Actually, that clause was added about a year ago - in response to Joel's lament. At the time, the purpose of Too Localized was fairly widely misunderstood - I must confess, I rarely used it at all, and probably never used it properly.
The real problem here is simply over-zealous closing. I've noticed this elsewhere, including right here on MSO: folks voting to close as "Too Localized" when a particular question doesn't interest them!
This is wrong.
That said, the example you cite on Gaming is rather unfortunate: it certainly does appear to be relevant to a specific moment in time, and unless time travel becomes wildly popular in the near future, not very many people playing Ultima on Sept. 24 of 1997 will be able to make use of the answers there. Now, it's certainly possible the asker had a valid reason for asking that question, even one that might be shared by other users - I recently came across a similar one on Web Apps that served to resolve a discussion in chat...
...But since no rationale was provided, we're left with the impression that this is nothing more than idle curiosity. That's not necessarily an invalid reason to ask or answer something, but it's not a particularly good one either, and if your curiosity isn't shared by those reading and moderating the question, it may well appear to be Too Localized.
It's unfortunate that, among those reading, answering, and discussing that question, no one had the sense to spend 30 seconds editing it.
Nevertheless, if you have a concrete suggestion for how the wording of that close description could be clarified, feel free to post it...
###Regarding your examples
Gaming...
...gaming seems like a site that should probably either discourage the use of Too Localized entirely, or reserve it purely for questions of the form, "What have I got in my [avatar's] pocket?"
... on Programmers.SE:
The discussions you cite both predate the current wording.
Programmers actually has quite a few localized questions, and I would've expected to see more examples since - like Gaming - the subject matter tends toward the personal and temporary. For instance...
...on Meta Stack Overflow:
MSO generally knows which way the wind is blowing WRT "Too Localized". Except when it comes to closing questions on MSO.
I'd actually encourage the use of Too Localized for "what's wrong with my code" questions on SO that make no effort to actually explain what they're doing and how it's failing - these tend to be the definition of "unlikely to ever help any future visitors" since you simply can't find them*.
*The trick is to search for "C# P0rblum"
