this post was submitted on 28 Dec 2025
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The only thing on TV after school was Sesame Street, and sitcom reruns. So, if it was warm, we went outside and played. Yes, really.
Some kids had game consoles, but not everyone. And, the games weren't that great, so most of us weren't playing for hours. We did a lot of other things, too.
We went to play with kids who had game consoles
1984?
You can only play so much Pong...
In 1984 we had on console Pac Man, Donkey Kong, Space Invaders, Frogger, Super Mario Bros (Famicom), Jet Set Willy, Elite (Amiga), The Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy, Kings Quest 1, and Pitfall 2, just to name a few of the many classic titles we had access to.
The Amiga didn't come out until 1985.
Might not have been for Amiga exclusively then. I was only familiar with Elite on the Amiga.
Interesting how experiences differ...
In our village there was exactly one guy who had an Atari console.
It had Pong and some super-simple shooter with a light gun, that was all.
Only got it because his dad acquired it cheaply from a friend.
We all tried it, had fun for a few hours, but concluded that it was not worth the effort (and the pricetag...)
Took another three or four years for gaming to finally become a thing when CPCs and C64s started appearing everywhere.
Oh, that wasn't just my collection. That was the entire family's, plus like 5 other kids family's collections. Admittedly, the smallest town I've lived in had a population of ≈20,000 people.
That's ~factor 20 to my somewhat rural home town.
Might explain the difference!
First time I visited a store selling computer games in the big city we drove to twice a year was in 1990, first visit of a video game arcade was in 1992 when attending senior high in that same city...
Outside? Like where kidnappers live? No thanks, I’d rather protect my children by absolutely minimizing their in-person social interactions and exposing them to as much corporate media as possible
GI Joe. And transformers. And silver spoons. And a ton of other stupid shit I would watch in the 80s after school, instead of doing my homework and then getting in trouble because my homework wasn’t done.
I suppose now kids do TikTok and YouTube? Though consoles are still a thing.
I think the thing a lot of people miss when doing these comparisons is at least back then, there were people regulating what could be shown to kids. Remember the old "hey kids tell your parents you want the GI Joe with King Fu grip!" and then that was disallowed?
The problem with YouTube and the like is you have to actively monitor literally everything they watch because every single video is a gamble. They used to say cartoons will rot kids brains, but these days a lot of what kids watch are literally brain rot.
My mom didn't have to worry about a random OF creator making cartoons to try and thirst trap her 9 y/o son. Or Voltron literally trying to groom them.