People who were adults when the 1990s started and aren't blinded by the nostalgia of childhood, what were those years really like?

I was 25. I had my Walkman with all my Springsteen and mix tapes which I enjoyed listening to when running or taking the bus to school or work. Everyone read papers/books on the bus and there were multiple newspaper boxes at the stops. The buses were not hydrids but otherwise looked about the same as today, we used picture ID bus passes, tickets, or coins.

I had finished my comp sci degree and was working developing in C language, which is still very familiar to the Java I do now, with the native types, char array manipulations, and functions/methods. The Windows O/S was just starting and people were arguing over the need for a GUI when DOS and Unix did just fine. With DOS you had interfaces usually with menu lists and selecting typing number at the bottom of the screen or selecting it with a mouse.

I had a 21 inch TV with cable with all the sports and TV I wanted with a VCR to set and record shows. Colleagues at work traded cassettes for shows like Star Trek TNG. My brother recorded every episode of TNG on cassette, so we had them all. We recorded sports, and many other TV shows. Video rental places were everywhere, BlockBuster was huge, but there were many other local chains for competition, so you could get most movies. My buddy had a dual VCR so he recorded movies he rented for his collection, pirating old school. Computers were for games like Bard's Tale 3 and the Gold Box Dungeons and Dragons series. I had an Apple 2C with a color 2E monitor which I sold and traded for an IBM 286 with 17 inch monitor. These were standalone games, no multiplayer. Nintendo was still the biggest game console with Mario Brothers and Donkey Kong.

However, BBS's were big with dial up modems, US Robotics 9600 bit/s. On BBS's you could play a variety of online games, text turn based strategy games against opponents, but not in real time. Doom and Castle Wolfenstein, and Leisure Suit Larry were the big breakout games in a couple of years. Wordperfect 5.1 was the big office software everyone was talking about with Novel Networks as the widely used office LANs. Cabling LAN networks was tricky with 10BaseT and segmenting. CompuServe and AOL were big for dial up users who didn't have the savvy to navigate BBS's. Internet was available at work with search programs like Archie for FTP sites where you could find files and pictures, though not videos. But the pictures took forever to copy, like hours for big ones. Dial up at home took forever and used your phone line.

The big thing was cordless phones for home, everybody was getting them. Beepers were used to contact someone for emergencies, but you had to find a phone.

I shared an apartment with a roommate and we dated lots of girls. We went out to clubs and watched sports on the projection screens. We played Dungeons and Dragons 2nd edition. I played ice hockey and worked out in the YMCA gym. I had a beat up old Honda Accord hatch back (boy I miss those) and my work buddy Asian friend had a Honda Prelude. Both had awesome tape decks with speakers.

There were more movie theatres and drive-ins still existed. We had 2 dollar Tuesdays and the theaters were packed. The Star Wars Expanded universe novels by Timothy Zahn were coming out and we all dreamed and hoped that Lucas would continue the series after Return of the Jedi.

Well, that is all I can think of over lunch.

/r/AskReddit Thread