For some reference, I was born in 1989, so I would've been 10 years old at the end of the 90's, and I didn't pay any attention to what other people were buying, but here is my take from what little I remember...
In the 90's, I don't remember video games being anywhere near as mainstream as what they are today. The people playing video games were mostly male, they were children or people in their upper teens to mid-30s. It really seemed like it would've been unusual for someone in their 40's to be a gamer back then. The graphics were pretty rudimentary back then, maybe too rudimentary for the average person. It really did seem like most games were predominantly aimed at the youth demographic. There weren't any God of Wars or Grand Theft Auto Vs or anything that resembled real life violence- yeah Doom and Mortal Kombat but they looked like cartoons. It seemed like PC games always were a little more adult-focused than console and handheld titles
Was collecting video games even really a thing back then I mean how many people went "ooh that game is obscure, I should buy that" I was too young to care about rarity.
The other thing I want to say is that it seemed like there weren't as many options for games back then. These days we are bombarded with thousands of mobile games, console, handheld, PC games that one can hardly keep up.
On the schoolyard most my friends had an N64, some had a PS1, almost everyone had played the NES. Turok was popular, Cruisn' USA, Mario obviously. I am too young to remember the heyday of arcades.
What are your thoughts? I'd like to hear from people who are older than me and remember what I view as the Golden Age of video games better than I can.