I grew up in a time when we got one or two games a year, if we wanted more games, piracy with double deck tapes, or programming our own games, were the only options available.
Thus it is hard to feel the need to be talking about the latest popular game.
But you're also describing the social aspects of gaming, meeting with friends to swap games to copy, trading the few games we had, and so on.
I grew up in the same era, but I never stopped playing video games, so my relationship with them continuously evolved.
Did you also walk fifteen miles up hill both ways to school? Times change, but even back in the Nintendo Power days people would definitely flock to the home of whoever got Super Mario World 2 or Super Smash Bros first because there was no way to play those online and everyone would then talk about the games.
Nintendo was never that big in most European countries, when we talked about games on the playground during primary school it was about Game & Watch devices.
During highschool we were trading Spectrum, C64, PC and Amiga stuff on the playground, no one cared about consoles.