Very long post ahead.
When I was 5 to 10, 1998-2003, it was the end of the PS1 gen and the start/mid of the PS2, but I was playing a lot of different systems.
In 1998 my father's friend son and then my first friend had just showed me his father PC and we played Prince of Persia on it, which we really didn't have a clue how to play properly and I actually disliked it, even as I was completely in awe with it as the first video game I've ever seen in my life. I didn't even know these things existed before that. He moved away really soon in 1999 tho.
Around mid 1999 when I had turned 6, my dad got us a Sega Master System (NES gen). My cousin was our neighbour and he had a Mega Drive. I played a lot of Sonic 1, Fantasy Zone 2, Super Monaco GP 2 and Afterburner on my console, and Sonic 1 and 2, Streets of Rage 1 and 2 and some other games on my cousin.
I had several close neighbours right around my age too, my now then best friend had a SNES, his house was where I played the most after my home. His mother would not let he play in the street with us, so he would basically always stay home. I played Mario Kart, Mario World, Battletoads (SNES), Goof Troop, Magical Quest 3 and some other games on his SNES. He also had a PC where we played some games like Sim City, Age of Empires 2, Gunbound, Counter Strike and some stuff but we used to go to lanhouses in groups here and there for games like Gunbound and Counter Strike.
Other kids also had the Master System, SNES and N64s, but I would rarely play their games, just the other Master System kid because we swapped carts so we could play more games. I really envied his blue label Castle of Illusion (Mickey Mouse game) because Master System used red label for games and his blue one felt special, but the game was excellent too! Remember, PCs and the internet was not really popular in Brazil by this time, too expensive, there was just a few TV channels that would still take a while to start having videogame related shows, and nobody had money to spent on game magazines around I lived. I grew up with myths, legends, rumors and lots of fake made up stuff and that was what gaming was back then, nearly no information, you knew what your friends had around. I actually think it was magical because of that.
In 2000 a new kid moved in as neighbour too, he had a Game Boy Color and a PS1, which got me introduced to Pokémon and Digimon games, which were a MASSIVE thing back then, specially Pokémon, but Digimon was huge too.
After seeing his PS1 tho everything changed, I immediatly wanted a PS1 and we got one in late 2000 while my best friend got a PS2 in 2001 (it was expensive, but his parents got divorced and he would get a few great gifts here and there because of that). From there on I played far too many games like Resident Evil, Crash, Spyro series, Diablo, Beyblade, sport games, then God of War series and so on.
Remember that lack on information I just talked about? Well, that's how I got The Legend of Dragoon by pure chance. The PS1 and PS2 were huge here because of piracy, eventually everyone had one or the other as we would get games very cheap, pirated games were sold in stores and nobody gave a shit about it, eventually PCs got decently affordable and people would burn their own PS1 and PS2 games themselves, but for a few years before that (up until 2006/2007) we would buy those pirated games on stores. It was the normal way to play games for basically everybody.
A store once handed my father a small product list of PS1 games (names only) to order by phone, we would pay R$ 10 (around $2 USD) for a combo of 3 discs, with free shipping and same day delivery to your house. And even so I was only allowed very rarely to order games, money really was no joke.
Anyway, when I said 3 discs, that was it, discs, not necessarily games, so if you would order Final Fantasy 7, it had 3 discs and it was the full order, Final Fantasy 8 had 4 discs, so you would need 2x the 3 discs combos to get all 4 discs (plus 2 other discs).
One of the first times we ordered games there, actually the first time I did it myself, in 2001, I planned the 3 games I wanted to buy beforehand (even as a 8 years old I was already far too anxious and had to plan what I did before doing it, lol), so I called them and they did not have stock for 2 of the 3 games I wanted, so I got anxious, I don't properly remember if I finished the call or hung up and called them a few seconds later (sometimes I think it was one or the other), but I quickly flipped some pages on the list while on the list and immediatly went for the Adventure games (not many games where on Role Playing), there was a game named The Legend of Dragoon there, Dragoon should be about Dragons (Dragões), right? (I Knew no english at all, but it was so close to the portuguese word lol), and it had 4 discs, I could get 2 discs and solve the problem immediatly, so I choose disc 1 and 2 to complete the order and that's how I came in contact with the best game ever made.
For years I only had disc 1 and 2, because I played the game having to guess the dialogue by what happened there, didn't know where to go, what to do, which was a pretty similar experience to playing Pokémon, but a lot harder, and eventually I got stuck in disc 2 because it would not load stores (it was likely burned with too high speeds, it was still really new when I got it, the ripped ISO might have been problematic too, who knows, my discs did not look scratched but they were very low quality cheap pirated cds afterall) and there was a quest involved talking to someone inside one. Eventually I finally got all the discs and could proceeed and beat it, I would play the parts I could from disc 2 over and over grinding levels and additions, I got really good at the game because of that and could actually defeat enemies with my eyes closed just based on the sound for the timings lol.
Mostly my best friend and me moved to being pretty "hardcore" games over the years after mid 2000s, other teens would still like to play football (actually football, not american football) games like Winning Eleven, PES and Fifa, but mostly us 2 would play a lot of other games on his PC, PS2 and eventually PS3.
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