And then there were the arcades. My friend was a local celebrity and so good that some arcades had banned him, or set his favorite games to 'super difficult'. When he played, a crowd would watch, whether it was Dinosaurs VS Cadillacs, TMNT: Manhattan Project, or Street Fighter. Sometimes some clueless new guy would challenge him in the latter, and a significant portion of the arcade users would notice and come see the beatdown.
Sometimes we'd go to a new part of town because they had fancy new games, or because they hadn't banned him yet. We'd play co-op games, and he'd help me stay alive as long as possible.
I haven't thought about this in a long time, but this kind of social gaming was central to my youth, now that I think about it.
(and that's not even getting into the 90s/00s LAN parties!)
Yup. I have fond memories of multiplayer mario kart or goldeneye, or cooperative games e.g. coop Secret of Mana / Seiken Densetsu 2.
> I expect there's much more pressure for a social group to all have the same console now due to the the prevalence of online multiplayer.
So do I, but Nintendo seems to have kept the flame alive, local multiplayer mario kart works fine on the Switch, and the game is playable with solo joy-cons, so a pair of full-size controllers is enough for 4 players (once you find out how to configure the bloody thing).
I got Mario Kart 8 for Switch and we tried playing it on one large shared TV screen.
We immediately ran into the problem that it's incredibly difficult to see the track on the split screen. Seems like local multiplayer only works well when everyone involved has memorized all the tracks.
But those were the days of splitscreen local multiplayer games. I expect there's much more pressure for a social group to all have the same console now due to the the prevalence of online multiplayer.