Side note: I didn't properly learn how to play Minesweeper until well after I got my first smart phone, it's a real banger of a game. I highly recommend giving it a chance if, like me, you were too young to figure it out and just randomly pressed on squares until it blew up.
The last 25 years was better and better browsers and web technologies, but the result now is a web that loads slowly and has tons of ads. Somewhere around 2008 was maybe the best, I dont remember exactly what year. But when the web was actually good and social media was not big yet.
I didn't mind the early 2000's web experience. You just kinda had to know how to get around, know what the fake download button looked like, not type your real name anywhere, have a little patience. The barrier to entry was slightly higher, which kept the masses away.
I think it was great, even with all its problems. Way less corporate too.
It's so cool how we all share this experience. It's a bit like also knowing what life was like before mobile phones. No other generation will ever know.
Those of us who drew random squiggles in Paint and filled the loops using the bucket tool are just objectively better and healthier people. Thank you for your attention to this matter.
Enter teenage me trying to draw (in Paint!) proper exposed boobies on this image from Pools of Darkness. That's about when I gave up on my aspirations for becoming an artist.
Wow, that's ambitious. But I get it - it's sooooo close already!
That point when you're zoomed in, coloring individual pixels with zero horniness, just all frustration and focus. Then you zoom out and your heart skips a beat. Ahh, those were the days.
Funny that I had a similar skill. My drawings were all "under boob" pics. I focused on that. Tops of boobs are no big deal, but when a halter top is involved the tops are completely covered but a good portion of the bottom of the boob is exposed.
That tickles a memory of an actual game from around that time that looked like that. I think it was one of the ones MS made free, though you might have needed to specifically install the extended game pack or play it with the windows CD in or something like that. Not the most solid memory I have, but I just remember the screen saver looked a lot like that game just without the actual game part.
Yeah, that's the one! Lol my memory about it was so vague that while I remembered you had to collect things in the maze, I didn't remember it was a capture the flag game. It came on the windows 95 CD, though IIRC you had to install it separately from windows, which I think meant not that many people were aware of it.
The first PC I had in my bedroom didn’t have internet, in fact we didn’t have internet in the house at all, but when bored I would still click the internet E xplorer logo sometimes to see if it would magically work.
I got bored during a particularly slow period at work once and wanted to just play minesweeper or solitaire and found I did not have that option on modern windows without download some bullshit "app" from the "app store" that was full of ads...
I remember once getting a demo CD for strategy games (not a cereal box one but one they had for like $5 beside the cash register at computer stores). It set a trajectory on my life that resulted in my later WoW addiction.
That disc had Dune II on it, the first RTS game I ever played. I was instantly hooked. Then I tried Warcraft II (also on that disc) and it was even better. I mentioned it to a friend at school and he had just gotten SC:BW, which meant he had two play discs and let me borrow the SC disc first, then the BW disc later and we played a ton of StarCraft. Somehow, on battle.net despite using the same key (my assumption is they screwed something up in early manufacturing and duplicated some keys, which meant they couldn't just limit it to one player online at a time per key for some set of keys that included my friend's).
That eventually led to me discovering the StarCraft modding community, which defined my later high school years. Funny enough, I wasn't even into modding that much, I was more fascinated with the tools that enabled it and the reverse engineering process involved in building those tools.
It also led me on my path to D2, WC3, SC2, and finally WoW (uh, might have the order wrong for SC2).
I wonder how things would have gone for me without that demo disc.
I haven't even tried 1 in a long time. It's been a while since I played 2, so maybe it won't be so bad. I've even got my own copy now, though I think I might still have the burnt copy of brood wars from my friend's disc lol.
I had the Internet well before that pinball game existed. Windows 95 wouldn't even exist for almost a decade when we got Internet. IRC made me the lifelong pirate I am today.
Those ones above were all included with windows back in the day, like installed from the disc when you installed windows, then they'd be discoverable in Start -> Programs -> Accessories -> Games (other than paint, which was in accessories) IIRC. Eventually they moved it out of the accessories folder, then later on they changed which games were included, eliminating some, though these ones I believe remained the longest until MS started instead advertising games they had on the windows store.
We used to be able to buy those things to own completely. Now everything is sponsored by ads. The advertising companies do nothing but subsidize the evil tech bros bastards. Fuck Tide! The armpits of my white t-shirts shall remain yellow from this point forward, for the people! /s
86 replies
I have memories from the early 90s playing a DOS version of Dig-Dug all day when I didn't want to go to school.
I'm in this post.
Side note: I didn't properly learn how to play Minesweeper until well after I got my first smart phone, it's a real banger of a game. I highly recommend giving it a chance if, like me, you were too young to figure it out and just randomly pressed on squares until it blew up.
They had games like this before the Internet with no DRM or anything? :O
If you wanted to put in the time you could finder power ups!
I've got a Dungeon Master's guide
I've got a twelve sided die
I've got Kitty Pryde
And Nightcrawler too
Waiting there for me
Yes I do
I do
It was a peaceful life.
before Swifties
We thought it couldn't get better than this, and in fact it didn't get better.
The last 25 years was better and better browsers and web technologies, but the result now is a web that loads slowly and has tons of ads. Somewhere around 2008 was maybe the best, I dont remember exactly what year. But when the web was actually good and social media was not big yet.
I didn't mind the early 2000's web experience. You just kinda had to know how to get around, know what the fake download button looked like, not type your real name anywhere, have a little patience. The barrier to entry was slightly higher, which kept the masses away.
I think it was great, even with all its problems. Way less corporate too.
1997 to before Facebook existed were the best Internet years.
Get a pihole. No ads
Already running a dns ad blocker, but this wasn't really a comment about how I personally avoid ads.
Now they have AI, and micro transactions if you want to buy more balls/cards.
And we were right
It's so cool how we all share this experience. It's a bit like also knowing what life was like before mobile phones. No other generation will ever know.
There will be plenty of post-cellphone generations after the collapse.
Those of us who drew random squiggles in Paint and filled the loops using the bucket tool are just objectively better and healthier people. Thank you for your attention to this matter.
Yes, hello! I made some beautiful stained glass are
This, but all your games are shareware/demos you constantly replay
Loved the Road Rash demo back then
Jezzball mothertruckers.
i miss that game so much. I should try to find if someones made one for linux.
edit
Icebreaker on flatpack, even has a jezz-like skin. huphup
Fuck yeah!
If you don't have Space Cadet Pinball on your PC right now, then please re-evaluate what you're doing with your life.
Edit: also on every other platform
I have that shit on my phone right now, it's a great time killer
Same here.
High score so far was 10mil
Filling the mspaint canvas with the spray paint tool 🤗
Uhhh excuse me?
Where's Number Munchers?
...or Oregon Trail?
...or QBasic games like Gorillas?
...and Nibbles (aka Snake)
...and Wolfenstein 3D that some kid installed on the machines when no one was looking?
Neither came as a standard Windows game/app
Dang it you're right. Sorry.
As a teenager, I got really good at drawing boobs from the side and the front in MS paint.
Then we got the internet and my digital art career went up in smoke at 28.8kbs.
Enter teenage me trying to draw (in Paint!) proper exposed boobies on this image from Pools of Darkness. That's about when I gave up on my aspirations for becoming an artist.
Wow, that's ambitious. But I get it - it's sooooo close already!
That point when you're zoomed in, coloring individual pixels with zero horniness, just all frustration and focus. Then you zoom out and your heart skips a beat. Ahh, those were the days.
I don't know about the zero horniness, have you ever been a teenager? :D
It's the pendulum, swinging from total focus on pixel-level edits, to "fully appreciating" your work over the space of 30 seconds.
Okay put like that I get what you meant :)
Funny how it was Laura Croft's triangular prism boobs that became so famous when there were better boob depictions in games with detailed pixel art.
Indeed, but personally, I always thought Lara's calves were the most well formed bit ;)
Funny that I had a similar skill. My drawings were all "under boob" pics. I focused on that. Tops of boobs are no big deal, but when a halter top is involved the tops are completely covered but a good portion of the bottom of the boob is exposed.
Damn, now I understand when exactly I stopped doodling, with both the pencil and the mouse.
Relive the dream:
https://online-pinball.com/play/space-cadet-pinball/
https://playminigames.net/game/skifree
I can just open my 486 laptop running win2k and play it, Still booted 5 years ago.
Watching the maze screensaver on windows 98 like a damn tv show
That tickles a memory of an actual game from around that time that looked like that. I think it was one of the ones MS made free, though you might have needed to specifically install the extended game pack or play it with the windows CD in or something like that. Not the most solid memory I have, but I just remember the screen saver looked a lot like that game just without the actual game part.
Oh shit ... Hover?
Yeah, that's the one! Lol my memory about it was so vague that while I remembered you had to collect things in the maze, I didn't remember it was a capture the flag game. It came on the windows 95 CD, though IIRC you had to install it separately from windows, which I think meant not that many people were aware of it.
Your initial description was just about all I remembered about it too!
The first PC I had in my bedroom didn’t have internet, in fact we didn’t have internet in the house at all, but when bored I would still click the internet E xplorer logo sometimes to see if it would magically work.
This is also life with internet when your parents come in your bedroom
The rest of us had better jerk off a material.
Sorry that you had to cum to cards and pinball
None of the girls at school could live up to the Queen of Hearts
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Your parents did what?
You heard me
I got bored during a particularly slow period at work once and wanted to just play minesweeper or solitaire and found I did not have that option on modern windows without download some bullshit "app" from the "app store" that was full of ads...
And it never did get better than that.
This was the peak
Damnit Beckyfear go take a bath!
Please take the Internet away
Please take the billionaire technocrats away...
If you replaced MS Paint with SkiFree in that picture, you'd achieve perfection.
Windows 3.5 was the apex of operating system design. There, I said it. Fight me, I dont care.
I think almost everyone started with ms paint, no? I have no idea what skifree is.
Once Internet came, downloaded demos on bboards and then happy puppy. Had content for a while although short lived.
I still remember when the prize at the bottom of the cereal box was a CD-ROM for (mostly terrible) computer games
DONT YOU SLANDER CHEX QUEST
I remember once getting a demo CD for strategy games (not a cereal box one but one they had for like $5 beside the cash register at computer stores). It set a trajectory on my life that resulted in my later WoW addiction.
That disc had Dune II on it, the first RTS game I ever played. I was instantly hooked. Then I tried Warcraft II (also on that disc) and it was even better. I mentioned it to a friend at school and he had just gotten SC:BW, which meant he had two play discs and let me borrow the SC disc first, then the BW disc later and we played a ton of StarCraft. Somehow, on battle.net despite using the same key (my assumption is they screwed something up in early manufacturing and duplicated some keys, which meant they couldn't just limit it to one player online at a time per key for some set of keys that included my friend's).
That eventually led to me discovering the StarCraft modding community, which defined my later high school years. Funny enough, I wasn't even into modding that much, I was more fascinated with the tools that enabled it and the reverse engineering process involved in building those tools.
It also led me on my path to D2, WC3, SC2, and finally WoW (uh, might have the order wrong for SC2).
I wonder how things would have gone for me without that demo disc.
I really wish I'd been introduced to SC1 as a kid, I've tried playing it but after 2 1 just feels so janky
I haven't even tried 1 in a long time. It's been a while since I played 2, so maybe it won't be so bad. I've even got my own copy now, though I think I might still have the burnt copy of brood wars from my friend's disc lol.
Where is the OG Prince of Persia, it belongs on that list
I grew up with internet and still played these.
I used to play rodents revenge on my dad's wori computer all the time
I had the Internet well before that pinball game existed. Windows 95 wouldn't even exist for almost a decade when we got Internet. IRC made me the lifelong pirate I am today.
It was expensive in most parts of the world, though.
My dad convinced his work that he needed it. No clue how much it cost. It was 1986
That's the "I don't know how to install games onto the PC" starter pack.
The C64 and Amiga 500 Plus had no internet. At least back then.
What starter pack has Dune II and California Games?
I grew up with mine sweeper, but now with internet there's triple A minesweeper.
What about roller coaster tycoon?
Those ones above were all included with windows back in the day, like installed from the disc when you installed windows, then they'd be discoverable in Start -> Programs -> Accessories -> Games (other than paint, which was in accessories) IIRC. Eventually they moved it out of the accessories folder, then later on they changed which games were included, eliminating some, though these ones I believe remained the longest until MS started instead advertising games they had on the windows store.
We used to be able to buy those things to own completely. Now everything is sponsored by ads. The advertising companies do nothing but subsidize the evil tech bros bastards. Fuck Tide! The armpits of my white t-shirts shall remain yellow from this point forward, for the people! /s