In all fairness, by the colony's fourth year (given enough animals), multi-GHz machines with GBs of memory start groaning.

I need to convince pg that an open source Dwarf Fortress implementation is worth funding. Either that, or figure out how to build a cryptocurrency around it so that all of those Bitcoin miners can help simulate my fortress when its deflationary period starts.

Just pay them bitcoins to simulate your dwarves and your fortresses.

OK, but you could do iPad-style games. All you need is a cool input device. I'm thinking a webcam, and gloves with a specific bandwidth of color. Though the image processing might be too much.

Maybe for the input device just attach it to a big multitouch screen. Toss in a battery, wifi (maybe 3G?), ~32GB of flash memory. Then people could use one portable device and developers could write games and publish them to a central store for only ~1-5USD a piece.