The age you were for your preferred style of gaming

[FAST6191]

Advertisers will tell me that everybody wants to be 19 and people aiming to do well should play to that. This also means that some would argue the music you like at 19 will form the style you like from there on, the films you like.....

Now I have been looking back at the reviews of games I have done and I seem to cut a certain style/vintage of gameplay more slack than some. However this is not the sort of games that I saw when I was 19.


Equally we saw a massive fracture of what gets called popular culture -- it is nothing unusual for there to be 200 TV channels (I remember the introduction of the fifth free to air channel in the UK* and those not that much older than me remember the introduction of the fourth), indeed it is not all that odd to find someone that does internet instead of TV, having a platinum album is actually something special these days compared to being able to trip over then in the 90's.
Has this changed anything?


*UK TV was something of a running joke in this regard so maybe not the best example.

 

[Nathan Drake]

Let's see. When I was younger, I preferred platforming games largely with a sprinkle of JRPGs on the side. Obviously as a kid, platformers, especially Nintendo ones, are a lot easier to grasp than your average JRPG, so I latched onto those a bit more until I was about 10. By the time I was 10, I was still enjoying platforming titles, but I had largely shifted to JRPGs as my major favored genre. Games like Golden Sun, FFIX, and Legend of Dragoon pushed me further and further towards JRPGs, although I was also gaining a love for action/adventure games. That meant that I was finally enjoying things like Zelda, mostly because I was at a point where understanding the generally fairly straightforward stories was a simple task, and my ability to actually improve as a gamer was more substantial making things overall less of a trial. By the time I was 15, I still liked JRPGs, but I had largely shifted to them, action/adventure games, and FPS titles. Honestly, the major reason I was into FPS titles at that point was due to my friend, but I still gained an affinity for them none the less. At this point I noticed that genres such as platforming weren't really appealing to me anymore, and this has persisted to this day, although FPS titles were more of a phase than anything else.

I would say at this point, my preferred genres are certainly JRPG, action/adventure, and I wouldn't necessarily say VN, but I guess interactive VNs like 999, VLR, Phoenix Wright, etc.. It's really hard for me to get into classic series I used to like from companies like Nintendo, and since Nintendo is one of the only companies that still really involves platforming as the core gameplay for any games, that means I don't really play platforming titles anymore. Genres that never really appealed to me still don't, although some games that may fall within the puzzle genre have certainly earned entries among my favorite games. A love for certain puzzle games is a more recent trend in my life though. I don't think I had the patience for them when I was younger and just wanted to hack and slash and save worlds.

 

[PityOnU]

Advertisers will tell me that everybody wants to be 19 and people aiming to do well should play to that. This also means that some would argue the music you like at 19 will form the style you like from there on, the films you like.....

Now I have been looking back at the reviews of games I have done and I seem to cut a certain style/vintage of gameplay more slack than some. However this is not the sort of games that I saw when I was 19.


Equally we saw a massive fracture of what gets called popular culture -- it is nothing unusual for there to be 200 TV channels (I remember the introduction of the fifth free to air channel in the UK* and those not that much older than me remember the introduction of the fourth), indeed it is not all that odd to find someone that does internet instead of TV, having a platinum album is actually something special these days compared to being able to trip over then in the 90's.
Has this changed anything?


*UK TV was something of a running joke in this regard so maybe not the best example.

I had heard from various sources (although none that I can find right now) that it's around 10 years old where you begin to truly take shape as an individual, so experiences during that time leave the largest impression.

I know this holds true for me. All of my favorite franchises (Pokemon, Smash Bros., Harvest Moon, etc.) were games I was playing when I was about 10 years old.

19 seems really late to me. Maybe that's just the largest gaming demographic right now?

 

[RevPokemon]

I'm only 18 so I may be a bit young to add anything but I can say that my gaming tastes aren't really shaped by the current games that attract my age group (like gta,cod, and what not) but it was the era when I was between 7 and 13 when I played many games that I still love like darkstalkers, sonic adventure 1&2, Mario sunshine, chibi robo, custom robo, battle for bikini bottom, the Pokemon games and many more are games that I played during era.

Now there are alot of games I've enjoyed in the past 2 years but they are mainly retro games that I was too young or not even born to play.

So ultimately I think the era that you have nostalgia for is the era that shapes your tastes

 

[Sakitoshi]

The very first console I had was a PC and the games I played were Jill of the jungle, Jazz Jackrabbit and DooM around age 5, yeah a 5 years old killing frogs, turtles and demons, since then I been playing good classics continuing with Megarace, Heretic, Duke 3D, NES, Genesis and SNES emulators, Quake, Wacky Wheels, ooohhhh the golden era of gaming. I didn't played games more complicated than that, the concept of something else than go, kill and proceed to the next stage was weird to me, when I tried Hexen I was overwhelmed by the complexity even though the basic concept was the very familiar FPS, but didn't gave up and persisted, failing trying, my lack of english was most provably at fault.
Got some thinking skills playing Solitaire, Chip's challenge, Rodent's revenge, Taipei and many others of the Microsoft entertainment pack, but can't remember at what age I started playing those.
Wasn't until 1999 at age 9 when I discovered Pokemon that I started playing RPGs, I also acquired a taste for racing games with Need for Speed 2 and 3. was around this time that I learned english thanks to my interest to games and english class of course.
Since then I have been playing more turn based RPGs and Diablo introduced me to the action/real time RPGs. I haven't varied much in taste, even added more, introducing fighters/brawlers, adventure, VNs and MMORPG to my formula, but the latter I abandoned once Ragnarok Online grow to ridiculous proportions and lost free time to play any other, tried Ragnarok II The gate of the world and though was good, but was killed by the developers.

So that's that. it depends on every person and with games having such big variety in genres and sub-genres is hard to stay with only a handful of them.

 

[Vulpes Abnocto]

When I was a kid I played.....well, everything we could get our hands on, since there weren't a lot of games back then. I had an Atari 2600 between ages 7-10. At that point I really didn't pay attention to genres of games, but I guess I spent most of my time on games like StarMaster, Asteroids, and Missile Command.
10-14 were my NES years where I first discovered RPGs such as Dragon Warrior, Crystalis, and Final Fantasy.
15-18 were my Sega Genesis/32X, and Playstation 1 years. More Final Fantasy, but now leaning more toward FF Tactics as a favorite game. Of course this was around the advent period of survival horror so I was all into Resident Evil and Silent Hill. And of course there was always my guilty pleasure: Spyro the Dragon.
And around age 18 I got my first real taste of PC gaming. I realized it was simple to find a PC somebody was tossing out (because nobody worried about identity theft yet) and either fix it up or upgrade it to be a cheap, usable gaming machine. These were the Quake and Unreal Tourney and StarCraft years.

Now at age 34 I hardly get time to play anything for very long. But I still break out quite a few of those listed games to relive the old days, or I have modern equivalent games to take their place. Not really interested in MMOs or MOBAs. I guess I was just too old when those became viable.