I was born in 83 and I feel humbled to have seen how video games have changed from the NES days to what we have now. When Nintendo and Sega were competing it would be frustrating because the same video game title would not look the same. Aladdin is a popular example of how on the SNES and Sega Genesis they looked drastically different. It always blows my mind when someone will complain about the graphics of a current video game and to me it's like "you think that's bad, look at what I grew up with".
I even grew up playing some of the obscure Apple II games like Lemonade Stand, Odell Lake, Word Muncher, Mario Teaches Typing, and of course the popular Oregon Trail.
Sometimes Nintendo magazine would publish walkthroughs of games and would have the entire levels or maps layed out screen-by-screen or there was a hotline to call that charged money to use.