Hiding in other people's closets and dry humping.
Oh wrong thread.

Early networking, from null modem cables through coax networking to UTP networking with Windows 95 and unreliable cables made by the dodgy hardware place up the road.
I have fond memories of 24-hour LAN parties where 18 hours of that were spent just getting everyone connected to the same game.
Now everything just works when you plug it in. Where's the fun in that?

Spending time on BBS systems.. I can't even remember what program I used to use, Telnet was balls, but the DOS based program really brought the ASCII to life.
Then I got internet access ($20 for 5 hours a month!), I think my dad cursed that decision, now both my parents fight over their internet connection. Mwahahaha.

Yeah. Ordinary audio casette tapes, no less. In some places, they even broadcast demos and freeware games on the radio. Then you could record it, eject the tape, pop it in your C64 and load it up :-D

Yeah, I had a number of BBS systems I hung out on. I was on FidoNet too. And played Valheru MUD. The guy who used to run it lived about 10 kilometers away from me. I remember riding my bike out to him one night around midnight and dropping an envelope with 100 Kroner (Danish currency) and my player name in his mailbox, because I was out of play time. Then rode my bike home, logged on with a temporary character to see if he was there, and asked him to go check his mailbox so I could continue playing. And no, I don't play WoW ;-)

Game demos... no such thing anymore, ofcourse, because of easy pirating... and having a paying job :P i remember having only a couple of complete original games, but instead playing the shit out of every demo-disc.. i must have played the Midtown Madness demo a million times, wishing more than anything to find a glitch to get through the walls that blocked of the rest of the gameworld X-( ... great driving game though..

Does anyone remember the Imagination Network?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ImagiNation_Network
I always wanted to try it when I was a kid but was to poor. I did get a chance though a few months ago because some geniuses reverse engineered the code and made a server. It's pretty cool but nobody was on-line to play. :(
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DKHMIKZZjaY