Early 80s Atari/Magnavox Odyessey2 at home and Arcade machines everywhere. Hours spent in front of the living room television playing games with the whole family. Using butter knives to attach the RF switch box to a little 8" B&W TV in the kitchen. Begging and borrowing quarters every time I passed an arcade machine which could be anywhere from a full fledged arcade to a diner, convenience store or even somewhere mundane like a dry cleaner or tire store, they were virtually as plentiful as slot machines in Vegas. Cartoons of popular games on TV, songs about them on the radio, if you were not there I doubt you can conceive the impact video games had on popular culture 1978 to about 1984.
Runner up would be the late 80s/early 90s when I had my NES and my friends and I traded games, rented games, and can neither confirm or deny copying a floppy or two. This period was fun but I got my NES shortly before the SNES came along and ruined the fun. I had my Atari for a decade before getting the NES, no way I could replace it a mere 2 years later, Nintendo must have thought we were made of money or something. I ditched consoles for several years after this, besides that I had a PC and access to BBSs by then so who needed Nintendo? I eventually got over it but that soured me on console gaming for a long time and is what makes the NES era less nostalgic than it should be.
