I liked how Pokemon Gold/Siver/Crystal did it. Real time progressed and now we're re-visiting the world. I hated that Gen III was almost entirely unrelated, and sort of took place at the same time as Gen I instead (except not really because it's full of contradictions).
That said, I don't think you need to use real-time to determine how much time passes in-universe, but I like when events happening in-universe are considered to actually take time, and therefore characters age at an appropriate rate. It worked in Soul Calibur until 5. Sonic actually turned 20 in Generations. The trick is, don't do anything that fucks up the gameplay or gets rid of classic characters, like has been done in several fighting games.
Not vidya, but I mostly like how it's worked in the DC Universe. Time passes extremely slowly compared to real time, because most comics happen quickly. a story that takes six months of issues to come out is likely to take place in a single day. But over time, events still happen that mean time must be passing. An earlier example is when, by the mid-'80s, Green Arrow's sidekick had had a kid, meaning that Green Arrow was essentially a grandfather, so they started actually playing him as getting older. It became part of the story.
Around the same time, they did the possible-future Batman story, The Dark Knight Returns. When that story came out, Batman was on his second Robin. A few years ago, when Batman was on his fifth Robin, they realized a lot of time must have passed, so they started introducing characters from The Dark Knight Returns into regular continuity. Of course it's a different timeline, so it's not the same events, and Batman doesn't seem like an old man, presumably because of Lazarus Pits and time being rewritten and compressed four or five times, but they've essentially caught up to the point where Carrie Kelley and The Mutants show up.
Then after that they realized that both Batman and Superman have actual sons now, and back in the '50s there were future stories about "The Super Sons," the future sons of Batman and Superman. So they just made an actual Super Sons series, in actual continuity this time. It took almost 60 years, but they caught up to the future stories.
On the other hand, if you take this too far, things just get fucked. For example, everything is fucked by characters whose histories are tightly tied to World War II. By the '60s they tried to say they lived in an alternate universe and time was passing in real time. They were now middle aged. By the '80s they were elderly, but there were good stories to be told with that. By the '90s they needed to start explaining that magic and super science events had kept them relatively young. Then a few years ago they just straight up rebooted them as young versions back in their original alternate universe. But they're too popular so they're back again now and I guess it's back to saying magic has kept them relatively young (still elderly, but they should all be dead).
Other routes they've taken is saying that the first 15 years of continuity (until the mid-'50s) for characters who never got cancelled (big names like Superman and Batman) were actually in the same alt-universe as the WWII heroes. The original Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman continued to age in real time and eventually had stories where they died and stuff. But that left the post-'50s versions. Those versions had no "beginnings" because they only retroactively said earlier stuff was actually an alt-universe. So the alt-universe stuff is still canon except stuff that's specifically contradicted. By the mid-'80s it all got too complicated so they merged the universes and rebooted. Except they wanted to have their cake and eat it too, so the Superman "reboot" says that in modern day, Superman has been a public figure for 10 years, and all the past stories happened in those ten years, except for the ones that are explicitly contradicted by new stuff. Superman is the first superhero, so everyone else's continuity is mashed into those 10 years. Except for the WWII guys, who are now elderly and therefore existed before Superman, and the Superman who used to be from their universe, and old like them, never existed anymore. Except he did in heaven, but nobody remembered him until he died 20 years later. They then did similar "reboot" things at least four or five more times since then.
If you've got a really long running series, just keep it simple and don't worry about aging.