Besides the usual suspects of Chess, Nine Man’s Morris (Mühle), Skat, Back Gammon, Scrabble and the obligatory “Spielesammlung” … a lot of the “notable” games that I grew up with were nominees of Spiel des Jahres. The first I remember is Sagaland. But looking through older winners and nominees I realize I played so many of those: Rummikub, Hase und Igel, Dampfross, Rubik’s Cube was given the only ever solo-gaming award in 1980, Scotland Yard, Heimlich & Co (probably the first Wolfgang Kramer game I owned–not anymore though I am tempted to buy a new edition), Barbarossa (Klaus Teuber made other stuff before Catan), Auf Achse (another Kramer).
It is quite interesting that the year we got our first PC (1990 I think) is the one where I do not recognize a lot of games from the nominations list. It is the year my parents stopped buying boardgames for us for Christmas. Instead we got California Games and Leisure Suit Larry.
Another big influence from my early years was my discovery of the “Choose your own adventures stories” being discussed elsewhere. I found a few at the local library and it was a quest of at least a decade (or longer) to find the games I really wanted… A first step was playing Clouds of Xeen (I just learned this was one of the first open world computer rpgs) in 1993/94, but it took me another 2 years to stumble across some pen&paper players at university.
At university I also encountered another major influence on my current gaming: Magic The Gathering. I do not know what I spent more money on RPG books or Magic cards? The combo-tastic, skirmish nature of magic and the deck construction will forever be something I enjoy. Also how incredibly portable is a Magic deck? It fits into any jacket pocket and with sleeves you could play on a sticky pub table or during a lecture. Perfect for university students who were always on the move…
We played a lot of boardgames but for nearly a decade I played mostly RPGs and Magic. Still I went to SPIEL a couple of times even in those years.
I really only got back to boardgames when the time/money availability switched from more time to more money. (Does that mean that RPGs and Magic are cheaper than boardgames? I don’t think it does… but boardgames definitely take up less time)
And I would say that I would call boardgames an actual hobby… maybe for the past 5-6 years when our Spiel visits were something I started prepping for.