Tar Heel Dead Lvl 50 DD Brute

 

Posted

- You tell someone in-game that you first started gaming on a Commodore, and they ask, "what's that?"

- Someone in-game asks your age, and you tell them, and their response is, "... dude... you're older than my dad."

- Someone in-game asks your age, and you tell them, and they don't believe you, they think you're putting them on.

- You make a reference to Rodney Dangerfield to someone in-game, and the response is, "who's Rodney Dangerfield?"

You might just be old if...

- You remember your amazement when you first saw a color TV.

- You remember when you first heard of cable TV, and you thought, "who in the world would pay for TV?"

- You remember fondly your large collection of 8-track tapes.

- To this day, you can't get rid of your turntable, because you just can't imagine life without a turntable.

- You know what a turntable is.

Many others... all true stories.

 

Posted

[ QUOTE ]
You owned a Batmamobile made by Gorki (sp?) toys (you know the one which would pop the blade on the front and had the mortar on the back that shot off little yellow pellots that you lost the day you got it)

[/ QUOTE ]

Damn you for making me remember mine!

 

Posted

- you had one of the original "Barbie-tail" Barbies, with the bumble-bee swimsuit.

- you still have a copy of Crystal Cave.

- you know who Space Angel and Clutch Cargo were. (and can name their companions)

- in Houston, you know who Kitirik was, and where she got her name. (Catgirl warning!)

- you know who Mingo was.

- you know his name is Brutus, not Bluto.

- you can finish the quote: "I will gladly pay you Tuesday..."

- you are used to playing computer games with a pad of paper, a pencil, an eraser, and a straight-edge next to the keyboard.

- you know who Infocom was. And/or Perry Sim. And/or The Wabewalker.

- open mailbox

I'll [i]almost certainly[/i] be happy with I7....."SOON(tm)"

Too bad "Maturity" isn't an Enhanceable power.

Anybody with a bow is okay in my book. ;-)

@Linuial
Starfire/Hellfire
Liberty, Infinity & Protector

 

Posted

First, i just want to say as the OP here that I almost want to cry because this is my first thread that didn't turn into a flame war and I wasn't ridiculed and had my feelings squashed like a bug!
I want to thank everyone here for the great memories! God i miss the 80's!

You know what? as much as i love modern day adventure/RPG games, nothing will ever take the place of my days playing PC text adventures. Enchanter, Zork(and all those damn sequels) and my favorite of all: Lurking Horror! Remember that? These games were not spoon-fed to you. They required you to think and to use your brain! Things most games nowadays Do not require at all!

Or what about the early D&D pc games like Pool of Radiance and the others. Those games were huge! and took months to complete. These were the days before eye-candy and video cards, when games were made or broke by the quality of the writing and the depth of the games, not by how many relections you can see in a characters bald head!

Who would ever have thought we would wind up here!!!
I remember being an arcade kid in the 80's when Gauntlet first came out! That game blew our minds! We were like "what do you mean 4 people can play at once? Are you serious?"

Now its "40 people can go on a raid? Really?!!!

Earlier today a friend of mine who plays World of Warcraft was trying to tell me how much better and more in depth it is compared to COH and how much COH sucks and i said "you can keep your crappy stock fantasy characters, I've got 3 completely different heroes, one of whom is a robot pimp with hat and bellbottoms! Let's see World of Warcraft do that!!!!!

 

Posted

So so long ago...

* You know who Ambush Bug is.

* You know who Wendy and Marvin were, and prefer them (her, at least ).

* You looked that up in your Funk & Wagnalls.

* The avatar in your first graphical PC game was a '@'.

* You saved your data on 8" disks.

* The TRS-80 was super high-tech.

Moggie's big forum-brother.

"I'm a tech. I tell it how it is. I'm incapable of the sunshine blowing necessary in their field." - BillZBubba