I used to completely ignore all rpgs with turn-based combat like the plague, but now it's one of my favorite genres.

I used to think ABBA was kind of lame, then started warming up to 1/2 of their songs, and now I can't stop listening to them!

I couldn't stand Feta, Olives or Whiskey, but now seemingly can't get enough of any of those.
(Still despise avocados however)

Any similar observations?

Growing up, I loved ketchup. Not to an "if it were socially acceptable, I'd marry it" degree, but still. These days, I prefer mustard as my go-to condiment and rarely, very much so, have ketchup on anything.

I used to cower in fear over hot things. Not hot as in "warm" but stuff like jalapenos/etc. Now, I quite enjoy them - often to the detriment of my stomach, so I have to limit what I have and how far I go with them.

Breakfast cereal - like most kids, I loved the obvious sugary junk (and grew up in the timeframe where people were realizing that said junk contained too much junk and started the scramble to change the formula). Now, I still have some of the sugary stuff once in a while but I find I'm perfectly okay with a plain bowl of cornflakes just as I am anything else.

Similarly - toaster pastries. I used to think "what kind of psychopath likes any without frosting?" and now I find myself saying "hopefully the grocery store has at least one box of unfrosted on the shelf".

Music has never really been too much of an issue with me. Growing up, the music I heard was largely dictated through my father and if anything happened to play that deviated from his taste then someone would be certain to never hear the end to how "garbage" it was. As I got older, I found myself enjoying many different types of music, with very rare exception to not liking anything in particular.

As far as games go - I was never much into sim and strategy types growing up. As I got older and was more inclined to be patient, I began to appreciate them much more than I had previously.

I couldn't stand sweet potato as a kid and.........still don't but in those days, it was ''eat it Freddy'' or else:)

Well, my tastes have never really changed, but I do go through "phases" where I really like a particular genre and play it to death.

Changing is a sign of weakness, sticking to your guns no matter what is a sign of character and integrity. I enjoy whiskey, cigars and blow as much today as I did when I was 5, the trick is to plan ahead and pick hobbies you can grow with.

Consider the fact that we evolve with experience (well, some of us do :P) and that our taste buds gets more dull with our age I'm not surprised we tend to change something along the way, while some things stay the same, as part of out personality.

Games:
Me too, RPG's in general was something I never even considered in my early computer era, now it's my main entertainment and over-shadowing even FPS'. The pictures in the magazines was something I kinda liked and it showed games with really good graphics and art style, but the gameplay itself never enticed me (like ES:Arena, Ultima, or Balders Gate to name a few). The only exception was Fallout (as far as I can remember) but that was something that was highly recommended by PCGamer and a close friend, since I never would have gotten in to it otherwise.

Platformers for me is a dead genre today.

In those early days I got my first computer relatively late, but FPS', platformers, and RTS was my main genre, however, RTS isn't much fun nowadays either. Sims never been my thing for the most part, but management/building games has gotten a lot better.

I guess I got more patient to slower games than faster ones in these days.

Food:
Yes, sugary cereal and very salty food was a main thing, no matter what time it was. I've neither hypertension nor diabetes today but I'm more sensitive to both; sometimes it feels like my body just crashes.

Although I barely ate my vegetables when growing up (like most kids I guess), salads quickly became one of my favourite "junk food" as soon as I got around late-20's. Feta cheese was something I couldn't stand, now it's my main ingredient in a good salad. But I still absolutely hate tomato, everything in my body revolts when I eat it. And, since every single restaurant is having that nasty green grass that literally stings when you eat it (yes, even the name ruccola is revolting) on everything too, ordering salads/pizza out is out of the question. Well, I prefer to make my own, and it's much cheaper too.

Jalopeno is also something I've grown fond of, be it in pizza, taco, or kebab (even in salads sometimes)... and something I immediately regret the day after :D

Seafood, with the exception of some really tasty fishes (not raw), is still out of the question. My body even reacts to the smell and wants to puke. My grandparents told me "when you get a little older you're going to love it, I promise you". Yeah right! After living about 50% of my life I highly doubt there's still much hope :P.

Music:
I actually like everything (every genre and era) since I grew up with a big family and they all liked different things. but prefer mixes to join the old and the new, and also since modern music tend to have more energy in it. That has always been constant.

Didn't exactly listen much to rap by itself, but it was something that came naturally by listen to eurodance and early techno. The only genre I just can't stand today at all is modern rap; it's like earraping myself to some of the most un-musical sounds in the history. Even those satanic metal songs(?) are better for the ear.

Alcohol: Funny enough, I grew up without alcohol (as it should be). In my late teens and 20's I preferred mixing pure liqueur with different things (!). In my 30's I preferred wine. And now I mostly don't drink alcohol at all...

could not eat peppers ( as in the hot stuff ), drink cola or wear restricting clothes ( jeans for example )
this all changed at certain ages with pepper being the last major change

Used to love sweet things. Cider, binge on confectionary. These days I find ketchup to be sweet, bearable but I prefer mayonaisse on my fries/chips.

Eating more greens. Don't enjoy the taste but I'll go out of my way to eat that and skip fruit in the evenings.

Prefer wine over beer. Seems I might drink more spirits in the coming years.

With music, probably the most interesting thing is that as the years passed, I appreciate modern art music more than when I was younger; this includes the really strange stuff that's out there.

(By strange, I'm thinking of music that has strange harmonies that don't sound pleasant to the ear, as well as things like aleatoric music.)

Side note: Aleatoric music can be fun to play, though I probably wouldn't want to do a whole concert of such music. A little here and there can be a good change of pace. Of course, it can be difficult when you have to play out of tempo but still count in tempo, especially when the tempo isn't constant. You could tell me to watch the conductor, but that's a distraction from the playing which needs to not be in tempo. (Yes, I have been in this situation.)

Edit: Still not into compsers like Debussey or Philip Glass, however.

Music: I used to like the Doom soundtrack, now I don't. I never liked the Quake soundtrack, I still don't. I didn't like pop music growing up, now I enjoy listening to some "greatest hits from the 80s and 90s". Always loved rock (I was 5 and listening to punk and metal so yeah...).

Food: Did anyone liked beer growing up? I only started drinking beer when I was around 17 years old. Now wine I always liked.

Games: I used to like RTS games like Age of Empires but now I can't seem to enjoy them anymore. Granted, give me Age of Empires and I'll play it, and lose miserably agains the easiest CPU opponent, but I always liked and still do improving my civilization. Always liked rpgs like Baldur's Gate and Planescape Torment (Icewind Dale is my favorite though), but now I can't seem to find the time, energy and interest in playing those games because is "too much work" to learn the rules and such (like in Pillars of Eternity). When I was a kid I would look at games like FTL and claimed those were "crappy games" and the last 48hs I did nothing but play FTL (and lose miserably against the rebel flagship every single time).

So yes, tastes do change.

Also, I never cared for Fallout and yesterday I tried to play it because "I felt I had to" and was really excited until I saw how clunky everything is: walking and clicking around stuff requires a cursor change? The font is killing my eyes, I can't play like this... That's the inventory? Ok... it actually reminds me of CONSOLE rpgs... bye. It took me around an hour just to get to Shady Sands or whatever it was called, the first town on your way to Vault 15. The worst part is that I WANT to play it, I WANT to like it, and it just doesn't do it for me. I guess I can try Wasteland 2 (I'm not touching the first one, though I did see a let's play of it). The problem is my PC can't run that game so I have the ONLY option of playing it on Switch (more expensive, especially since I got it here for free when GOG gave it away, and it seems it's bugged to hell and back with crashes and not optimal interface... does anyone know if they fixed it after two years?).

Olives, for me, too.

In gaming my tastes haven't changed that much, except that I had very few interest in pure shooters back in the days, I knew Doom and Wolfenstein 3D from friends, but apart from that the genre didn't have much appeal to me and I even kind of disapproved of all the gratuituous violence and gun fetishism. Nowadays, I'm more relaxed (possibly also desensitised/dulled?) towards pixel massacres, and in the last decade I tried to catch up on several classics and new games in the genre. Mostly those with story-telling, open worlds, fast paced arcade-y gameplay and/or more adventurous settings, fantasy, horror, wild west etc., I still don't really enjoy playing as a soldier and simulating modern warfare.

In music my tastes haven't changed that much either, I'm just more open-minded now than I was as a teen.

The thing is, a typical console RPG won't require you to click and rely on pathfinding just to get around; rather, you use the control pad/stick to move your character directly with no need for pathfinding. One of the many issues I have with Baldur's Gate and its sequel is that the *only* way to move your characters is to click your mouse on the spot you want to move, then hope that the pathfinding does its job. What happened to just using the arrow keys to move, as you could back in Ultima 6 (and in most PC ports of console RPGs)?

Also, console RPGs don't involve cursor changes. The only mode change that happens just getting around is accessing the menu, and it's *very* obvious that you're in the menu. Granted, some older RPGs (like early Dragon Quest) make it necessary to access the menu just to do things like talk to people, open doors, and (in DQ1) even clime stairs, but that went away as controllers got more buttons (though even the GBC Dragon Quest ports have these improvements).


Funny thing is, the control/interface problems you mentioned mostly don't actually apply in the first games. Cursor changing? No cursor, so no need to worry. Need to walk around? No cursor, just use the arrow keys (and no pathfinding to worry about). Inventory? It's just a list, though there are limits on how many items a character can carry, so perhaps it is like early console RPGs.

(This is based on the classic version, as I haven't even seen the remaster played.)

When I said console rpg I was actually refering to the inventory being a list of stuff, and no grid and such. The other things are very well PC, that's for sure.

If you don't like the whole "clicking to move" (I prefer keyboard only games actually, like Duskers), then the console ports of Baldur's Gate and it's kin actually allow you to move the character with the stick and the rest of the party follows you in formation (the problem is clicking to change the cursor to "point" at the enemies in order to attack and inventory management... oh, and levelling up I guess can be a chore, too? And the price... So I never tried them myself, just talking about what I saw). Also, Neverwinter Nights allows you to move with the keyboard (or the stick on consoles).

EDIT: My problem with the first Wasteland is basically the graphics (seriously, I love retro graphics and even old games, but this game doesn't look old, it looks ugly) and some mechanics like inventory management with no graphical interface (limitations of the time, I know, but still, I can't stand it).

It doesn't help that some of that 'sugary junk' have become far less sugary over the years. Fruit Loops for example is but a pale imitation of what it once was. Dancing Queen on repeat for me atm (weirdly), and yes, Simon & Garfunkel's amazing.