No idea what’s happening. Permanently banned after 14 years of contribution due to some inconsequential mod-gripe, and a subsequent “ban evasion” (using another old account on a different, un-related sub).

Yeah, never do it on actual social media, but around these part it’s occasionally useful.

Love a pint, personally. Drinking with friends trumps most other activities. Currently on my way to see The Prodigy with some old friends I’m meeting in Edinburgh. Looking forward to the pubs and merry laughs as much as the gig, in fact more so.

deleted by creator

Definitely. I’m pushing 50 and know that, had games been more sophisticated, realistic, and able to be played online in my teens, I’d have struggled not to let that consume me. However, as it happened, the allure of gigs, beer, nights out, and girls didn’t really have much competition with the likes of Street Fighter 2.

On one hand, I definitely feel I’ve missed out on that gaming experience and to this day don’t have that shared interest that my younger colleagues have with each other. On the other, I see younger guys at work who are just regular dudes but have no family, friends, or partners outside work or their online world. And by younger, I mean pushing 40. We’re talking about decades where their free time has been spent mostly gaming.

To each their own—please don’t get prickly if you feel seen or think I’m being condescending. I can absolutely see how that can happen, and if you’re cool with that, then that’s all that matters. It’s just not the way I personally would want to live from my current perspective, although I know that had I been born a decade later, I’d probably be in the same boat.

I take your point. I suppose it’s worth mentioning that a lot of games were either straight-up arcade conversions or derivatives. There are a few decent YouTube channels from former artists and coders that talk about the dev process. By today’s standards it was insanely restrictive and the teams were comparatively tiny. True game development was just at such an early stage then, which I guess is partly the point you’re making.

You’re spot on, although, to be fair Autistic traits aren’t quite the enigma they once were. These days it feels like being neurotypical is the outlier.

I mean, they took the ST as far as it could go graphically. To this day there are people trying to mod fully expanded STEs so it’ll run something close to Doom, but really I feel they just couldn’t cut it. 8mhz and a display limited to 16 colours (without special sync tricks) from a pallette of 512/4096 (depending on which machine you had) was a bit of a bottleneck. There’s proto-open world games like Hunter, but in general side/vertical scrolling shot-em-ups was pretty much it’s bag, and games like Turrican, Killing Gameshow and Xenon 2 all pushed the limits of what could be done as far as I recall.

Yep, £20.05 in my local shop for 20 Regal King-size.

Regarding lawns, I think it’s the feeling of accomplishment when you’ve mowed them that’s the kicker. A wild garden can look better, but there’s something about the smugness of having a freshly cut lawn that gives you a slightly virtuous buzz.

I had an Atari ST and, in a childish and tribalistic way, hated the Amiga - although looking back it was clearly superior by almost every metric! I betrayed my childhood self and got one a few years back. The games are generally smoother and sound better, but the nostalgia itch is only truly scratched when I power up the ST.

Cigarettes. Of course, there were other more pressing reasons to quit, but saving nearly £20 a packet helped.

While, to be honest, I don’t really agree with you, I think there’s definitely a biological element around fertility and maturity that’s worth discussing.

However, it’s difficult to discuss this stuff in generalities. Plus, there’s a tendency to overcorrect when discussing age gaps as a natural reaction to the countless scandals regarding old, powerful men exploiting young, vulnerable people.

It feels like there’s an instinctive reaction, especially online, to any perceived imbalance in age, and that generally the senior figure is viewed with suspicion.

I find it slightly hypocritical that some of those who fall over themselves to rightly defend the freedom of consenting adults to identify how they like, and encourage people to embrace all facets of their sexuality, baulk at any significant age discrepancies between heterosexual couples like puritans clutching pearls.

Haha

Doubtful, I’m 49!

Eh… What?! Certainly remember pre-optical mice, but replacing the balls with eggs was surely not a thing?

Wild how they made a dino look weirdly handsome.

One of the tiresome elements of Reddit was always this childrfree tribalism that seemed to span thousands of subs. Have kids, don’t have kids. Entirely your own business and nobody else’s. Neither decision should be worn as some sort of badge of honour.

She was an alcoholic with border-line personality disorder, and as a naive and lonely young Scotsman I foolishly mistook her for a bright girl with a quirky personality who liked a drink and had occasional violent moodswings. Took way too long to realise what the gravity of her condition meant. I was emotionally inexperienced and trusting. And I paid the price.

On the bright side, when i came out of that relationship and healed I met someone well-balanced and kind, who is now my wife. I’m so grateful for the love i now have and the relative stability of my life, and in a weird way I’m glad I went through what I did with my ex, as it makes me appreciate what I now have.

That’s wild. So you don’t particularly care for the show, but it was presumably the theme for your wedding as well? Or was this a previous marriage?