Growing up ’90s – Part one in a multi-part series by J. Luis
Let me begin this piece by stating that I was born in 1985 Anno Domini, the year of our Lord. Like so many others that I work alongside I spent my formative years growing up in the 1990s. Now, I could wax poetic about actually being an ’80s kid, growing up under Ronald Reagan and bouncing around town on my Pogo Ball. I’m not a pretentious douche (that’s up for debate in many circles) and think that nostalgia begins at the age of five; Supreme court decisions be damned. So, keep your Koosh balls to yourselves and get ready for what life was like growing up in the ’90s.
Super Soaker 50
Water guns have been around for ages, but when the Super Soaker 50 hit the scene it changed the world, forever. It was more than your average water gun, it was a status symbol. If your parents managed to buy you one of these you not only knew you would be an unstoppable force on your block during the summer, but that kids from far and wide would want to play with you if only to get their grubby kits all over it. Heck, I’m still pissed my parents never got me one of these that I still dabble on eBay looking for one complete in box for display. The Super Soaker 50 is evocative of an age and still one of the best looking water guns of all time.
Nintendo Game Boy
In the very early days of the ’90s, video games were a very new thing to have in the home. The original Nintendo Game Boy came out and immediately made waves in an industry where companies were still very wary about video games (The video game crash still loomed on everyone’s mind). Sure, the Game Boy technically came out in ’89, but it didn’t become a cultural icon until the early ’90. It spawned so many competitors, many of which technically outclassed the system, but none of them could come close to capturing the success of Nintendo’s little boy wonder. Many games excelled on the system not because of the specs it had, but because those limitations forced developers to get inventive and focus on pushing game design into new areas. Many games still hold up even today. See, modern game developer that lives in cubicle farm, graphics don’t make the game.
Yo-Yo’s
These little things have been around since the dawn of time (Seriously, these things have been around since around 500 BC) and have had their ups and downs with regards to popularity over the years. But they found a huge upswing in polarity during the mid ’90s on many an elementary and middle school playground. I can vividly remember kids vying not only to be the best yo-yoer (Apparently that’s a word or my autocorrect has completely given up with all the made up words I use), but to have the coolest, most totally rad yo-yo on the playground. Then as quick as they came they disappeared into the ether, right alongside Hit Clips and Personal Digital Organizers.
Goosebumps Books
Beware kids, you’re in for a scare with these truly terrifying tales of suspense. This series of books by legendary children’s author R.L. Stine had kids hearts pumping with terror. For many the books were their first forays into literature, and boy were they a treat. While generations before may have had their Nancy Drew’s, Hardy Boys, and even The Boxcar Children (Anyone? Seriously, they lived in a boxcar and solved crime.) us young developing boys, and many girls too, grew up reading this series. Every single book was unique and didn’t require having read any earlier book to enjoy. R.L. Stine even went as far as creating a series of ‘Choose Your Own Adventure’ series of Goosebumps before the series petered out. Ask any elementary school teacher that worked during the ’90s and they’ll gladly recall the thousands of book reports that the Goosebumps series provided.
Video Stores
While there is a fair number of people who call RedBox home, the majority of the population (At least in the big cities) have long since moved onto the streaming bandwagon. Heck, my parents who hate technology, have embraced Netflix, Hulu Plus, Amazon Prime, and HBO Go faster than even I did (I still say LaserDisc is due for a comeback). Blockbuster may still be a name to many, even if it’s just a poor mans Netflix/Redbox, but there was once a time not to long ago when people had to get up and go to a video store. I can still remember driving to the local video store and looking through the racks of 99c rentals (That’s were my love for terrible B-movies came from) while my parents talked with friends over at the new releases. The video store was more than a place to get videos, it was an impromptu meeting place for friends and neighbors that would talk, gossip, and share movie recommendation as the internet wasn’t really a thing. Being lucky enough as a young lad to be able to rent an NES or SNES (When it came around) was the highlight of the week. The only problem was that back then families probably only had a single TV, so I’d have to wait for my parents to watch some boring merchant ivory film and then wait for my sister to watch whatever terrible animated film she rented half a dozen times. God dammit, I just wanted to play WWF Raw in peace!
Microsoft Windows 95
Computers had been a thing before 1995 and I can vividly remember when floppy discs were actually of the floppy variety, but home computing didn’t explode into the mainstream until the advent of Microsoft Windows 95. How much impact did it have? Well, go look at almost any computer at work, school, or home and you’ll more than likely still see a Windows operating system on it (Regardless of what you may think of the OS). Before Windows came about trying to play a game was a 50/50 roll of the dice. See that rack of PC games on the shelf, they sure look pretty amazing compared to their console counterparts, but odds were that before Windows, half of them wouldn’t run on whatever you had at home. Plug And Play made compatibility much easier and gamers rejoiced in unison and then Windows 8 came out and we all cried.
56k Modems
You kids and your fancy WiFi and broadband magic can’t understand how just getting onto the internet required three separate degrees in computers to accomplish. Thanks in part to Windows 95 things got a whole lot easier, but it still wasn’t a cakewalk. Today being reduced to 3G on your phone can be a nightmare, but imagine taking 3G and slowing it down even more and then try to access the internet. How slow was it? Well, YouTube would never be able to exist in the ’90s. Streaming wasn’t even a word in the lexicon at the time. Oh, you want to download that cool song from the net, well, be ready to wait upwards of and hour for it to happen. It took so long to download (Remember that you were using a phone line so nobody could use the phone) that we opted to download a Midi version of our favorite music. Go search for your favorite song right now as a Midi file and you’ll understand the early internet. Oh, and that sound, that horrible, horrible sound when you dialed in. It sounded like two beasts from hell going bareback in the most disgusting way.
Online Gaming
We aren’t talking about fast action FPS action with voice chat and 100 man servers, we aren’t even talking the most basic free-to-play browser-based MMO from China. You would be lucky if you could get two people playing at the same time without the worry of somebody’s call being dropped or a family member picking up the phone ending everything. I can’t tell you how many times my game of Warcraft 2 was disconnected because somebody at either home picked up the damn phone because there would be no way of knowing when people were playing. I remember having to walk into the living room and announce that I would be playing via modem with a friend. If that wasn’t bad enough you should have seen two kids try to set up a game. You’d call each other and talk strategy before connecting. Who would host, who would connect, what kind of game we were playing, how long we had to play, and if anything went wrong (It often did) we’d have to call each other and do it all over again. You can only imagine the noise between ringing phones and modems trying to connect.
Ball Mice
Those of you that got into the PC side of gaming, or just working on a PC general in the past ten or so years may not understand how much work and upkeep something as simple as a computer mouse required. Nowadays everything is laser guided with forty programmable buttons without the need for any cords. Listen here kids, back in the ’90s mice (mouses?) had two buttons and no laser. How then did we get our custom dinosaur Windows cursor to move you ask? Why with the use a small rubberized ball. A computer mouse was a fantastical thing when it came about as before the GUI (Graphical User Interface) everything was done via keyboard input, you know, like they still do it on television and in movies. This rubber ball would roll around on what we called a “Mouse Pad” and this rolling would in turn roll some wheels inside that would then transfer the input to the PC. Sounds easy enough, but what do you to clean your mouse today? Odds are you don’t or at best give it a quick blow (Stop your dirty thought right this minute). Back in the ’90s you’d have to undo the mouse, unscrew the ring holding the mouse, remove the ball, don’t lose the ball, wipe down the ball, try to resist bouncing the ball, pull out off the gunk from the gears inside the mouse, find the ball that rolled off the desk, put it all back together, and then you’re ready to go for another day or so. Fun! Oh, and those gigantic “Track Ball” mice that were all the rage for a little while can go fuck right the hell off.
Tamagotchi
These things were widely popular among the young girl demographic, so much so that they even came out with a totally radical one for boys featuring Digimon. During middle school these little virtual pets were such a distraction that the school I attended flat out banned the damn things. Many a girl shed tears and mourned many a dead Tamagotchi. You see, these little guys were essentially the baby dolls that our parents played with as kids. These little blocks of pixels hatch and require the player to raise them into what I assume is adulthood. I don’t actually know as I don’t remember a girl ever raising the damn thing past infancy. They would usually die after the initial poop everywhere phase. You had three buttons that you used to feed, clean, and play with your Tamagotchi. The unit had an internal clock so it would react depending on the time of day. It would sleep at night, wake up in the morning, and demand food during regular intervals. It was a simplistic toy, but pretty neat in execution. I had a Digimon version of these toys that allowed me to raise a monster and then touch my Digimon unit against a friends and watch a battle. Neat idea then, pretty neat idea now.
Thanks for letting me indulge in a bit of ’90s nostalgia. I hope you enjoyed our little journey and I’ll be sure to see you again when I get into part two of this ongoing series. What’s in store next? Who knows! If VH1 could drag out their series for eighty bazillion episodes I’m sure I can do the same. Now, if you’ll excuse me there is a Nintendo 64 calling my name.
About Author
