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10 THINGS EVERY NINETIES GAMER REMEMBERS

14/3/2016

23 Comments

 
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If you're a gamer of a certain age, it's likely you remember what an exciting decade the 1990s was.

Those were the years where video games became the major industry we recognise today. They saw the rise of the PlayStation, the fall of Sega, and saw the dawn of Internet gaming.

Here are ten things that everybody who played games in the 1990s will never forget.

10. A FRIEND FROM SCHOOL COPYING A LOAD OF GAMES ONTO ONE OF THESE FOR YOU.
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In the 1980s games were so simple that it was possible to put over 1,000 of them on one C90 cassette tape. By the mid-90s, games had become so complicated and advanced that cassettes were no long big enough to store even one game. Most schoolyard pirates instead bought one of these machines, and reeled off copies of the hottest new games on request.

However, they had to be careful to conceal them beneath special foil sheathes, so that they couldn't be picked up by the Federation Against Copyright Theft detection vans.
9. SHOOTING SOMEBODY BECAUSE THEY HAD A DIFFERENT CONSOLE TO YOU.
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Video game-inspired violence became a hot topic in the 1990s - and little wonder given how many of us shot somebody in the face or leg, simply because they owned a different console to us. Few computer fairs between 1992 and 1999 didn't end in some manner of bloodshed. Looking back, it seems somewhat ridiculous now!
8. BECOMING A WRITER FOR CVG.
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CVG famously recruited its writing staff from the illiterate ranks of its readers, and with everybody reading CVG, it was only a matter of time before you got the call. Most of us remember our time at EMAP fondly, though a few of the longer-running staff were right arseholes.
7. TOPPING UP YOUR CONSOLE BEES
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These days, consoles no longer need to be topped up once every month or so with bees. Not so back in the day, where many of us would spend our weekends foraging for bees, or visiting a bee shop, to ensure we never ran low. Of course, you had to be careful not to accidentally fill your console with wasps - otherwise it would start to work in reverse.
6. JUSTIFYING VIDEO GAMES TO THIS SOFTLY SPOKEN MAN.
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Nobody knows who he was, but he went door-to-door in 1997, eventually asking every gamer in the UK to justify video games to him. Whether he ever had them justified to his satisfaction isn't known, but few of us will ever forget his kind face, softly-spoken voice, and the way in which he'd thank us with a slightly creepy stroke of our hand, whilst mewling.
5. COMPARING THUMB DAMAGE WITH FRIENDS.
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Thumb damage has been a thing of the past ever since they invented Finger Paste(tm), but that wasn't the case in the 1990s - when thumb damage was an occurrence for most gamers. At one point, entire hospital wards were dedicated to ailments as diverse as thumb epilepsy, thumb rot, and "thumby".
4. TAKING YOUR CONSOLE TO BE WASHED.
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Of course, modern consoles are self-cleaning, due to being filled with armies of little robotic nannies. In the 1990s, the machines would become so gummed up with that foul-scented yellow spume - for which scientists never came up with a pronounceable name - that we'd need to take them off to be professionally washed every couple of weeks.
3. FOAMING AT THE MOUTH BECAUSE YOU PLAYED TOO MANY GAMES SIMULTANEOUSLY.
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These days, we all wear special anti-brain-damage spectacles whilst gaming, but until 2001 most gamers could've said to have belched up litres of pink foam after playing several games simultaneously. Fortunately, the Special Reserve catalogue offered a line of attractive gaming bibs, emblazoned with cool slogans like "Foamin' Empire!" and "Totally Foamin' Dudes!".
2. WHEN DAVE PERRY REMOVED HIS BANDANA ON GAMESMASTER LIVE.
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We all used to watch GamesMaster, so few of us will ever forget the late-night live special edition where Dominik Diamond's co-host Dave Perry removed his trademark bandana, to reveal a living colony of miniature Turkish mayors inhabiting his scalp.
1. WHEN SEGA AND NINTENDO REALLY WENT HEAD TO HEAD.
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After more than five years of corporate rivalry, the bosses of Sega and Nintendo decided to settle who was best once and for all at the 1995 E3 trade show. Executives for both companies fought it out in a special ring in front of thousands of braying attendees. When the dust had settled, six people from each company had been decapitated, and judges declared no overall winner.
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23 Comments
Clive Peppard
14/3/2016 12:55:21 pm

I once put hornets in my console by accident, it ran at 100 FPS on organic system architecture that was simple, cheap and easy to mass produce. I took my findings to Nintendo, they killed my hornets and used their position in the global vespian world to effectively end this tecnology before it could be launched. But you just know Nintendo HQ is run on Hornet architecture - you can hear the distinctive buzz at their "server farm" just outside Hokaido.

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gaijintendo
14/3/2016 01:04:54 pm

I remember the Sega vs Nintendo keynote the year before, where they both went head to head presenting their new wares using a single microphone.
So spitty!

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Spiney O'Sullivan
14/3/2016 06:39:11 pm

If you check out the YouTube video of that, you can see Rad Barry of Mega Gameblast Radazine down near the stage-front towelling himself off afterwards. It's the last recorded footage of him before he was gunned down 10 minutes later by irate fans of the short-lived Garyelectric V100 over what they considered a hit-piece in the latest issue of MGR. Joke's on them, though, history shows that the Garyelectric v100 DID actually have the worst port of "Badical Ninjas III: Bogus to the Max" after all!

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Jabberwoc
14/3/2016 02:02:27 pm

If anybody is wondering what happened to the Softly Spoken Man - he's alive and well! He's been living at the bottom of my garden for the last twenty years. Every evening he comes to the patio for his meal of dog food and bread and is often seen staring through the window at night as I watch the X-Files. He never speaks now and smells of marzipan.

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Tinker's Cuss
14/3/2016 03:25:19 pm

I absolutely loved the Nintendo/Sega pagga - using the Spock/Kirk (Spirk?) fight music from "Amok Time" was a stroke of genius.

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Minglefingler
14/3/2016 03:33:28 pm

I remember the naked fat men (twins I think) that used to sit on you and your oppenent's heads during competitive games of Mortal Kombat. They used to chat sadly about trying to lose weight by "doing aerobics" and it was all very civilised unless you were on the wrong end of a flawless victory, in which case the one squatting on you would fart several days worth of curry stench onto your screaming eyeballs. The one that was born first was called Gary Oldman and his yonger borther was called Gary Newman, Looking back I suppose it was odd that two siblings both shared the same forename.

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Mr Sweary
14/3/2016 05:02:41 pm

The worst thing about the whole console shoot-em-up-not-just-within-the-safe-confines-of-an-imaginary-game scene was that often after a Mexican stand-off style slug out the people involved would shake hands, put those hands in ice for later re-attatchment (remember kids, this was in the days before roadside bionic repair outfit equipped Paramedics on hoverboards) and then go after people who had NO console in unison.

I once found myself on the blood and guts end of one of these 'kiss and make up' attacks, and just to make it worse Mary Whitehouse, then at the peak of her meddling in things she didn't understand powers, just laughed me down in an all purpose foreign accent.

To this day I feel slightly foolish for not lying about having a console, but not if the feeling involves anything below the knees!

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Spiney O'Sullivan
14/3/2016 06:12:26 pm

Kids today have it too easy. Not only do games now all have low difficulty curves, tutorials and pay-to-win mechanics, but they can play all the best 90s games on emulators without having to tune in an RF unit and then place the "Sega prongs" (or "Sprongs") under their eyelids to play like we did. Sadly it's almost impossible to find a non-rusted pair of official Sprongs on eBay, and the cheap third-party ones have been known to detach retinas.

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Kelvin Green link
14/3/2016 06:17:32 pm

As someone who lost all three thumbs and half a kidney attempting Ryu's famous "How Do, Ken?" on the Mega Drive's razor-sharp d-pad, I am offended by the implied flippancy of 5.

If you wish to avoid a lengthy legal battle, Mr Biffo, you will send me the ocean mug from picture 8.

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Spiney O'Sullivan
14/3/2016 09:58:34 pm

You've been in the noughties too long, mate. Back in the 90s instead of crying about your lost thumbs you'd have been told to get some Lad Culture. Read a copy of FHM, swig an alcopop,

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Spiney O'Sullivan
14/3/2016 10:00:46 pm

... go to a rave in the Ministry of Sound to listen to some Madchester Britpop, and get over it like a Lad.

Ben
14/3/2016 06:39:14 pm

I still have my nineties reflexes and will, to this very day, literally bludgeon any man, woman or child who deins to express a console preference contrary to my own.

Literally.

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Damon link
14/3/2016 08:17:51 pm

Where I grew up, on the East Coast of the US we didn't see as many magnetic tape games as the UK home market just cartridges of Nintendo and Sega and the discs of the Playstation. CDs were expensive then so running a Playstation copying scheme got you all the lunch money in the school but you had to hide the discs between bread so the U.S. Department of Copyright's 'ground agents' who were out of touch and kept telling us to "not duplicate that betamax". We called them 'Betas' because they would always say that. Anyway we hid our copied discs between bread and you would "trade" a "sandwich". Platformers were ham while fighting games were bologna. I know we had names for the other games but I don't remember them now. A game "with mustard" was said to be very difficult while one on "wonderbread" was a title you couldn't miss out on. A "whole grain game" was usually a kind of crap game no one wanted and only an original copy was worth trading in to the "Deli master" who had eyes trained to see the etchings on the optical discs under infrared light. See what they would do is they would flash a remote control quickly to pick up the etchings then use their dad's razor to copy them into another disc. Kids would spend hours on this in their basements. Luckily parents just thought we were huffing paint or something and not committing what has since become a very serious crime in this country.

I also recall the cartage games were "Thick Slice" with Nintendo as the "Thick Italian" and Sega as "Thick French" though with the Dreamcast that changed to "Thin French". They were easier to copy since you could just steal your mom's soldering iron (remember when every household needed one of those? Nowadays you call up the soldering man to do it!) and scavenge the dumpsters behind the Radio Shack. They needed more legwork but less skill so they were worth less than the discs. Many families manages to afford more originals of carts so the cart kids made more of a sharing and trading swapping copies rather than the Playstation kids who would sell their homemade copies and hoard them. All in all I think us cart kids had more comradeship though at the time you just see the PS Delimaster with twelve brownies at lunch and you never thought years later he'd be missing one leg due to diabetes in a trailer off the highway you take to work (Yeah Jeff the only women touching you now is your nurse, want another brownie or can't you roll yourself over to it?). Clearly we fondly remember those days fondly and it was a bonding experience for all and we are in no way bitter or still upset about the way the PS kids talked down to us.

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Mr Sweary
14/3/2016 10:00:22 pm

It's a little known fact that Subway started out as a shady 'warez' provider, but one day someone asked for a hot dog, and, well you know the rest of the story provided you've read 'The Subway Story'.

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Damon link
15/3/2016 01:19:05 am

I only got my warez from my local dealer. I only support mom & pop gray market operations, none of those big-box chain ones. If you don't know your dealer by his street handle you're not getting personal warez service!

Alastair Ward
14/3/2016 08:25:05 pm

Sorry to be all serious but we were well over magnetic tapes in the 90s, even in N Ireland. It was all CDs and carts.

But yeah, the bandana had to appear on the list.

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Mr Sweary
14/3/2016 09:54:26 pm

Of course, the Spectrum +4, how we all laughed over here as they threw them still boxed onto the pyre, goaded on by an as yet untitled Alan Sugar.

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Minglefingler
14/3/2016 10:50:15 pm

Hmm, here's an Alan Sugar fact that most poeple seem to have forgotten. As a boy, Alan Sugar had terrible trouble with his bowels, he couldn't walk more than a few feet without shitting himself, a fact that he found mortifying especially as his family were poor and could only afford to clothe him in loose fitting shorts. Underwear unfortunately was too expensive due to the recent Boxer rebellion driving prices up considerably so Alan was mocked by all and sundry for leaving his droppings everywhere.
Anyway, around this time a bunch of monkeys invaded London and were terrorising the gentlefolk, whooping and screaming for bananas. Luckily Bananarama had played a show near Alan's home a few days previously and the enterprising lad had made off with a few tonnes of ripe bananas which he planned to sell to the monkeys. sadly Alan's greed for fresh fruit overcame him and he ate all the bananas late in the evening whilst waiting for the monkeys to awaken.
Horrified at his lack of self control, Alan paced the capital, shitting furiously as he berated himself. The next morning though the monkeys upon rising gazed down upon cobbled streets littered with Alan's stools which were now coloured a bright yellow due to his recent overindulgences. The hungry creatures lept upon their spoils assuming, that the foul objects were indeed bananas. The air was filled with simian howls of disgust as the foolish creatures discovered their costly mistake and as one, fled London, never to return. A few made their way to Hartlepool only to be hung by suspicious locals.
A cheerful cockney type recognised Alan as the author of the monkeys' downfall and approached the lad saying "'Ere mate, you don't 'alf shit gold." A commendation which the future Lord Sugar unfortunately chose to believe. And here we are today.

Chinnyhill
14/3/2016 11:37:02 pm

Another 1990's gaming article where Mr Biffo ignores the Amiga due to his 25 year vendetta against David Pleasence the jolly bearded head of Commodore.

THE AMIGA WILL RISE! ALL HAIL THE AMIGA!

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Clevedon Mo'fo
15/3/2016 11:24:20 am

Has it ever occurred to you that the Illuminati are the REAL reason he doesn't (or more accurately cannot, without genuine fear for his life) ever mention the Atari? 25 years just so happens to be the same length of time that 25 'E3' mind control events fit into - coincidence?? Yeah right. Keep cheering for Sonic sheeple!!

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colincidence link
15/3/2016 01:56:47 pm

3 = Cumberbatch

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the C man
16/3/2016 01:40:32 pm

the nineties, sega, sony, cd discs so shiny,
Madchester, sarah cracknell,lads mag, oh crikey.
Death of 8 bits, tapes and multiload press play,
now sold for fortunes on eBay today.

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Mr Sweary
18/3/2016 08:13:44 pm

You are Kate Tempest and I claim my 50p.

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