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Comment by chucksmash | Hacker News Reader

Loved these games. Grew up playing them with a yoke + throttle controller my dad bought for MS Flight Simulator. Didn't have the specs for Tie Fighter to run well but X-Wing worked great. I'd angle a clock radio next to the yoke for a little more of a cockpit vibe plus to change up the soundtrack.

So much joy being at that age and in that era of computing/gaming. Hope people are able to pass that same feeling along to the current gen in some way, shape or form.

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I wonder if immersion in fiction (interactive or otherwise) is lower nowadays, given the rise of dopamine-saturating short-form content like scrolling. I definitely enjoyed more long-form content (like the mentioned games) 10-20 years ago. I guess I do experience less genuine immersion. I wonder what the effect of that is on my wellbeing.

Might be also that kids generally still can dream, adults lose that ability if untrained. I believe that most of subjects that are touched on in "The Little Prince" are factual.

The other day my wife got into a playground toy car for kids, 3 kids got into, and each was picking a destination while she was driving them. Wooden toy car and pretend motor sounds + an adult pretending to drive them were enough for them to get immersed.

I enjoyed more long-form content when I had the time.

I can't imagine having 10 hours on a Saturday to just "waste" on playing through XWing, no matter how much In want to. Retirement is looking pretty attractive.

There's a lot of middle ground between doom-scrolling type content and a 10 hour block of non-stop immersion. It doesn't have to be one or the other.

> I definitely enjoyed more long-form content (like the mentioned games) 10-20 years ago.

On a chat about OpenTIE, and OpenXWA, I was talking to this. I used to be able to dive into several hours of a simulation game.

My kids are able to play Minecraft, Stardew Valley, or other immersive games.

I can't because of many reasons, and I was just saying that I'm looking forward to a time when I'll kick them out the house, tell my boss that I'm done, and strap on a VR headset and finally play through Star Wars Squadrons.

I recently setup an emulator, passed it through the TV and had blue tooth controllers hooked up, so I could show my son Donkey Kong Country - we ended up finishing 1 and 2 (with my wife joining in), he loved the older game. Trying to get him into older PC games now. So yeah, it is possible to get them into it (just dragging him away from minecraft is hard haha).

The updated Donkey Kong Country that is available on Switch is also a great game. From what I understand it is almost identical to the older version, but with updated graphics and the option to save progress

Indeed! We purchased that after we finished the first two, and they have been having a ball of a time.

my son is addicted to VR gorilla tag. I guess he'll be getting weep-eyed about it in 30 years :P

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