>>52699055Hardly anyone had trading cables, and if they did it was because they convinced their parents to buy some third party peripherals that did the same thing. Most kids in the US in the '90s were only getting stuff like that around the holidays and birthdays, so I would have to wait like a full 6 months before my mom would actually pick the damn things up and then let me actually open them. But yes, most of our playtime was after school when we would go to each other's houses or play on the bus. You prepared for those moments because they were so infrequent. And sometimes the kids you were trying to trade or battle with didn't really know anything, so you had to convince them there was a reason why you needed that Sandshrew or why they had to send back that Machamp. It was the same for pretty much every multiplayer game that had those sort of features. Even games like Four Swords or the Chao breeding in Sonic Adventure were such a chore because you didn't always have the tools, the people, or the will to convince them to help. It's a wonder kids today would even understand the struggle considering how prolific wireless connections are and also how open-minded adults have become about kids bringing along gaming consoles. For fuck's sake, we would have the school-wide assemblies explaining the dangers of playing video games. Now I'm a teacher myself and we host goddamn gaming tournaments and have several gaming clubs. It is extremely common now for some of the students to just pull out their switch in the cafeteria or in a study hall and try to get people together to play. That's one of the biggest things that bugs me about growing up when I did and now being an old bastard. We got bullied and adults kept trying to "reform" us. Now that shit is celebrated. It's right next to geek culture becoming mainstream and attractive girls getting into geek culture as one of the things that annoys me about now versus then.
>t. Elder millennial who bought Red on release 