I'm 30. but I have a much older soul.

At 62, I have socks and underwear older than most of you tykes...  Started with Avalon Hill board games in the 1960's and bought my first computer in '84 (a Mac) and PC in '88.  TBS games were abundant then.  The good old days.  Crude graphics, but lots of new ideas and energy.

Really?  I wonder why Stardock continues bothering with retail when places like Wal-mart pull shit like this.

Anyway i am guessing the majority is about 30+ to like this kind of games.

Not as much as I cried.

Until we finally got a color set (with a remote -- the 4 button ones with the 4 rods in them) and then my tears were for Joy!

I was starting 7th grade in the fall of '66.

You mean back when Avalon Hill was Avalon Hill and not a division of Wizards / Hasbro that the younger generations are familiar with.

RuneQuest  /sigh (of happy reminiscing)

Was that 66 AD or 66 BC?

I too cut my teeth on Avalon Hill boardgames.  Blitzkrieg, 1914 (a horrible game but still fun), tactics II, Anzio, Le Mans, Management, etc.

I was lucky that a friend's older brother had almost every one of their games, and I could borrow those I didn't own.

Squad Leader then ASL are the penultimate.

Such as sad fate for such a great game company, tho their current 'owners' aren't bad.

The General was a great magazine, I kept my subscription for many many years.

*runs after the kids shaking fist and shouting 'get off my thread'*

He means way, way before.  I think Tanktics (sp?) had an original publish date of 1960 exactly (or maybe '59).  It was another decade before half of my chromosomes even met the other half.

RQ.  Used to love to read the rulebooks, don't think I ever managed to get a group together.  Maybe a game or two at an old Con at most.  With a good deal of babying, cajoling, and outright bullying, I can get Windows 7 to run King of Dragon Pass (http://a-sharp.com/kodp/) though.

Actually, the first Avalon Hill game I bought was the boardgame Nieuchess around 1961, followed by Tactics II right afterwards.  Both games started a fire that has yet to go out...I bought many, many board games but the problem was always finding the time and buddy to play with.  Then later there were the monster board games that were fun to buy and lay out but the cats or dogs in the house invariably ended those experiments.  PC TBS games proved to be just what I was looking for but their heyday seems to have passed except for Elemental and Civ and a few others from Matrix.

39 here.

@ Walmart issue: I almost exclusively get all my games online (Stardock, Steam, etc.) - for various reasons: Easy updates, desire to not have cardboard refuse, no travel time, etc.  I believe sales at stores such as Walmart are reflecting this consumer behavior and so we are seeing a transformation into a market where buying software at a physical location will be phased out altogether.  Perhaps never completely phased out (like record albums), but we'll certainly never see a glut of Software, Etc.'s and Egghead stores like we used to.

@ 1541 issue: Ha!  The 1541 was my pride and joy and it was the first piece of hardware I had to sucker my parents into buying (it was actually more expensive than the C64 itself was).  In 1984, it meant that instead of playing Telengard from my tape drive, I could play Ultima 3 from my disk drive.  At that point in time, games on tape were being phased out and big-time developers like Origin (hehe) would only release games on floppies.  Allegedly there was a cartridge available too, but I never saw this on sale...

Just for giggles, I'm taking a moment to marvel at how Telengard was one of the first rogue-likes I ever enjoyed playing... Geez, that game was tough.

I remember Tactics II.  Very simple game:  you had counters, and they had different values depending on what military age you were playing in.   Kind of like a cross between Civ and Stratego.   I played against my Dad.  I lost.    That's a lesson in life I learned quickly.   Now when I play a game against my son, I'm gonna whup him.

There's a VASSAL program/community that facilitates playing some of these old boardgames over the net.

For ASL there's VASL

For other games there's VASSAL

I played around with them a while ago but had some trouble and didn't pursue it sufficiently to figure it out.  Folks do get it to work, tho.  And the list of games (modules) that it works with is pretty long.

The game was the last one pre-hex grids IIRC.  A great old game.

I still have a copy of Tactics II in the basement... although mine wasn't from the 1960's, lol.

One of my favorite places was this game store called Napoleons.  In half the store they had it stocked with all the AH boxed games, an assortment of miniatures filing the walls, Osprey books, exquisite chess sets, and military memorabilia. I loved taking trips to that place and just walking around and looking at stuff.

Although I owned a few AH games, I never really got to play them much.  Wasn't anyone around that was really interested in playing.  Plus it was difficult if they weren't familiar with the game themselves.  I never liked explaining rules to people, much less the binder of rules that AH was.  So it was more of a collection for me.

I bought the Elemental Limited Edition out of my first social security check.    But I took it early (62) before all the money is gone.  Glad I'm not a young kid in these times.

Remember when copy protection consisted of asking you for a certain word on a certain page?  I remember missing part of the manual so whenever it would ask for those pages I'd have to restart.

I am 23 but I was born age 70. I was born tired of those damn kids and their rock and roll. I am now over a thousand and I just search the earth looking for something that interests me. This game does.

I was programming in assembly on my Vic-20 when you young-'uns were all knee-high to a... oh wait, I'm right in the pack here at 41.

Vintage '69 model, yeah, summer of love happens when Fearzone blows into town.

Guys, I just want to say you're all splendid, really! (just 30 here, but I have some respect for experience and old gamers)

38 here. Started with Sinclair ZX spectrum. Good times

1977 from This side my first comp was C64

My friend who buy Elemental too is from 1975

Stardock and all employers! Thx for this good game (we w8 for next stability patch and wait for patch which unlock multiplayer game :P)

I sure do remember that.  Pretty soon, the page/paragraph/word method gave way to the code wheel method.  I think the first game I had with a wheel was Pool of Radiance.

Same here. 38 years old. Reading this thread I would say 38 years young