Before everyone and their dog had a PC and the internet at home, there was a distinct time in the early 2000s when the internet café was where it all happened. It didn't matter if I wanted to work on a school project, sneak a peek at WWE results since they only aired Raw and Smackdown a week later over in India, or beg the guy behind the counter to let me squeeze in a round of Vice City. All I knew was that those dim little rooms were the place to be.

For me, those cafés were all about playing games, and they're also where I learned a significant amount of lessons about gaming and even life, at times. These 'cyber' cafés I frequented as a kid shaped my childhood gaming habits in not so unimportant ways.

Tekken 3 at a market arcade

A power trip suddenly became a learning opportunity

There used to be an arcade in the local market where my parents went for the monthly groceries, and since that had nothing to do with me and my brother, we'd get a tiny allowance to roam around the marketplace and spend about a couple of dollars. This must have been 2004 or 2005, and we were amazed to see a hole-in-the-wall joint with a single arcade machine running a game that we recognized from sound before ever laying our eyes on the screen — Tekken 3.

A bunch of kids were huddled around the machine, and they were clearly giddy at what they were seeing. Now, these kids were clearly lesser-privileged, and they were also exactly my age. There was this one kid, though, whom the rest hailed as 'the king of the arena', since he was the toughest to beat for them all. Such was his hype that I couldn't wait to play against him, and I even cut my time in half by giving him half my coins for the versus battle.

What followed was a complete demolition where I simply spammed my favorite move — Yoshimitsu's sword strike over and over again, draining his health bar in under ten seconds every time. To me, I'd just defeated 'the king' and put him in his place, and as we left and the day came to a close, I wouldn't stop gushing about the experience to my parents in the front seat.

I even remember the specific traffic light we were stopped at when my mother turned off the FM radio, and told me that I won because I had a PC at home I played on every day. Those kids pooled their money to maybe play once a week, or even if they played every day, they also had to go do odd jobs across town, and then got to play sometimes. I'm not going to pretend I understood immediately, but it did put a lot of things into perspective. My PC at home, and my access to a game, along with my ability to play it every day — that's why I was 'better' than those kids, and it had a lot less to do with skill, and a whole lot more to do with the sheer privilege of my life.

My very first internet café taught me to love my own PC

A clunky PC made me appreciate the one I had at home

The first ever internet café I went to didn't really impart a huge lesson on me, but it certainly put things into perspective. Since I only got 30 minutes of PC time every day, I figured I'd go visit the local 'cybercafé' and play something there. The problem? The 50 bucks (about a dollar) I gave for entry got me in, only for me to be met by a terribly small monitor, a normal keyboard, and a teeny tiny transparent mouse with red and blue lights peeking from inside.

Sure, I'd lost money I could've spent on Lay's, but the more important lesson honestly here was how I felt when I got back home and saw my own Hewlett-Packard PC that my father had taken out a loan for. In that moment, it was perfect to me, and my astonishment at how my home PC was better than that of an internet café that let you play games, taught me, once again, just how rare accessibility to good tech was.

One PC, one game, and five kids

Sharing one game and its progress every evening

This is the one I actually have trouble believing even happened. In 2006, we moved across town, and that meant a new house, location, and school district. By this time, the PC had become off limits for games, since I was now 'a grown boy who needed to study and do nothing else'. Since it was my dad's decision, of course, my mum sneaked me money so I could at least go play twice a week at the local café. Imagine my surprise when I saw that every kid in the block went there for the evening, and there was only one PC that could support the latest games. The rest were strictly for working and browsing the internet.

The guy whose father ran the shop, let us all have turns on that PC as we played Prince of Persia: Warrior Within, taking 15-minute turns that were strictly timed by the clock. Sharing those quarter-hours with 3, 4, or sometimes 5 other kids who I only knew from school, all while we tried to build off of each other's progress was an incredulous experience that I still can't believe I went through.

I think it taught me two things instead of one big lesson. The first was how much patience mattered. I got fifteen minutes of killing demons on the Island of Time while then having to sometimes wait an hour before getting my next turn, all while staying invested in what the other players were doing, so I'd know where to go next. The second lesson was clearly about how scarcity makes magic. Because access was so highly limited, those moments in the game felt nothing short of mythic.

One cafe owner led me to my biggest gaming discovery

I was shown the 'right way' to play

Need for Speed II SE was a game that was everywhere. My home PC, my relatives' PCs, and of course, the local internet cafe. It even offered split-screen racing on PC, which meant that the same cafe I just talked about, let two players play at the same time, which, when we pooled our money together, translated to thirty whole minutes of split-screen playtime.

Something incredible that I remember from that time was seeing the owner of the café pull up one day, tell us we'd get our turn later, and start playing himself. Single-player race, Monolithic Studios. The incredible part? I saw him use keys that I never thought made sense to play a game — WASD. I must've been six years old at the time, and I had only ever used arrow keys or the numpad for any game I'd ever played on the PC. Seeing this felt like an epiphany. It felt... wrong.

It was only after I expressed my utter confusion at what I was seeing that the guy, who must've been thrice my age, told me that's how you're supposed to play, and even made fun of me for my arrow keys. In all honesty, not only was I an 'arrow-key-only' player, but I also used two hands for those four keys, so he wasn't off the mark at all. Still, it took me a while to start getting used to the WASD approach, especially since it made my hands cramp up a lot, but that guy is still who I credit for having 'shown me the way'.

My last-ever café cemented my love for gaming

I was terrified the entire time, but loved playing my first open-world title

The last internet café I ever visited was 18 years ago, and it was also the most... traumatic. First off, the owner there was a man in his fifties who was always angry, and used the choicest of swear words to decorate every single sentence he uttered. Every minute I spent in there was spent afraid that he might kick me out or direct all of that inexplicable rage towards me.

However, this is where I played GTA III for the first (and last time), and to this day, I don't know what that game is about, or what the story is. You know why? Because there were two PCs there, and only one had GTA III on it. More importantly, you just had to pick up where the last person left the game, and since these computers didn't have any speakers, either, there was barely ever a time I understood what was going on in that game.

I never had the luxury of continuity or context, and it was only my pure love for the format of gaming that brought me joy. Who the protagonist is, what their motivations are, what the heck is even going on in this city — none of it mattered. All that mattered was pressing buttons on the keyboard and seeing things happen on the screen. GTA III may have changed gaming forever, but it definitely changed my life, too, without me ever completely understanding that game to the fullest.

My memory of these cafés is never about the games or the machines

Looking back, I clearly don't think about the machines or the games when I think about the cafés I grew up in (partially). What I do remember are the cramped spaces I shared with other kids, learning from the older players and trying to teach my own friends what I learned.

As such, it's easy to see why I still carry that with me — a feeling of privilege at being able to play games on a PC I've now built, and being able to afford the best consoles on the market. No matter how much time passes, the opportunity to play a game will always be tied into a feeling of fulfillment for that toddler in me who never grew up.