enigmatic puzzle - I am Blind to Life - A strange riddle

I've always been fond of somewhat mysterious puzzles after I participated in a puzzlehunt years ago. Anyway, here is my shot at making one. Feedback is welcome!

---

On the front of the paper, there are a series of questions in the form of a riddle:

Question 1. I am blind to Life.

Question 2. I leave the dead in my wake.

Question 3. I have lived for many generations.

Question 4. None shall come before me.

Question 5. What am I?

And on the back, there is a note from the author at the beginning, followed by a series of responses to the questions on the front.

Dear Puzzler, I’ve encoded the responses below using the 1969 ASCII standard. You can't solve the riddles without them. Here’s a small example:

,Z

I can’t see much at all, so I had my friend help transcribe this puzzle and arrange the encoded responses nicely into a grid for me. Have fun, and remember, in the end it’s just a game...

PS: Oh, by the way, the answer is an acronym.

---

Blind to Life

Response 1:

     ''    9@B
7    K <   < '   G
     2'B    @A

Response 2:

I?  -' I?
 I "A@  I

Response 3:

+"-'

Response 4:

_&1&72
HHZOEA
!!S[&B
CEBEG

Response 5: Take the first of the name of the type of each of the others.

What am I?

---

Edit: Sorry for taking so long, but after looking at some of the responses (which are quite far off) I ran it through with a friend. I probably made it too unclear as to what to do (probably should have done that first urgh. I’ve edited the puzzle to give more direction. Don't kill me, thanks for trying though >_<

Hint 1:

"Take the first of the name of the type of each of the others" means that you are looking for the name of the category that each pattern belongs to, not necessarily the name of the pattern itself.

Hint 2:

I understand that is difficult/impossible to search for these patterns directly. Therefore, it is designed so that the name of the category associated with the pattern also answers the corresponding question.

Hint 3:

All four answers may be found on the front page of this website. The last one isn't in the obvious place to look...