Struggled a bit with the title there. What I mean to talk about are games or a series of games where the player character is the same, and the time spent and events that have shaped them are significant enough to confidently say you've basically played through their lifetime. Examples below:

Wing Commander I, II, III, and IV feature the same main character, Christopher Blair. We play the entire career of that character. In the first game he’s an unproven rookie, in II he’s a veteran, in III he’s a hero, and in IV he’s a living legend.

On the other side of the coin there’s games like Fable TLC where the passage of time is simulated and attached to actions like questing. The player can acquire scars, get married, travel across Albion, and grow old. ‘Pirates!’ has a similar feel. In Hero Generations age is a timer at the edge of the screen always counting down until the torch is passed to the hero’s child. In MDickie’s Wrestling Mpire 2008, you can play a wrestler from youth to old age, and their stats change to reflect the stage of their life.

In the Saint's Row series you built/rebuild a gang (SR1+2) become a superstar (SR3) and even president of the United States (SR4).

In the Ultima series (U4+) the avatar doesn't age, but since time on earth flows differently than in Britannia, you can see the companions age between the games.

There's this old DOS game called Alter Ego which is basically a life simulator where you make decisions. Get married or don't, be moral or amoral, return money you found or keep it... that kind of thing.

It's been a long time, but I remember it being entertaining. I seem to remember dying during an old-person softball game, or something like that.

Crusader Kings. Especially considering you actually play out the lives of an entire family over hundreds of years.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZkpyZws4bJ8

Interesting, in that theme I also recall the educational life simulator ‘Real Lives’ released many years ago which involves playing a randomly generated person anywhere in the world and dealing with the difficulties in various countries from societal issues to natural disasters. The trial version was probably bundled on the CD of a PC gaming magazine.

Rogue Legacy?

Sims

The Duke Nukem series and The Guild.

I remember that in Sid Meier's Pirates! you started off as a young lad and by the end when you finally find your family/kill the bad guy you can be much older and more wrinkly.

Another good one is Fallout 3. There you play as a baby, then a teenager, and then a young adult when you step outside of the vault.

Its from 1986, and you can play it online: https://www.playalterego.com/

Each character comes fully grown, and we only get to play the moment of their horrific sticky demise. The Guild makes sense, but Duke Nukem? Would love to hear an explanation for that one. I'm a little sad it’s been dropped for Fallout 4 and we’re seemingly playing someone who has had a life’s worth of choices. Its difficult to scrape together the exact details yet, but from what I can gather you have to start married, and with a kid.

Well obviously you start out as a regular dude and by the time you get to DNF you're signing autographs and you're a huge hero.

In Darklands, you create your characters by choosing a career path for them, always in five year increments, meaning you're able to create very skilled characters right at the beginning, at the cost of them being much older, which is detrimental to their various stats.
The characters also age in-game and can eventually die from natural causes.

If I remember correctly, Might & Magic VI also has in-game aging.

The Quest for Glory series would probably fit into the same category as Wing Commander, as you start out as a nobody and slowly become a renowned and seasoned hero all over the world.

At least parts of the King's Quest series might count as well: King's Quest 1 is about the young knight Graham ascending to the throne of Daventry, KQ 2 shows him as a king, finding and eventually marrying the love of his life and in KQ 5, he's a much older man, going on one last adventure to save his family.

The Harvest Moon make use of such a concept as well, some more explicitly than others. Harvest Moon: A Wonderful Life/Another Wonderful Life in particular has you play almost the entire life of the main character, right up until the day he/she dies.

Isn't regular dude to hero every story ever told? It doesn't necessarily denote a lifetime’s worth of experiences. My Wing Commander example also mentioned Blair’s rising celebrity status, but there has to be more to it than that. We see him age both physically and mentally, and feel the weight of his experiences having gone through them. The very first scene of WC IV is in a depressing bar with Blair nursing a drink and trying to cope with the fact that his friends are gone and there are no more dragons to slay.

Contract J.A.C.K.
Even the game is dead.