Some of my fondest memories involve sitting around a gameboy with a friend and a sibling, trying to beat Super Mario Land. It had no saves, and in the past we had been thwarted by the daily power outages and the fiddly power connector kept in place with a match (no batteries). We also did this with various NES games, which at least made it easier for everyone else to see the screen.

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!)