Poll: Do you play videogames?

um....holy crap of course. I play video games waaay too much. Especially when I'm at school. We get LAN parties together every night. It's awesome.

I love to play video games... computer games, mostly, with some console games snuck in. I've got 5 favorite genres that come to mind... racing simulators, air/space flight sims, real time strategy, first person shooter, and Sim-type (SimCity, The Sims) games.

I've had to curtail my game playing while I'm supposed to be working on my MCSE training, but I've ended up finding other things to do instead. So much for that. :-P

-- Pauley

Console and computer. fave genres, 1st person shooters, RPGs, platformers, action, survival horror,realtime strategy, and just about everything else except puzzle and sports games (with a few exceptions.)

neh.. I just watch my boyfriend and his best friend play.. I havent played videogames since Sonic The Hedgehog for Sega Genesis was the newest game out there...

"I play videogames as often as time permits, which means rarely these days".

Still, I have a group of friends that gets together to play Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles and Zelda: Four Swords (although we haven't had a chance to play the latter yet) about once a month, schedule-permitting.

(Three of the four of us were getting together to play Goldeneye on a daily basis, six years ago. And yet we've pretty much always stayed away from PC games. Odd.)

my daddy nicked us a playstation from work. and so now i can play gran turismo! *glee* i have the leet driving skillz, y0. (haven't mastered the corners yet, however.)

I"m sorta in between loving them and playing them once in a while. I don't play many, quantity-wise. But ones I do play and fall for I'll play incessantly for hours on end. Or...days on end. :) (e.g. Ratchet and Clank, SSX)

If you have a tuned Skyline, you can hit the wall in every corner and still win races.�� That was my strategy for the first few months. :-)

And when I do, it's either Pinball or Spider Solitaire on my computer.

In college I adored Popcorn (a freeware French-Canadian Breakout clone) but it runs really badly on today's modern computers. Also in college, I got addicted to the original Russian CGA version of Tetris.

Mmmm Tetris. I used to be able to beat anymore on tetris. Computer based that is. I didn't have a console so I couldn't play it well with a game controller.

(see subject)

is evil.

That's all.

I don't exactly recommend these, but they're amusing reads:

The Gamer's Guide to Girls: How to Hide Your Habit from Your Honey
The Gamer's Guide to Girls: Getting Your Gal to Go Gamer

-- Pauley

How do you mean, "really badly on today's modern computers"? Does the program run too fast?

Programs exist that can slow down your CPU to run older games that were dependent on "CPU time" vs. real time. Two pretty good ones that I've found are Mo'Slo (from what I'm reading, one of the best, costs $15) and CPUKiller (looks to be free to use in brief testing so far).

More info and additional utilities to try can be found at "The NEW PC Slow Down Page" (yeah, it's Geocities, and it's simple, but it's got some good info on this particular topic) or a Google search.

(Oh, and I can tell you from experience -- close down the other programs you're running in Windows before you slow down the processor... 'cause it's extremely difficult and (naturally) slow to get them to close afterwards.)

-- Pauley

I just realized that I clicked on the wrong answer :P

But then there is no button for my answer anyway, except fpr Other.

I used to play a lot of videogames, the ones my brother has, and then I stopped for a long while. Now I'm just starting to get into them again, because all my friends are forcing me to play Final Fantasy ;) I'm enjoying it, and look forward to more :) hehehe.

Oh hey, I just beat Four Swords this past weekend. It's really a great game. I wish I didn't have to always play on single player, though.� :p

As my thumbnail suggests, I love Zelda games like crazy. They are glorious masterpieces, yo.

I cannot, however, dig the Final Fantasy groove at all.

To be fair, I'm not very good at most of them, and I probably spend more time talking about them and watching other people play than actually playing them myself. But I still enjoy them very much.

I don't play video games, nor do I like them, but the reason for this is that they suck up so much time that I could be spending doing things I consider more important. I also don't watch much TV. I do let my son play games on the computer for up to an hour each day, but most of the things he plays are in some way educational, as well as attempting to build some fine motor skills.

Honestly, a wise person will not get me started into a discussion about video games.� Unless of course, you aren't doing anything for the next FOREVER.� Hell, it would probably take me hours/days/possibly a few weeks just to name what I have from off the top of my head.� Hmm.� I don't play them as much anymore, because I've evolved into a video game snob.� I try not to play games that aren't worth the time/experience devoted to them.� Old school games don't count towards that, though.� You can't touch my NES/SMS/2600, get away from it/them.

I like video games - but not the gory ones. Something that will allow me to expand my mind at least a little without the super-spooky music, gory bloodletting, or stupid sh..tuff.

Zelda was fine until it got too spooky for me. (hello, nightmares? right here.)

Mario Bros was great in that respect. I liked the Crash Bandicoot games, too.

Any recommendations?

Argh...please don't let my boyfriend near that second one...

*rolls eyes*

my son likes animal crossing no violence

heh... guess this might be the one way in which I'm totally a "guy".....

The only reason I like video games (other than tetris/solitaire/backgammon) is for the "play for 15 minutes and shoot as much as you can" fun.

I have no interest in "beating a really hard level" or whatever.... I'm far more happy to put in the cheat code so I can be immortal and just have my fun for a few minutes then get back to real life.

As such, I don't consider myself a videogame player.
That title I give to those who devote time to it.

The only things I devote time to are the games that are "IRL" as well.
(backgammon, etc)

SSX3 really appeals to me as a girl. :) It's a snowboarding game but part of the game is earning money and you can use it to buy cool outfits and stuff and so I have so much fun playing and getting better and building up my money so I can make my characters look cool. :)

I like RPGs and strategy games the best. However, I don't like the thought of being sucked into a black pit of games on a bright day. So I devised a system: I only play video games when I'm the only person home. It makes me aware of where people are going and what they're doing, while allowing me to occassionally play video games. It works for me...

PS. The most educational game I've ever played was Age of Empires II (aside from Math Blaster). That game actually taught me some stuff about history. Ah Math Blaster... good times...

Sounds like, given that all the games you mentioned are console games, and two of the three are Nintendo franchises, you're at least looking in the right direction -- if you want "expand your mind" games that don't get "spooky" or "gory" or "stupid", the Nintendo consoles are going to suit your tastes better than the PS2 or Xbox.

That said: Pikmin is a great game, and unless you consider little weed-creatures that are under your control getting chomped by bad guys gory, it's right up your alley.

My wife really likes The Sims, but I know she hasn't played the console version at all. But The Sims isn't a videogame to me; it's a "virtual pet" toy writ large.

Crazy Taxi, while not really in the "expand your mind" category, is good fun. And it's impossible to run anyone over, so Nate probably hates it :-)

There's also the whole "party game" genre, if you have friends you want to play videogames with -- like all of the "Mario Party" games, which are basically board games with diversions in between rounds.

You might notice that all of these games are a few years old -- I haven't been spending much money on videogames in recent months :-)

Heh.� My wife LOOOOVes that game.� She refuses to play (or even try to learn) anything else.� So, uh, . . . that supports your position.

Yeah, that's exactly what I mean - the game runs far too fast.

Thanks for the pointers!

yup.� the sim is not a video game, as far as im concerned.� it's a rediculously elaborate tamagotchi thingy.� it's about as much of a video game as Dance Dance Revolution, but don't get me started on that. :P� interactive excersize machine in disguise, anyone?

I got Pikmin about two months ago, after wanting it for a long time. I'm not bothered by, and often enjoy, good fun violence and puzzles. But for some reason something about Pikmin freaked me out. I haven't played it since that first day. It's too much like Lemmings, I guess. I may yet come back to it at some point.

I think it's depressing that so many girls seem uninterested in videogames. I've loved them dearly, since I first played Atari, when I was about 3 years old. Some of my favorite memories are of the first time I played Zelda or Super Mario Bros 3 or watching my cousins play for hours. Also, I think it would be hard for me to date a boy who didn't love videogames as much as I do. I never shyed away from any type of game for being too violent or too anything else. I will say that sports games, shooters, and RPGs aren't much fun for me. I love Zelda best (like I feel the need to say everyday), but I also like Mario games, and general fun games (Animal Crossing, The Sims, Harry Potter, Adventure, Bubble Bobble, Battletoads, Sonic games to a degree, etc.), and I'm fixing to go back and play all of the Metroid games since Metroid 2.

I watched a documentary about videogames on the Gameshow Network� a few months ago. It was really fun and informative. At one point, they said that girls make up about 25% of the gaming population and are the fastest growing minority. I have to wonder if that's about right.

The only video games a girl should be playing are the Barbie game, Mary-Kate and Ashley's Greatest Mysteries, and Photoshop!!!!111