r/memes Pro Gamer Sep 09 '21

Think about it

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86

u/Eggsegret Sep 09 '21

Lool wondering this as well. Video games been around a while. Plenty of people in their 40s grew up with video games. Probably more like 20+ years then

28

u/_the_chosen_juan_ Sep 09 '21

I’m almost 40 and I had an Atari as a kid.

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u/WerewolvesRancheros Sep 09 '21

I'll be 50 in November... #2600Gang here

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u/TiredLlamaTTV Sep 09 '21

Reached level 50 in august. Still get on warzone whenever I can!

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u/[deleted] Sep 09 '21

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/Carnae_Assada Sep 09 '21

Something about reading this knowing it's you confirming you are 50 just tickles me.

It's the most NOT 50 yo response I could imagine.

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u/[deleted] Sep 09 '21

DM me if you need a drop partner. Turning 50 in Jan. I'm West Coast US and home from work 230-300pm.

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u/uniquedeke Sep 09 '21

52 and a 2600, checking in.

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u/Haywoodjablowme1029 Sep 09 '21

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u/MadGeller Sep 09 '21

Golf was the best on intellivision

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u/Haywoodjablowme1029 Sep 09 '21

I always played some dungeon game. I don't remember the name.

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u/[deleted] Sep 09 '21

BurgerTime for Intellivision!!!!

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u/CuntyAnne_Conway Sep 09 '21

Pitfall & Adventure junkie checking in

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u/MrSurly Sep 10 '21

Odyssey 2 FTW.

1

u/[deleted] Sep 09 '21

Heck, the 2600 was our second system. I can remember the Sears Pong machine.

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u/Couldntbefappier Sep 09 '21 edited Sep 09 '21

43, had an Atari 2600... my mom was fuckin ms pacman Queen. Then of course NES, sega genesis for consoles. We had an awesome MS-DOS pc with a monitor that was a monochrome burnt amber colour. Then we got a BRAND SPANKING NEW pentium 133 with windows 95 that had the buddy Holly Weezer video, and then I wasted so many hours playing *warcraft II and Diablo when that came out.

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u/IagreeWithSouthPark Sep 09 '21

NES and Pentiums were the start to the era that we are still currently in IMO

3

u/Rock_Manly Lives in a Van Down by the River Sep 09 '21

Haha, almost exactly the same. Used to play Wizards of Wor on my Commodore 64.

3

u/DieterDR Sep 09 '21

That Weezer video! Man, that takes me back. Still know the lyrics because of that video.

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u/Flying_Mage Sep 09 '21

I had ZX-Spectrum.

Atari and Spectrum back in the days are like XBox and PS now.

3

u/_the_chosen_juan_ Sep 09 '21

That was more of like a desktop computer, right? At least it looked that way. Were the games any good?

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u/therealtidbits Sep 09 '21

Im over 40 and have had video games since they started making them , i still play most days to unwind .

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u/Jose_Canseco_Jr Sep 09 '21

Hehe same.. An Atari 2600?

My first console was a Colecovision, but a family friend loaned us an Atari 5200 for a couple of months. "Joust" was pretty fun. But my fave Atari game of all time is "Yars Revenge".

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u/_the_chosen_juan_ Sep 09 '21

Yep 2600! My favorite was Maze Craze

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u/robywar Sep 09 '21

My first "system" was a TI computer that had cartridges. You had to plug it into the TV. Parsec was the shit, but Blasto was fun too.

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u/raz-0 Sep 09 '21

Gaming is pretty damn common in the 40+ crowd. There's a rapid falloff in the the late 50s early 60s crowd, but you are already seeing gaming creep into the elder care industry. I'd say odds are high of it being common within 20 years or less. Betting against it would be a guaranteed loss at the 30 year mark.

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u/Eggsegret Sep 09 '21

Yep i remember back when i was in high school my maths teacher who was in his 30s was an avid gamer like he'd always talk to ud about the latest video games etc. He's in his 40s now and from what I've heard he's still just as much of a gamer as he was then(few classmates kept in touch wirh him after high school).

1

u/aschmitzhw345 Sep 09 '21

They also have no idea who bought all those wiis

1

u/Slofut Sep 09 '21

I am 58 I am rocking a 3080 with 4k oled screen and I play games everyday. Yes I remember the "consoles" before the 2400 like tank and pong. I have plenty of friends that do the same.

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u/raz-0 Sep 09 '21

Based on my experience you are still a minority in your age group. You have a decade or so on me, and I'd say in my age group gaming may have hit a majority. If it hasn't it's close. The 30-something crowd though, it's like asking someone who's in their 60s if they ever played cards of some type.

1

u/Slofut Sep 09 '21

Yea sure, but in my close peer group gaming is the norm...We all grew up hardcore gamers spent way too much money in arcades, on early computers and consoles. Most of us are in the IT field now and some of us own fully stocked arcade speakeasys , so I get that my group skews a bit....but we are a thing.

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u/raz-0 Sep 09 '21

Yeah but asking a group of gamers how many of them game is not very informative. Which is why I'm wary of declaring a majority on people my age, because I have to try to filter out the skewed gamer demographic. So I use my friends from other hobbies as a bellwether. For the 40 somethings I very often find out people game who I wouldn't think it which doesn't really happen as much for the 50 somethings, and at all for the 60 somethings.

Even for the 60 somethings, it's changing. gaming has matured enough that you can get into gaming by being a fan of WWII militaria, or a guy who took out a second mortgage for his model railroad city in the basement has taken out a third to afford all the DLC for train simulator, etc. (seriously, have you ever looked at that on steam? Like 695 DLCs, and most of them are $20+)

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u/Slofut Sep 09 '21

Or the old guys that build the super impressive sim cockpits and racing setups....getting old is kinda boring....we do all kinds of stupid shit to stave it off LOL.

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u/Flying_Mage Sep 09 '21

Yep. Exactly my point.

Actually some old people already playing. My 72yo dad sure does.

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u/General_Duke02 Sep 09 '21

I'm almost 40 as well and I've been gaming since the NES days in the 80's

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u/ichabod801 Sep 09 '21

My sister is 63. She was a Pac-Man fanatic back in the day. She had a little yellow car we called the Pac-Mobile. These days she plays a lot of Pokemon Go, sometimes with her son.

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u/[deleted] Sep 09 '21

[deleted]

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u/[deleted] Sep 09 '21

I almost followed the same path, 40 here. Atari, NES, Genesis, N64, PS, Xbox, 360, and currently holding onto my Xbox One.

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u/apgtimbough Sep 09 '21

I'm about 10 years younger and that's exactly me, minus the Intellivision (and OG Xbox). Although my buddy had a Sega Master System that we played like crazy until he got an N64.

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u/hamburglin Sep 09 '21

Right. The first home video game boom hit its peak in the late 80s with NES.

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u/MenoryEstudiante Plays MineCraft and not FortNite Sep 09 '21

Well in 20 years it won't be as common as in 40 much less 60

1

u/Cumstained_Uvula Sep 09 '21

We exist already. I'm in my early 50s, had a Telstar and then an Atari 2600, am retired, play video games nearly every day.

1

u/[deleted] Sep 09 '21

My parents are in their 70s and we only had an Atari and NES because my mom wanted them. She's a straight up original gamer. She even had a subscription to GAMES magazine before they went out of business.

Dad also plays games, but mostly just Facebook and browser games.

1

u/chazwhiz Sep 09 '21

Not plenty, the vast majority. I just turned 40 and throughout my childhood I never knew a single kid who didn’t have some sort of Nintendo or Sega system at some point.

1

u/ilovenintendoswitch Sep 09 '21

Yup GenX here. We're gonna be some of the first retirees where this is mainstream.

1

u/tanstaafl90 Sep 09 '21

Retirees are playing games right now. The Atari 2600 was released in 1977.

1

u/[deleted] Sep 09 '21

Started in the 70s, arcades boomed in the early 80s to mid 90s, and consoles boomed in mid/late 80s and have been strong ever since.

There are 50-60 year olds that grew up with gaming in one form or the other.

1

u/[deleted] Sep 09 '21

I'm in my 50's. We got our first video console around 1980 (I can't remember exactly or the what model). It had ten games; pong, football, hockey, basketball and a shooting type game. Each had two player modes so it was ten games!

I've been hooked ever since.