I remember playing Falcon and Comanche and Red Baron games and Longbow way back when. Some were just too exacting for my tastes, but I did gin up double monitors to play them, and Thrustmaster and a few other HOTAS controllers to play them. The graphics were often incredibly bad, but the tension and adrenaline rushes were wonderful and very real, whether more SIM-like or arcade. Either way was fine with me.
And the old NASCAR gameg dis and ones like them were great too. I had wheels and pedals. So visceral actual drivers used them to practice races -- and one guy at least won a race on a track he had never been on and ascribed it to his practice sessions mastering the track in the game!
Lotsa times the "oh it was better back then" stuff is rightly derided as baloney, but we do miss out these days on that stuff. I used to see shelves filled with SIM-game controllers of all types; now I don't see them at all.
But rock on, man. It's a great hobby and even great training for serious folks.
