In the '80s, we had to travel > 40 minutes each way. I could afford a game maybe once every month or two, but I ended up getting more into D&D instead and spending my money on those books (both game books and novels).
When Blockbuster got games for rent, that was great because my town actually had one and it was only about 15-20 minutes each way.
I mostly stuck to computer gaming into the '90s, though. I played a gamecube or N64 a couple of times, but never really got into it (and we certainly couldn't afford to buy them). It was still kinda the same deal for computer games, though; do I have enough RAM for this? Can my Amiga work with a RAM expansion? I guess there were less things, but they still existed. Probably on the C64 as well, but I remember that less.