Growing up my brother and I played a ton of Mario on NES and then SNES. For us doing the multiplayer thing, largely co-op, was just normal. I took a lot of it for granted in those days. Really only started to appreciate it when games like Secret of Mana allowed us to play co-op.
Secret of Mana was a big one. First RPG where co-op was more than just "you control these two in a fight I will do the rest" like it was in the SNES FF games. Mario Kart on SNES was a blast too.
N64 is where things of course got real good for us for multiplayer. 4 player Mario Kart 64 was a staple. I remember one game of Wrestlemania 2000 with my brother and two friends where one friend was so mad that he was losing he proclaimed "If I get hit with one more of those stupid fucking firedrivers I am leaving and not coming back!" Of course the three of us that weren't so pissed off promptly proceeded to just take turns hitting his character with the fire thunder driver move and he stormed out all pissed. Other games like Killer Instinct Gold and Goldeneye were always great too.
PS1 we had a lot of fun with Dragonball GT. My brother decided he would max out his crouching quick jab. Sonofabitch took off full health bars with that move.
Xbox with the original Halo was a great time. 4 player split screen on a 20ish inch crt screen in my bedroom was awful, but yet oh so much magical fun anyway.
Later I would be big into Dark Age of Camelot, and even set up a few additional PCs in my bedroom so my friends could play in the same room when they were over. I still count it as we were in the same room despite it being a server-based game.
My brother joined the military shortly after high school and thus he hasn't lived local in the past 10 years. Whenever he comes home to visit though we have friends over and play Smash or SM3DW on Wii U. On his most recent visit we finally finished our "perfect" run through on SM3DW, hit the top of the pole with every character, got every start and every stamp, and never used the Golden Tanooki suits. That was a 3 year project and worth every hour put into it.
