Same in the 2000s. 90s had war with Iraq, gulf war, operation Desert Storm. Iran was recovering from the '80-'88 Iran-Iraq war when US supported Saddam with chemical weapons trying to break Iran after the 1979 revolution overthrew the US/UK installed Shaw since 1953. End of the 90s had the y2k hysteria ;)

90s were more exciting for gaming for sure, 2010s is where it all went wrong. Well for the US it was 9/11/01 that the US never got past or rather seized to start on / accelerate the path to the authoritarian plutocracy that the US is today.

The 90s were still better, because we didn't have the massive AI data centers, we didn't have 9/11, and America had at least some shred of sanity.

Paying over $100 a month in phone bills to play Everquest on dial up sucked. (on top of internet and game subscription!) Also PCs were very expensive in the 90s plus you had to deal with DOS, Windows 3.1, Windows 95, Windows 98, early DirectX, OpenGL, sound cards, failing floppy discs. The games were great, getting them to run (on PC) was not!

Some shred of sanity, internally maybe. For example:

Al-Shifa Pharmaceutical Factory: On August 20, 1998, the US launched Tomahawk cruise missiles at a pharmaceutical plant in Khartoum, Sudan. The Clinton administration justified the attack by claiming the factory produced VX nerve gas components for Al-Qaeda. Officials later admitted the intelligence was faulty. The strike destroyed the source of 90% of Sudan's major pharmaceutical products, causing an indirect, unquantified medical crisis across the country.

US motto: Oops we did it again.

At least in the 90s certain celebrities who were genuinely nice were still alive, like Robin Williams and Jason David Frank (the original Green Ranger). Nowadays it's incredibly difficult to find celebrities who aren't pedophiles. -_-

Paying over $100 a month in phone bills to play Everquest on dial up sucked. (on top of internet and game subscription!) Also PCs were very expensive in the 90s plus you had to deal with DOS, Windows 3.1, Windows 95, Windows 98, early DirectX, OpenGL, sound cards, failing floppy discs. The games were great, getting them to run (on PC) was not!

Some shred of sanity, internally maybe. For example:

Al-Shifa Pharmaceutical Factory: On August 20, 1998, the US launched Tomahawk cruise missiles at a pharmaceutical plant in Khartoum, Sudan. The Clinton administration justified the attack by claiming the factory produced VX nerve gas components for Al-Qaeda. Officials later admitted the intelligence was faulty. The strike destroyed the source of 90% of Sudan's major pharmaceutical products, causing an indirect, unquantified medical crisis across the country.

US motto: Oops we did it again.