[Doug]

Regarding the point about being too old to play:

I'm somewhat reluctant to reveal my exact age for fear of being ostracized, but I played Pong in the bus station in Springfield, Massachusetts in 1974 (I didn't need to stand on a milk crate to reach the buttons, either), and I have loved video games ever since. I've never had really good equipment, but it helped that my dad loved video games and always had some console or other, like the original Atari and Coleco.

The first game I played on a computer was King's Quest IV on a monochrome laptop at work during lunch-hour, and when my office bought a color monitor to hook it up to it was like the scene in the Wizard of Oz when it changes from black & white to color. Wow! When I got a chance to play Myst on my Dad's computer, I was blown away by the visuals and soundtrack. I couldn't wait to get a multimedia computer (yes, believe it or not, there was a time when PCs didn't come with speakers and CD-ROM drives). I've been hooked on adventure games since.

I've got an old computer and I can't play the most modern games, but I've got a closet full of older bargain bin titles that I enjoy working through bit by bit. AO was the latest (and by far one of the greatest, even though outside my favorite genre). Ok, so I don't tell a lot of my peers that I'm a video game junkie, but most nights it's a lot more interesting and a lot more entertaining than what's on TV. Whether I'm too old to play or not, I'm playing anyway, and I'll never stop.