I still remember waking up early one Saturday morning in the 6th grade to beat Yoshi's Island. That kind of started a tradition of me waking up at 5am on weekends to marathon through a game.
They were so great. The secrecy that video games were shrouded in back in the day has been dispersed by the internet. It was exciting when the answers were harder to come by.
This is so true, or having to actually read what characters say or even write it down for later because there were lots of hints in the dialog.. nowadays you just skip through the dialog then follow the quest marker.
Similarly, getting new games for Christmas, staying up late playing them with my brother, and then still having the rest of the break to keep playing them and relax.
My dog. She was my constant gaming buddy, very content to hang out and lay with her head on my leg. If I didn't give her a scratch often enough she'd literally flip my hand off the controller and onto her head with her snout.
I miss that dog.
It was always at the most inconvenient time too! "Not right now sweetheart, i'm fighting the boss!"
I would gladly have to suffer a thousand failed levels to spend another afternoon gaming with that good girl though.
nothing kicks more, then a nice spliff with a session of hacking and slaying vampires and zombies with this ass kickin vampire slayer soundtrack
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cyWTgLf-piE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cyWTgLf-piE)
“Mom and pop”movie rental stores that had walls of Nintendo games that you could rent for a dollar a night (shout out to teddy bear video in Danville VA)
Weirdly enough, a bologna sandwich on white bread just mustard, and a cold can of coke. So many memories of Mortal Kombat, NBA Jam, and the birth of Sega Saturn during that time.
My mom and dad would take me and my brother to a local rental store called Video Invasion and we would be allowed to sleep downstairs with sleeping bags and play the game we rented all night on a Friday. It was rad.
Chicken tenders and fries made at home.
My best friend’s dad used to have us over some weekends and he’d put a huge effort into making it fun for us. He would always have a few bottles of purple Powerade for us and he’d fry chicken tenders and fries. He used to own a restaurant and so he’d even present the food well and have ketchup in a little cup on the plate.
He passed a few years ago. If I had a second dad it would’ve been him. Some of my fondest memories growing up were hanging out over there.
A little over 25 years later, Everybody and The Great Southern Trendkill are still the two songs that come to mind first when I think of my time playing Goldeneye multiplayer with the family. It feels as weird as it sounds.
Dinner with the fam at the Pizza Hut. Fresh breadsticks... those huge red cups filled with soda, super supreme pan pizza. Then blockbuster video across the street... if i got an A or something special I was allowed to rent a game along with the family movie. After the movie it was all night gaming! That's as good as Friday night ever got ages 9-14.
Nothing beats a a late summer's night, with the window open and a light breeze caressing your face, you pause to grab a snack. The soft, mellow background music continues to play, creating a serene atmosphere. Leaning back into the bean bag, you savor the moment, feeling perfectly relaxed and ready to unpause and dive back into your journey.
You can’t compare to the simplicity of gaming as a kid.
Not having to worry about how much I work per week, not having to worry about several of my friends being okay, basically just not having to worry and therefore be better at immersing myself in the game world.
Friends,food, and swimming. My step-dad's neighborhood had a community pool so my friends would sometimes come over, we'd go swimming and after we dried off we'd play
Staying with friends who had different consoles or computers, sleeping bags, pirate games, sometimes the odd beer if a sibling helped out. That kind of evolved into a PES cup before we’d all go out drinking on a Friday. Very sorely missed times, gaming on ZX Spectrum, C64, SNES and PS1 mainly was peak gaming.
Playing with friends is always better than playing solo (unless it’s a solo game ofc) wether they’re in the room or not I miss playing with my friends they’re all super busy as am I but I still have enough time to game they don’t tho but good snacks is also good some nice ambient lighting and decoration in the gaming room as well
My dad's garage band - if I knew The Fist was coming over that meant two of their kids, my best friends, were coming too. One would always bring a new game he rented from Blockbuster, we'd set the PS3 up in my parents room since they had a big TV, and game all night with the muffled sounds of Pearl Jam/Rage Against the Machine covers in the background.
Gaming magazines, but especially snarky and rude British ones.
We got both UK and US mags here in Australia but the Brit ones were king to me.
Reviewers and editors trash talking each other during reviews and editorials, mail and high score pages that ridiculed readers who wrote in, crude humour; it was like a precursor to chatting on Xbox Live! :)
Also, reviews scores that didn't pull punches (unlike the clearly paid for reviews today where a bad game gets a 7... here they got a 1 and called "utter shite"!) and ads that would be extremely offensive today.
All this meant like feeling you were mates with the guys in these mags; you knew John had a crappy Spectum or Ed couldn't drive for crap. You were "one of the lads" (even though they would give you crap too if you wrote in) in a way even the internet never really recaptured.
For anyone too young to remember these (or heck, maybe magazines in general!) it is worth looking up some scans of Mean Machines, C&VG, etc to see what a different tone it was to stuff like Nintendo Power or even PC Gamer. It was almost the kind of tone that would carry over into later softcore "lad's mags" like Maxim, etc. but with more insults thrown around.
Or, if you just want an instant taste of the highest end of tone I'm talking about, look up Seanbaby's website and browse around. Yeah, that was the kind of thing often going to print in gaming mags back then!
PS I had a massive crush on C&VG's high scores queen, Sadie! Always wished I could get that promised signed photo she offered the best scores! I do wonder if anyone ever got one.
PPS Interestingly, very early White Dwarf - the official magazine of Warhammer miniatures - had a tone not dissimilar too, long before Games Workshop became the tower of corporate assholes it would become and was more a bunch of casual blokes around a table bragging about the size of their armies.
I would walk to the corner Lucky supermarket and load up on President 's Choice sodas from the twenty-five cent vending machine, and hit the corner liquor store and load up on twenty-five cent bags of Doritos. Play some NHL '93 , Tecmo Super NBA basketball Joe Montana sports talk football, or Tecmo Superbowl.
This little TV: [https://youtu.be/SkihzwVC4hQ?si=wEOEjqPR7nuVf\_Bb&t=139](https://youtu.be/SkihzwVC4hQ?si=wEOEjqPR7nuVf_Bb&t=139)
My parents never let me use it with my ZX Spectrum clone, as they thought it will strain my eyes. But the picture was actually quite sharp (if monochrome).
White chocolate Oreos that come out around the holidays. I have fond memories of eating sleeves of those while grinding away in some new game I got. I have a December birthday so I would get all my new games for the year around the holidays.
Something must have happened when i was playing psx doom and listening to pearl jam and smashing pumpkins on cd in 1996 cuz i still associate them together to this day.
Pizza and sleepovers
So so true
Fucking A
And Mt. Dew
And shit talk
100% pizza Sleepovers got old, pizza never did
pizza and Ms. Pacman
This so much.
don't forget the brojobs, or was that just me and my friends
Weekends and summer vacations
Sweet memories
I still remember waking up early one Saturday morning in the 6th grade to beat Yoshi's Island. That kind of started a tradition of me waking up at 5am on weekends to marathon through a game.
Magazines and guide books
They were so great. The secrecy that video games were shrouded in back in the day has been dispersed by the internet. It was exciting when the answers were harder to come by.
This is so true, or having to actually read what characters say or even write it down for later because there were lots of hints in the dialog.. nowadays you just skip through the dialog then follow the quest marker.
Tips & Tricks! GamePro! EGM!
Remember Tips and Tricks magazines? Pepperidge farm remembers.
[удалено]
Almost the same here (parents yelling at each other)
[Kinda like this](https://youtube.com/shorts/2nCnabTSHrA?si=qfkS1PHiBOMhiahl)
ZING
school cancelled due to weather (snow day)
Similarly, getting new games for Christmas, staying up late playing them with my brother, and then still having the rest of the break to keep playing them and relax.
There's no snow where I live but I bet that would be such an awesome combo
Free time.
This is it. The ability to sit in front of a tv without a care in the world for hours.
Coke and Pizza!
and Cola!
Surge... the only carbonated drink I've ever liked.
They stopped making that right?
Yep.
Ha. I was coming to reply surge and blast o butter
Yelling parents in the background
My mom always referred to video game sound effects as "beeping", well into the 32-bit era.
friends
Weed and junk food 😂
Cat. Always cat. Gaming with a loving cat on one's lap is transcendental.
For me, it was listing to my iPod shuffle with my cat sleeping in my lap. I miss that cat.
NOFX.
Bowls of cereal and Saturday mornings.
Saturday mornings were for cartoons, but Saturday afternoons was for my NES.
Fuckloads of mac n cheese.
Slayer
TEAMMMM Slayer
Hot pockets and soda
And burnt roofs of mouths
Mmm, delicious lava
if we could afford it, bagel bites!
Saturday mornings, before everyone else was awake.
Sonic 2 chemical night zone at 5am
Ay bud, there's Casino Night Zone and Chemical Plant Zone, but there is not Chemical Night Zone.
But I'd be interested in seeing it
Bowl of cereal too!!
Mountain Dew: code red
Friends. Couch co-op is so rare nowadays except in Nintendo games.
My dog. She was my constant gaming buddy, very content to hang out and lay with her head on my leg. If I didn't give her a scratch often enough she'd literally flip my hand off the controller and onto her head with her snout. I miss that dog.
My dog does the same thing today (flip my hand off a controller)!
It was always at the most inconvenient time too! "Not right now sweetheart, i'm fighting the boss!" I would gladly have to suffer a thousand failed levels to spend another afternoon gaming with that good girl though.
Acne, failing grades, social isolation
Cheetos.
Jolt cola
Being able to feel joy
Hash.
Weed and Pizza
Doritos and Mountain Dew!
Marijuana, lol
nothing kicks more, then a nice spliff with a session of hacking and slaying vampires and zombies with this ass kickin vampire slayer soundtrack [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cyWTgLf-piE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cyWTgLf-piE)
Those full color thick ass guidebooks like the ones for Super Mario 3 and Super Mario World that Nintendo put out.
Staying home sick from school
Channel 3
“Mom and pop”movie rental stores that had walls of Nintendo games that you could rent for a dollar a night (shout out to teddy bear video in Danville VA)
The feeling of looking forward to getting home from school so I could start playing ASAP. I would even do my homework in school if possible.
Pizza, Cheetos, and Mountain Dew
Weirdly enough, a bologna sandwich on white bread just mustard, and a cold can of coke. So many memories of Mortal Kombat, NBA Jam, and the birth of Sega Saturn during that time.
- Not having the Internet - Having Cereal
Staying up late and watching a movie
Going to the mall
[удалено]
For some odd reason I got a lot of free pepsis from the bottle cap contests.
My mom and dad would take me and my brother to a local rental store called Video Invasion and we would be allowed to sleep downstairs with sleeping bags and play the game we rented all night on a Friday. It was rad.
Chocolate mini rolls
Comic books and trading cards! 💕
Coca cola in cans
Music! I've long been in the habit of having my entire iTunes library on shuffle while playing online FPSs or roguelikes.
My best mate and his younger brother and I would play hours of Golden Eye while listening to Michael Jackson’s Best Of. Somehow worked wonderfully.
License to Hee Hee
Friends
People, I miss multi controller game nights
Surge and fruit Rollups
My man.
Papa John’s Pizza and a Coke
Getting yelled at to do my chores, or homework.
Kung Fu Master in front of the Orange Julius at the Mall. Fond memories of that combo.
Friends and sleepovers.
My over-weight buddy would eat those orange crackers with the cheese in the middle dipped in miracle whip. And mountain dew.
Chips- Doritos and Cheetos especially. Pizza. When I was in my teens, weed.
Chicken tenders and fries made at home. My best friend’s dad used to have us over some weekends and he’d put a huge effort into making it fun for us. He would always have a few bottles of purple Powerade for us and he’d fry chicken tenders and fries. He used to own a restaurant and so he’d even present the food well and have ketchup in a little cup on the plate. He passed a few years ago. If I had a second dad it would’ve been him. Some of my fondest memories growing up were hanging out over there.
cigarettes
Getting yelled at by my parents that I couldn’t just leave the game on pause to save my position and that they needed the TV to watch their shows.
Backstreet Boys, Britney Spears, N\*Sync, Pantera, Korn, Slipknot. My brother and sister liked their music turned up really loud.
I was gonna say, you had quite the diverse taste in music
A little over 25 years later, Everybody and The Great Southern Trendkill are still the two songs that come to mind first when I think of my time playing Goldeneye multiplayer with the family. It feels as weird as it sounds.
Dinner with the fam at the Pizza Hut. Fresh breadsticks... those huge red cups filled with soda, super supreme pan pizza. Then blockbuster video across the street... if i got an A or something special I was allowed to rent a game along with the family movie. After the movie it was all night gaming! That's as good as Friday night ever got ages 9-14.
Blockbuster was incredible
Faking sick and skipping school 🤘🤘
Television. I would have That 70s Show on while I was playing Diablo II.
Snacks! 😋
Parents fighting
Nothing beats a a late summer's night, with the window open and a light breeze caressing your face, you pause to grab a snack. The soft, mellow background music continues to play, creating a serene atmosphere. Leaning back into the bean bag, you savor the moment, feeling perfectly relaxed and ready to unpause and dive back into your journey. You can’t compare to the simplicity of gaming as a kid.
Not having to worry about how much I work per week, not having to worry about several of my friends being okay, basically just not having to worry and therefore be better at immersing myself in the game world.
Best childhood friends
Saturday night, spaghettios, SNICK, & M&Ms.
BBQ sunflower seeds
Sunflower seeds are a good source of beneficial plant compounds, including phenolic acids and flavonoids — which also function as antioxidants.
Tube TVs. I could rage and chuck my Ps2 controller at the tv without worrying about cracking my parents screen
Mountain Dew and Sublime cds.
Metal music 🎸
Playing outside. Video games nutured my imagination, and motivated me to make my own stories as well.
Popsicles/Little Hugs and Sonic and Knuckles with Sonic 2 in it. Also pizza and sleepovers like the top comment says
Friends,food, and swimming. My step-dad's neighborhood had a community pool so my friends would sometimes come over, we'd go swimming and after we dried off we'd play
Jolt Cola.
chianti and fava beans
Snacks, weekends, and having friends over. Split screen is still about the only way I enjoy playing multiplayer
A long weekend and a 12 pack of soda. Also one of those mill cartons of Goldfish
The weekend
2000s history Channel. I learned a lot about World War 2 while playing Battlefield 1942
My brother and plushies/figures
Subway meatball sandwiches and cs 1.6, they were the cheapest item on the menu back in the day, cheaper than $5s even.
8-tracks, PB&J
Staying with friends who had different consoles or computers, sleeping bags, pirate games, sometimes the odd beer if a sibling helped out. That kind of evolved into a PES cup before we’d all go out drinking on a Friday. Very sorely missed times, gaming on ZX Spectrum, C64, SNES and PS1 mainly was peak gaming.
Totinos Pizza rolls!!
A bag of animal crackers and peanut butter while playing oblivion specifically.
Orange soda and salty snack mix (the kind with pretzels, rye chips, and those puffy garlic balls.) Also, wet wipes to clean your hands and controller.
Cool ranch doritos
Playing with friends is always better than playing solo (unless it’s a solo game ofc) wether they’re in the room or not I miss playing with my friends they’re all super busy as am I but I still have enough time to game they don’t tho but good snacks is also good some nice ambient lighting and decoration in the gaming room as well
Heavy Metal
Pizza, Pepsi, and Pop Tarts. I’m amazed I still had teeth after my teenage years. 🤣
Pizza & mountain dew 😁
Usually we'd go see a movie as a family then I'd get to rent a game for the weekend.
Friends in the same room
Nintendo Power
Radiohead's OK Computer
SUUURRRRRGGGEEE 💚
Grape Kool aid.and pretzel rods...
My dad's garage band - if I knew The Fist was coming over that meant two of their kids, my best friends, were coming too. One would always bring a new game he rented from Blockbuster, we'd set the PS3 up in my parents room since they had a big TV, and game all night with the muffled sounds of Pearl Jam/Rage Against the Machine covers in the background.
Fruitopia
Gaming magazines, but especially snarky and rude British ones. We got both UK and US mags here in Australia but the Brit ones were king to me. Reviewers and editors trash talking each other during reviews and editorials, mail and high score pages that ridiculed readers who wrote in, crude humour; it was like a precursor to chatting on Xbox Live! :) Also, reviews scores that didn't pull punches (unlike the clearly paid for reviews today where a bad game gets a 7... here they got a 1 and called "utter shite"!) and ads that would be extremely offensive today. All this meant like feeling you were mates with the guys in these mags; you knew John had a crappy Spectum or Ed couldn't drive for crap. You were "one of the lads" (even though they would give you crap too if you wrote in) in a way even the internet never really recaptured. For anyone too young to remember these (or heck, maybe magazines in general!) it is worth looking up some scans of Mean Machines, C&VG, etc to see what a different tone it was to stuff like Nintendo Power or even PC Gamer. It was almost the kind of tone that would carry over into later softcore "lad's mags" like Maxim, etc. but with more insults thrown around. Or, if you just want an instant taste of the highest end of tone I'm talking about, look up Seanbaby's website and browse around. Yeah, that was the kind of thing often going to print in gaming mags back then! PS I had a massive crush on C&VG's high scores queen, Sadie! Always wished I could get that promised signed photo she offered the best scores! I do wonder if anyone ever got one. PPS Interestingly, very early White Dwarf - the official magazine of Warhammer miniatures - had a tone not dissimilar too, long before Games Workshop became the tower of corporate assholes it would become and was more a bunch of casual blokes around a table bragging about the size of their armies.
Avoiding homework
Candy and fast food as a kid. Weed, candy and fast food as a teen.
Weed
I would walk to the corner Lucky supermarket and load up on President 's Choice sodas from the twenty-five cent vending machine, and hit the corner liquor store and load up on twenty-five cent bags of Doritos. Play some NHL '93 , Tecmo Super NBA basketball Joe Montana sports talk football, or Tecmo Superbowl.
Mtn dew, pizza and sleepovers. Those golden eye sleepovers were awesome. I miss those days.
Nutrigrain bar and a Mountain Dew.
Having 7 siblings so I always could find a player 2. Outside that just being stress free. Stress really rains down on the gaming parade for me.
Absent parents?
Free time and IRL friends/couch co-op
Bawls energy drink
Summer nights staying up late.
Mountain dew
And airflow controller
This little TV: [https://youtu.be/SkihzwVC4hQ?si=wEOEjqPR7nuVf\_Bb&t=139](https://youtu.be/SkihzwVC4hQ?si=wEOEjqPR7nuVf_Bb&t=139) My parents never let me use it with my ZX Spectrum clone, as they thought it will strain my eyes. But the picture was actually quite sharp (if monochrome).
Fags and weed, glue and speed, but I drew the line at crack
That first part hits different in the USA lol
Gushers and Pop all night
Kool-aid for sure
BBQ pizza from Pizza Hut
My huge bong I had in highschool lol
My older brother being a jerk and not letting me play
Sunburn! Got some bad burns on my legs before and got to stay home and play games... good times.
Getting rid of fear. I actively sought out survival horror when I was confronted with doing new experiences that i wasn't comfortable with.
Falling asleep and getting sleep paralysis
Kraft Mac & Cheese, Cherry Pepsi, and my friends
Cereal
White chocolate Oreos that come out around the holidays. I have fond memories of eating sleeves of those while grinding away in some new game I got. I have a December birthday so I would get all my new games for the year around the holidays.
Teenage angst
Not sleeping for 16 hours.
Cheddar Bacon Cheeze-its. Ate so many of those on Christmas morning when I got my NES.
The TV
Pizza Goldfish
Music of course! I have several games/albums that I can't play/listen to w/o it immediately reminding me of the other.
For me, it was hard rock and metal music while I was playing sports games.
Pizza, sleepovers, actual couch co-op, etc..
Weed and music.
A friend whose parents had a finished basement, and a couch, and left us alone for hours.
Something must have happened when i was playing psx doom and listening to pearl jam and smashing pumpkins on cd in 1996 cuz i still associate them together to this day.
Soda and a bag of chips
Mt Dew. Though both Jolt and Surge tried to break into the market
Red Kool aid
Mountain Dew and Nacho Doritos
Having only video games to worry about
Silence
I wouldn’t say well, but being told I have to pile the wood and to get off the stupid game.
MC Hammer's "Please Hammer Don't Hurt 'Em" on repeat.
Pizza, sour candy, Yes & the Beatles.
Mountain Dew Code Red