skykiii
kiwifarms.net
- Registrado
- 17 de Jun, 2018
Yes, this thread is a sequel to my 80s cartoons thread.
I've always held that the 80s was better in terms of cartoons and certain other television entertainment... but the 1990s had almost everything else.
For me, like.... if I time traveled and got to re-experience the eighties, that would be interesting but it would be like getting to visit a land I barely glimpsed. The 1990s though... that's where my heart is. That's where I had a lot of formulative experiences and was changing and evolving as a person, and the decade itself just seemed to be fun thing after fun thing. I literally went from Goosebumps to X-Men to Sherlock Holmes to JRPGs to Anime and... ironically... to Eighties cartoons.
That's before I talk about the places and things that just don't exist anymore, or at least not the way they used to.
Vidya
Video games I think are the thing the 1990s owns the most... and again, its not the games themselves so much (though there's that too), but the overall experience.
This is something I notice is often lost on people today.... the thing is, if you lived through the 1990s gaming scene you were witnessing the future come to life in real time. You went right from an era where Donkey Kong was still the definition of "video game," to games having actual worlds, sometimes actual stories (and yeah I know some people bitch about that--I'd say "fuck 'em" but you might catch an STD doing that), we went from 2D games to pseudo-3D to actual 3D.... and to quote one issue of Diehard Gamefan: we saw the death of 8-bit, the rise and then fall of 16-bit, and the rise of 32 and 64-bit. On the PC side you saw PCs go from boxes that could barely run office programs to full fledged gaming machines.
And damn... I miss going to Electronics Boutique and seeing all the boxes on walls and shelves. I would love to time travel just to see those again.
The 1990s was also the last time arcades were seriously a thing... well, for awhile. Truth be told, in my area new arcades have popped up. One is some woman who just bought a bunch of Arcade 1up repros and set up shop, but another is a dude who actually fixes old machines and sets them to free play mode (you have to pay an entrance fee to get in but that's it) and its close to replicating the old feel.
Cartoons
Again, I think the eighties owns cartoons (at least western-made). But coming in second place isn't bad.
As for why "second place?" Its because I find the 1990s is split down the middle in terms of either cartoons I love or ones I absolutely can't stand. It was also a case of the decade getting worse as it went on--by the time we got to every cartoon being a hyper-cynical "comedy" with an aggressively ugly art style, I had jumped ship and wasn't even watching cartoons anymore, having moved on to anime, vidya, and reading.
Call me contrarian but a lot of the big names, I tend to not really like that much (Batman I love when I'm in the mood, Animaniacs is unbearable now, I can only stand Simpsons in short bursts) while the stuff I love often was stuff I wasn't into as a kid (X-Men, Fox's Peter Pan and the Pirates) or stuff that is less talked about.
There's three cartoons from this era I'm still hoping get a physical release someday (though I'd be fine with streaming): Attack of the Killer Tomatoes, Battletech, and the aformentioned Fox version of Peter Pan.
Literature
Okay, this admittedly is not a win I can give to the 1990s because a lot of the best books were written before I was born (Dune, Lord of the Rings, Romance of the Three Kingdoms, the Bible)... but the 1990s was where I started cracking spines.
My starter drugs were Encyclopedia Brown and Goosebumps--tho funnily enough Goosebumps I got into because of the "Give Yourself Goosebumps" books (basically Choose Your Own Adventure but with a GB slant) and then went back and read the actual books. At some point I got into R.L. Stine's Fear Street books instead, then graduated to "real" books like Sherlock Holmes and, yeah.
I remember a period where I was kinda pretentious (totally unlike now) and had a hard time going back to other mediums for a bit because now they were starting to seem childish... well, for a bit.
Other Things
I miss malls. Malls used to be cool. One I used to visit as a kid is now nothing but clothing stores.... another has like, one worthwhile store and the rest are either clothing or closed down.
Arcades are kinda making a comeback, that's cool.
The early days of the internet were genuinely fascinating. It was great discovering new people and interests, and when a few websites didn't own all the information. I was big into Warcraft II for awhile and one of my memories is that there were like 100 Warcraft II fan sites, each with different opinions, stories, etc.
Then of course there was discovering emulation for the first time... gah, I think I'm gonna go boot up Nesticle. See you guys later.
I've always held that the 80s was better in terms of cartoons and certain other television entertainment... but the 1990s had almost everything else.
For me, like.... if I time traveled and got to re-experience the eighties, that would be interesting but it would be like getting to visit a land I barely glimpsed. The 1990s though... that's where my heart is. That's where I had a lot of formulative experiences and was changing and evolving as a person, and the decade itself just seemed to be fun thing after fun thing. I literally went from Goosebumps to X-Men to Sherlock Holmes to JRPGs to Anime and... ironically... to Eighties cartoons.
That's before I talk about the places and things that just don't exist anymore, or at least not the way they used to.
Vidya
Video games I think are the thing the 1990s owns the most... and again, its not the games themselves so much (though there's that too), but the overall experience.
This is something I notice is often lost on people today.... the thing is, if you lived through the 1990s gaming scene you were witnessing the future come to life in real time. You went right from an era where Donkey Kong was still the definition of "video game," to games having actual worlds, sometimes actual stories (and yeah I know some people bitch about that--I'd say "fuck 'em" but you might catch an STD doing that), we went from 2D games to pseudo-3D to actual 3D.... and to quote one issue of Diehard Gamefan: we saw the death of 8-bit, the rise and then fall of 16-bit, and the rise of 32 and 64-bit. On the PC side you saw PCs go from boxes that could barely run office programs to full fledged gaming machines.
And damn... I miss going to Electronics Boutique and seeing all the boxes on walls and shelves. I would love to time travel just to see those again.
The 1990s was also the last time arcades were seriously a thing... well, for awhile. Truth be told, in my area new arcades have popped up. One is some woman who just bought a bunch of Arcade 1up repros and set up shop, but another is a dude who actually fixes old machines and sets them to free play mode (you have to pay an entrance fee to get in but that's it) and its close to replicating the old feel.
Cartoons
Again, I think the eighties owns cartoons (at least western-made). But coming in second place isn't bad.
As for why "second place?" Its because I find the 1990s is split down the middle in terms of either cartoons I love or ones I absolutely can't stand. It was also a case of the decade getting worse as it went on--by the time we got to every cartoon being a hyper-cynical "comedy" with an aggressively ugly art style, I had jumped ship and wasn't even watching cartoons anymore, having moved on to anime, vidya, and reading.
Call me contrarian but a lot of the big names, I tend to not really like that much (Batman I love when I'm in the mood, Animaniacs is unbearable now, I can only stand Simpsons in short bursts) while the stuff I love often was stuff I wasn't into as a kid (X-Men, Fox's Peter Pan and the Pirates) or stuff that is less talked about.
There's three cartoons from this era I'm still hoping get a physical release someday (though I'd be fine with streaming): Attack of the Killer Tomatoes, Battletech, and the aformentioned Fox version of Peter Pan.
Literature
Okay, this admittedly is not a win I can give to the 1990s because a lot of the best books were written before I was born (Dune, Lord of the Rings, Romance of the Three Kingdoms, the Bible)... but the 1990s was where I started cracking spines.
My starter drugs were Encyclopedia Brown and Goosebumps--tho funnily enough Goosebumps I got into because of the "Give Yourself Goosebumps" books (basically Choose Your Own Adventure but with a GB slant) and then went back and read the actual books. At some point I got into R.L. Stine's Fear Street books instead, then graduated to "real" books like Sherlock Holmes and, yeah.
I remember a period where I was kinda pretentious (totally unlike now) and had a hard time going back to other mediums for a bit because now they were starting to seem childish... well, for a bit.
Other Things
I miss malls. Malls used to be cool. One I used to visit as a kid is now nothing but clothing stores.... another has like, one worthwhile store and the rest are either clothing or closed down.
Arcades are kinda making a comeback, that's cool.
The early days of the internet were genuinely fascinating. It was great discovering new people and interests, and when a few websites didn't own all the information. I was big into Warcraft II for awhile and one of my memories is that there were like 100 Warcraft II fan sites, each with different opinions, stories, etc.
Then of course there was discovering emulation for the first time... gah, I think I'm gonna go boot up Nesticle. See you guys later.
