I missed Ocarina of Time the first time around. I only played it all the way through when it hit 3DS. Same story with Wind Waker on Wii U. When I was younger I didn't care too much for the 3D Zelda games for some reason.
I've got a pretty good idea how. My parents weren't well off, we didn't really do any odd jobs to earn money, and we had no Internet. We found out about games through cover art and game descriptions at rental stores, and the one-off magazines we would get. We mostly got games for our birthday, and Xmas only. There was no dedicated game store in the area back then, and there was just no way we could have played all of the "classics". Plus games were just one part of being a kid, it wasn't everything that I did.