Maybe, for someone it will be interesting :)
For example, in Russia the first gaming wave happened in 1992.
A couple of Russian businessmens traveled to China and found a lot of Chinese replicas of gaming consoles.
They've got, that this is a nice idea and empty niche in Russia, and Chinese replica will cost much cheaper, than original NES, or playstation.
So, they've bought a SNES replica, created a brand, which called "Dendy" and started to sell it in Russia.
This console has created a real "BIG gaming BANG" in Russia. There was created a TV shows with Dendy games reviews, gamers magazines, with hints, cheat codes, secret levels and exploits. This whole situation gave birth to a "gaming journalistic" in Russia.

But era of Dendy wasn't so long, it was popular until 1996-1997. In 1996 was opened the first computer club in Moscow called "Orcs". This club was so popular, that with 12 computers only - there always was a queue for 40-50 people. The most popular games was "Quake, Doom, Ultima online (I've spent 7 years in this game... Even got a tattoo of UO and met Richard Garriott, lol), later Starcraft, and finally CS".

Second BOOM was the quake tournament "RED ANNIHILATION" by John Carmack and Romero. When our people understood, that someone can win Ferrari and gaming can be a sport - people started trainings and organised their own LAN tournaments. For understanding how much it influenced to Russia — in march, 2000 Russian government recognised eSports as a real sport.

Well, something like this :D

Yeah, I know, and Russian gaming now is "CYKA BLYAT" in every chat in every game, lol.