I remember updating my autoexec.bat as a preteen but I wouldn't call it ludicrous hacking. I don't remember where I got the instructions from but I think they were just in the readmes or error messages of games, no internet required.

It pales into insignificance compared to what I have to do to keep a desktop Linux box behaving normally today. Every few weeks I'm having to paste a wodge of lines into a range of config files to fix whatever driver oddity or system resource issue has caused something to break this time. That is pretty unimaginable without the internet.