Very soon there won't be a generation that can remember video games not existing.
this post was submitted on 13 Mar 2026
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In the near future retirement homes may still have knitting activities, but they'll also have LAN parties with Warcraft 2, Duke Nukem 3D, Rise of the Triad, Age of Empires, Quake tournaments. All of this along with classic 80s arcade games. We'll be eating in the dining hall listening to the demo sounds of Dig Dug or Ms Pacman playing softly in the background.
If my nursing home doesn't have video games and heavy metal, good luck trying to get my ass in the Handivan.
Then 15-20 years later, those same glorious halls will echo with the sound of the Halo.
The reverberated utterances of DOUBLEKILL cascading into a TRIPLEKILL, or god bless it an OVERKILL. Our geriatric eyes darting across the screen during a round of swat trying to get that beautiful bullet sway of a perfectly swiped Battle Rifle shot.
Mountain Dew coursing through our ancient and dilapidated bodies. Obliterating the covenant, split screen mayhem, the MLG generation.
Power to the fucking players baby.
You’re making getting put in a home sound pretty awesome.
I had this realization about 12 years ago when visiting an elderly relative in a retirement home. There was a recreated whole 1950s diner inside the facility; the booths, black & white tile, heavy use of chrome accents and even the doo-wop music playing on repeat. It struck me that for many of the residents that recreated diner likely represented some of the best times in their life where they were care free and youthful in their primes.
It immediately hit me that I'd be in a facility like that some day (if I'm lucky enough to live that long) and that there would be an equivalent of the diner for GenX me. I realized it would be a 1980s arcade possibly with a shopping mall food court with pastel colors and a sprinkle of orange neon. However, I wouldn't be able to spend my entire time in that arcade, but I'd be playing the PC and console games of my youth too along with all the other residents that had that exact same desire for those that I would.
Let's sure hope the classics are preserved!
My parents were born in the late 60s and played the very first video games like pong and space invaders in the 70s. Gaming back then was more of a novelty toy and not so widespread as it is today.
Very true. My son was playing some Atari 2600 games on our Steam Deck and finally stopped to ask me, "Did people actually have fun with these games?"
Eh, not really! They were indeed a novelty, and usually got pretty boring fairly quickly...
I mean, I did! Having literally no other options makes a big difference!
Fair. I was one of the nerds who would still rather read a book or watch Star Trek reruns.
Atari games got so bad that it killed off the video game industry until Nintendo came along with a licensing program with standards.
The first video games were created in the 50s, and the precursors to them (like slot machines) are decades older. We are probably pretty close to that already.
They might have existed, but few people actually played them or even knew about them then. Slot machines don't count, no video!
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My grandma played a lot of Zork through the '80s, and taught me to play it in the '90s.
I imagine from her point of view arcade games got gradually more computerized.
I'm 51 and remember playing Asteroids in the arcade. The state of video games today literally blows my mind, I have a hard time processing what's going on!
I'm close to 50 and have never stopped playing them since Pac-Man in 1983. The big budget ones have gotten too bloated for their own good, though!
The only good Nazi is a dead Nazi.
Wait a second, your grandma played wolf3d? Grandma?! Am I old Lemmy?
If she was in her 20s when Wolfenstein came out in 1992, then a year later she could have had a kid, and 20 years later her kid could have had a kid, and then 13 years later the grandkid makes this post
I was 21 when Wolfenstein came out. You had to have like a $10,000 (adjusted for inflation) computer to run it. Some older nerds I knew had that. And they and their wives were often metal heads. I was grunge.
And they and their wives were often metal heads. I was grunge.
I tend to find metal heads are pretty well off too
We're all old to someone in school
No, you are young and hip 😎
The hip replacement, perhaps.
My neighbor who is in her 80s used to play NES. So them being a grandmother doesn't really factor in one way or the other.
And if that don't work, use more gun.
use gun
As I recall, the correct answer was, "use a Big Fucking Gun (9000)"
Was this Doom or Duke Nukem 3D
Aww crap. I misremembered.
It was Doom. I can't remember which weapon I used to kill cyber-Hitler. I think I just conflated the thrill of shooting Hitler with the thrill of shooting the BFG9000.
I'm OK with that mistake.
Doom, the BFG is king
If I recall, there were also rocket launchers.
You're probably thinking of Quake, which definitely had a rocket launcher.
Wolf 3D, as I recall, had four weapons. Knife, pistol, SMG, and chain gun.
I only recall a minigun, but no rocket launcher.
Ah yes
Wolfenstein 3d is the first video game I never played. I was maybe 5 years old and my dad showed me how to type what I needed to in DOS to launch the game. I had multiple saves at bosses so I could kill them over and over again.
Weirdly Wolfenstein and Doom were pretty often puzzle games past the first few levels. Finding the exit was not trivial, and I spent hours on some levels hunting down the one fucking keycard I needed to get through a door, to end up needing another keycard.
Or maybe I was a dumb kid?
Based grandma slotting Nazis.
I thought they were talking about Dungeon Master 🤷♂️
Doom was my first thought but Wolf3D makes sense too.
I guess same, but I would prefer to be seen as the grandpa that played Quake while listening to NIN. Academy award winning NIN.
I’m terrified that in a not so long future my inevitable grandchild will post some crap like that disrespecting StarCraft 2 and my memory in a crap combo.
What if I were to conflate it with populous though
Mixed feeling ms about that one. From that era it would be Sid Meier’s Colonisation my go-to.
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