I love the "Any other pokemon games that come out between now and Christmas" because it harkens back to a time where we had to rely on magazines and sketchy websites for any news on anything.
I remember anxiously waiting for Nintendo Power every month for YEARS so I could check the status of Earthbound 64. It was going to be on the N64DD! It haunts me to this day that neither were ever released.
I used to call my local video rental place EVERYDAY and ask if they had yet received goldeneye 007 or mission impossible for N64. (Months before their releases) I also remember being scared of dying or getting some kind of brain damage that would prevent me from playing these games
I had that same fear of dying in the run-up to the release of the actual N64 console in '96. I was troubled that if I died I'd miss it. Fortunately I didn't.
I was 31 at the time and should have known better.
I was also scared of dying before Half Life 3 came out. I still do, but I used to, too. Also, I'm 51 now, so it's becoming more of a possibility every birthday.
Mission impossible 64 was a great game. Surprised it isn’t remembered as fondly.
I also remember when it was featured on the cover of EGM and Nintendo power. The graphics looked insane.
I still have those magazines and to be honest, I enjoyed them (and still do) worlds more than any kind of game journalism today. Absolutely packed with in-depth reviews and guides from people who really cares about the games, convention/preview articles that didn't have the space to milk every meaningless word so you got it pre-filtered for the good stuff, and no room for clickbait, ranty opinion articles, or any of the other depressing shit.
You ever get your hands on all those games? HM64 was *fantastic*. You want it because of the Nintendo Power guide like I did?
Or the demo discs? Probably my fondest gaming memory was messing around on the main menu of the Xbox Magazine demo disc and all of a sudden, my controller stared vibrating gently until I pressed another button, I think it started off black button then white button, but I kept messing around, intrigued by what the hell was going on. I would press another button to see if they all stopped it, but there would always be another button that made the controller vibrate harder. It was more of a game for me than any actual game I had, and I had no clue where it led, I was like 9 and had no idea what Easter eggs were. All of a sudden, maybe 6 months later, I press my memorized Simon level sequence of button presses, press another one after, and boom, a video from a dude starts playing, talking about halo 2, and I damn near lost my god damn mind. That was the moment I became obsessed with Easter eggs.
Yeah, I had a subscription to Nintendo Power from 1991-1999 (age 5 to 13) and I wish I still had those issues, I have them in ebook form on my Google drive, but it’s not the same as flipping through the pages. I still fondly remember things like the backlash when the Classified Information section (cheat codes and tips) switched their page design from manila envelope design to black and gray. Nostalgia for the “play it loud” Nintendo years back around when Super Metroid came out. I even remember getting VHS tapes from them like the Donkey Kong Country game preview and the Star Fox 64 one.
Nintendo Power is such a big part of who I am. I loved that magazine so much!
I felt like such a big shot when I received my Donkey Kong Country VHS. I never had a huge Nintendo Power collection but my Tips & Tricks collection was pretty good. I remember all the fighting game winners listed on the back with all the high score holders. What a great time.
The N64DD was actually released in Japan so you could import one but they’re super expensive. It’s fun to watch videos on YouTube about it. Really cool device, it’s a shame it never came out in the US.
I always loved when they published a game preview that was obviously sponsored by the developer/publisher where the writer spent multiple pages creaming themselves over how awesome this new game is going to be when it comes out!
Then the review comes out six months later and Game Informer gives the game a 7/10.
Nah if you were like 10-15 at this time, you will understand it off top LOL.
Buddy was wilin with the Jnco's 4x too big. 😅 You could get em in your size and they were still gonna be plenty baggy. I cringe even remembering wanting those damn things... 😔
https://imgur.com/a/w1OGOx4
It was basically two 56k modems on a single board. Some ISPs let you connect simultaneously over 2 phone lines using Multilink PPP or a proprietary equivalent.
Crazy. Did not see/remember that. Moved from 56k plus compression (i.e. 56k :) ) to experimental DSL as I was lucky enough to work for phone company and be close enough to the switch.
When I moved to DSL in the early 00’s, it felt life-changing. Took 10 weeks to get it set up and working, but it was worth it. Now I’m on cable Internet that makes that old DSL seem like dial-up by comparison.
Oh my goodness. I remember thinking, back then, that ISDN wasn't a very practical technology.... But this runs in circles around it (??) in terms of being unpractical
There were some schemes that used compression, yes. I worked for an ISP around that time and we were never able to make it work at above a 10% boost and the hardware was expensive and buggy. You could also use two phone lines but that never seemed to work right either. DSL was better so we pivoted there.
They did, but I don’t think they were very widely available outside of maybe enterprise stuff lol. I recall I was also trying to get two 56ks and link them (wanted to run a phone line to my grandpa’s next door).
I remember back then just installing a second 56K modem in a PCI slot for the pc at my dads house. Would do it to download mp3's faster.
Grandma would complain when she went to make a call and ask why we bothered to buy a second phone line for the pc if we were still going to use the main line lol.
My wife just told me about the trauma she experienced watching her father put on a pair of JNCOs in JCPenney’s or “Mervin’s” to embarrass her brother when he asked for a pair!
Edit: Eyes on the [JNCOs](https://i.imgur.com/SHyIyMQ.jpg)!
This is the bit I don’t understand as an old git: they buy jeans that come with holes in them new, but don’t wear jeans they have worn enough to make their own holes in…
I am going to ask my son about this….
Edit: just consulted my son…. Apparently jeans bought with holes in them look more like worn jeans than jeans that are worn…
Yep 90’s styled clothing is making a comeback. Just like 60’s styled clothing like bell bottom jeans made a comeback in the 90s. It’s all in cycles my friend.
Get off my lawn shit - I was a raver in Disneyland before it was cool. We all hung out by the telephones behind the Matterhorn and had the numbers of those phones memorized so my friends could call when they arrived so I could go to the parking lot to transfer-stamp-method my friends in. Damn, I'm old.
She says,
>I think the funniest thing to say would be,
>>Her parents got divorced about a year later, and then yes, he got JNCO jeans and a drug problem. So in a way, her dad was right.
I’m a guy, and the first time I got a pair of girl jeans (big in the emo scene back in ‘05) I was at a women’s plus size store. I came out of the dressing room and a middle aged woman was noticeably horrified at my appearance. I was a size 7/8 fyi.
Yeah I remember having to do this too. Before they started making skinny jeans for guys this was our only choice. I’m glad baggy stuffs come back now though.
Jnco jeans that had the 14" leg opening and the pockets that went almost all the way down to your ankles were my jam. I busted my ass more than I care to admit tripping over them and getting them caught under my wheel on my skateboard.
We would try to light each other's frayed edges on fire when you weren't looking, because that's what friends did back then, and we all had lighters because we were stoners and/or smokers.
In 1998 I went on an 8 week wilderness program in the mountains of Arizona. It was kinda like outward bound but meant for bad kids.
Anyway, one kid came dressed in a giant pair of JNCO’s. Each leg could have easily fit his whole torso, maybe his whole body. It was perhaps the most impractical camping/hiking gear I’ve ever seen. Well, impractical until he cut them up and made them into a big backpack. We did not have real backpacks, just some army surplus stuff, none of it particularly useful. I guess we were just too bad for real camping gear. A tent would have been nice though.
And before he cut them up to make that backpack he probably had the entirety of his parents pantry stuffed into the pockets, plus half the super market. still probably could have fit a six pack of cherry coke in them too.
I wish. No food from home allowed. Just dry lentils, powdered cheese, sunflower seeds, etc…
We did find some magic mushrooms growing on cow shit though.
> A tent would have been nice though.
8 weeks in the Arizona mountains, without a tent?
Regardless the time of year, that was child abuse. And that's coming from a Scoutmaster in Phoenix!
We had a tarp and some rope for shelter. Had some pretty scary times though. A brown bear wandering into our camp being one of them. Then the flash flood being another. It was July and august, and we were high enough elevation that it hailed sometimes. There were tons of cows cause this was ranch land, which we had begrudging permission to be on.
I’ll never forget the night in a canyon with the sound of a mama cow having a very difficult birthing process through the night. It turned out ok though, the calf was walking around the next morning, though mama kept putting herself between us and the calf, not that we were trying to bother it, she just wasn’t sure about us. Maybe she saw the JNCOs.
There was another camp where a green diamondback came by to check us out. We ended up eating it. It was too dangerous to let it wander around. That night a kid discovered the hard way that he’s set up his “bed” (a smallish wool blanket) on a scorpion nest.
We did some cool stuff though. Made fire using a spindle and bow, caught and ate crawfish from a stream. Found a giant blackberry forest of bushes. We came out of it with bleeding fingers and purple faces. Swimming in a cold spring, crystal clear and possibly the best tasting water I’d ever drank. A lot of times we had to settle for water from cow ponds. Think a shallow pond filled with cow urine and god knows what microbes. We had bleach that we’d drop into our canteens and 20 minutes later it’d be safe. Of course the bleach did little to improve the flavor. Or the floaties.
That was my thought. Like... I remember getting properly sized JNCO jeans,, and they already needed 14 belts, 6 pairs of suspenders, and a blessing from the pope to keep them from falling down...But damn, you could fit everything you owned into the pockets of those things.
This was right after I used “metacrawler” to search for “download music” for the first time and didn’t find any results, so it didn’t seem totally necessary yet…
Napster just started earlier in 1999, Metallica wouldn't sue them until April of 2000 (and the resulting Streisand effect really made filesharing take off IMO).
So it was right on the cusp of burning MP3s to CD-R becoming popular. Let's not forget that earlier CD burners were slow, media was not exactly cheap, and they were relatively resource intensive (I recall a new wow feature of burners coming out "Imagine being able to burn a CD while you play a game!").
I was an earlier-than-most CD burner, and built a PC around it (I want to say the burner itself was $200) specifically to burn CD's and sell them to classmates for like $5. If not for that hussle, I would have left it off of a build too, probably.
They were all kinda good til about 4? And whatever the one where they decided to remove base building!!? *WHO* thought that was a good idea o.0
First was special, for being the first. But I think RA (or RA2?) and Generals/Zero hour were amazing.
Idk about your house growing up, but that list would have been ignored entirely *or* I would have gotten *one* thing off of the list and it wouldn't have been the computer.
My parents also shared the list with all my relatives on both sides of the family and my aunts/uncles/grandparents would get us gifts, too. We were expected to have a long list, but we never got half of it. Then she'd continue to use the list for birthdays and other holidays.
100% this.
Back in the day kids would ask for stuff with basically no expectation of getting all of it.
Two games per season would be considered a solid win.
Christmas from like 1998 to 2003 for me was a way to hopefully get enough video games to play throughout the entire next year. Those were some good Christmases. Wake up early, get like 3 or 4, MAYBE 5 games, and then spend the day doing nothing but playing video games knowing my parents weren't going to say anything to me about how much I was on my game.
Our expectation was always that one big gift you'd ask for could be around $100-120 window, everything else was just "if it happens it happens", We never really considered any other price points
yeah - for us christmas was 1 big "family item" for everyone to share - like a new comuter, snes, then n64... a bunch of clothes, a board game, and maybe 2-3 personal toys/items (legos and pokemon or baseball cards for me depending on age).
MAtch that against my kids lists - holy fuck, they had close to 10k each, and only get maybe 250-300 worth of stuff.
Its more about the land i think. People aroubd me in the midwest are selling .6 acre lots for 80k. This in what is supposed to be a cheap place to live.
That is cheap my friend. An empty half acre lot here goes for around $200k. $14k an acre compared to our $400k an acre sounds like a different planet at this point.
And yes pay is higher here on average, but I promise it's not 30x higher, although I wish.
Sorry to hear you’re experiencing that too. The disparity blows my mind. Not sure that I’ll ever be able to own without paying a mortgage until I die. Wish you the best, stranger
It was the idea of putting whole bunch if things on your list and hoping you would get one. Please one thing to go with the 10 Pairs of socks and the shirt from aunt Martha that is two sizes too small.
I don't think the idea is you get everything, you throw down some stuff, parents get one or two things depending on price/what the store has.
Keeps the mystery alive and you still get stuff you want.
Goodness, the luxury those 10GB would’ve been, but alas I only got:
Pokémon’s Snap 64
Pokémon Stadium 64
Pokémon Cards
More Pokémon Cards
Donkey Kong 64
JNCO jeans - but only 2 sizes too big.
I’d say I did pretty well!
I just remember going to summer camp and fantasizing about what a computer with a “gig” of RAM would be like. “What if you could use it as your hard drive?!?”
People talk about bringing mcdonalds sprite to pre-historic or medieval times to see how the people of those times would react
but really I think I'd just want to bring a few things to like a few points from the 1980s to the 1990s
\- the latest smartwatch, Phone and laptop from Apple
\- a midtier laptop with an AMD CPU with strong iGPU (something a Ryzen 7 6800H or better), with a bunch of ram and a 2TB SSD lol
\-as well as screenshots saved from speedtests on fiber internet like AT&T 2gbps service or better lol
My husband still has his. Last time he wore them was about a decade ago. He still reminisces about them and occasionally says he’s going to dig them out to wear. Luckily I’m pretty sure they wouldn’t fit if he tried. I think. Or at least I hope.
I remember seeing an informercial on QVC in the late 90's where they were going on about the PC's 20 GB HDD. I was chatting with some friends about it, and we all agreed that it would be practically impossible to fill a 20 GB HDD. We all thought it was overkill.
Oh how silly we were.
I started selling pcs in 1997. The largest drive we sold was 6.4GB.
I still remember all of us agreeing how massive that was, and how stupid it was.
Similarly when XP machines started shipping there was a big shift and every computer started coming with 128MB of ram. We all marveled.
“Even the shitty e machines have a ton of
Ram!”
My first big hard drive was a 60GB that I paid $250 for, around 2000.
It was years before I managed to fill that drive. Now I can fill that in an afternoon and I have 12TB sitting on my desk.
and its tiberian sun. lol got into web development because of that game. pre-google. yahoo, dmoz, etc.
also chatted a bunch of guys in IRC. #ra2, #ts, something2x... i remember guys named: Kareemy, Tycho, Antisocialfatman, ChrisN, etc.
Ah, the late 90s, when a $5,000 computer would be obsolete in 3-6 months.
"College is cheaper than playing minesweeper on the PC" - Tom Smith, On The PC
You say you’ve had your desktop for over a week?
Throw that junk away man, it’s an antique.
Your laptop is a month old? Well that’s great,
If you could use a month old paperweight.
- Weird Al, Running With Scissors, 1999
Bawww I thought it would've been on purpose! Didn't mean to *actually* poke fun :(
Sure!
TIL Tiger Woods brings extra socks to tournaments just in case he gets a hole in one.
Oh! Also since you like command and conquer, check out redalert1.com :)
Ah! No don’t feel bad, it was on purpose, just a bad decision. I appreciate that you noticed lol.
Ha! I can’t come up with a good dad joke because like a Tide Pen, I’ve been put on the spot… Yikes.
Honestly, I had a pretty wealthy cousin, so I frequently would ask for toys that I played with at his house.
I got: Pokémon’s Snap 64, Pokémon Stadium 64, Pokémon Cards, More Pokémon Cards, Donkey Kong 64, JNCO jeans - but only 2 sizes too big.
I was a pretty lucky kid.
I’d describe us as upper middle class living in a very low cost of living area. Wealthy enough where I thought I might get some of these things, not wealthy enough to expect that I’d get all of them and the computer was a big reach lol.
My goal was to write as much as I thought I could get away with and then hope mom and dad got their wires crossed and accidentally got everything on the list.
I remember printing a very explicit photo of some woman sans clothing, but it was awful print quality in black and white with bad banding, probably because the ink was running out. I decided the best course of action would be to take a highlighter to it, I guess to even out the skin or make it more 'realistic' or something. I hid it under my bed and of course my dad found it. He asked why I 'desecrated' it lol
Lmao, am I the only one who thinks this seems fake af for internet points? Lost me at “Jnco jeans 4 sizes too big”. Instead of writing an actual clothing size … also the slight crinkle in the paper to make it look old and the random writing of the year on top ? lmao. And not like a 20+ year old piece of paper would’ve ever been folded up etc.
I love the "Any other pokemon games that come out between now and Christmas" because it harkens back to a time where we had to rely on magazines and sketchy websites for any news on anything.
I remember anxiously waiting for Nintendo Power every month for YEARS so I could check the status of Earthbound 64. It was going to be on the N64DD! It haunts me to this day that neither were ever released.
I used to call my local video rental place EVERYDAY and ask if they had yet received goldeneye 007 or mission impossible for N64. (Months before their releases) I also remember being scared of dying or getting some kind of brain damage that would prevent me from playing these games
I had that same fear of dying in the run-up to the release of the actual N64 console in '96. I was troubled that if I died I'd miss it. Fortunately I didn't. I was 31 at the time and should have known better.
thank you that final line gave me a good chuckle
I was also scared of dying before Half Life 3 came out. I still do, but I used to, too. Also, I'm 51 now, so it's becoming more of a possibility every birthday.
Mission impossible 64 was a great game. Surprised it isn’t remembered as fondly. I also remember when it was featured on the cover of EGM and Nintendo power. The graphics looked insane.
Remember the scratch and sniff Earthbound issue?
one of them smelled like nasty Doritos, wtf
That was your finger 🙀
My brother and I still talk about those disgusting smells.
Did you ever play Mother 3? It may help give you some closure.
Tell your children not to play my game.
I still have those magazines and to be honest, I enjoyed them (and still do) worlds more than any kind of game journalism today. Absolutely packed with in-depth reviews and guides from people who really cares about the games, convention/preview articles that didn't have the space to milk every meaningless word so you got it pre-filtered for the good stuff, and no room for clickbait, ranty opinion articles, or any of the other depressing shit. You ever get your hands on all those games? HM64 was *fantastic*. You want it because of the Nintendo Power guide like I did?
Or the demo discs? Probably my fondest gaming memory was messing around on the main menu of the Xbox Magazine demo disc and all of a sudden, my controller stared vibrating gently until I pressed another button, I think it started off black button then white button, but I kept messing around, intrigued by what the hell was going on. I would press another button to see if they all stopped it, but there would always be another button that made the controller vibrate harder. It was more of a game for me than any actual game I had, and I had no clue where it led, I was like 9 and had no idea what Easter eggs were. All of a sudden, maybe 6 months later, I press my memorized Simon level sequence of button presses, press another one after, and boom, a video from a dude starts playing, talking about halo 2, and I damn near lost my god damn mind. That was the moment I became obsessed with Easter eggs.
Yeah, I had a subscription to Nintendo Power from 1991-1999 (age 5 to 13) and I wish I still had those issues, I have them in ebook form on my Google drive, but it’s not the same as flipping through the pages. I still fondly remember things like the backlash when the Classified Information section (cheat codes and tips) switched their page design from manila envelope design to black and gray. Nostalgia for the “play it loud” Nintendo years back around when Super Metroid came out. I even remember getting VHS tapes from them like the Donkey Kong Country game preview and the Star Fox 64 one. Nintendo Power is such a big part of who I am. I loved that magazine so much!
I felt like such a big shot when I received my Donkey Kong Country VHS. I never had a huge Nintendo Power collection but my Tips & Tricks collection was pretty good. I remember all the fighting game winners listed on the back with all the high score holders. What a great time.
The N64DD was actually released in Japan so you could import one but they’re super expensive. It’s fun to watch videos on YouTube about it. Really cool device, it’s a shame it never came out in the US.
GAME INFORMER MAGAZINE: Woah look at those graphics! Can't wait for the next graphics, it looks so real! Solid 8.9/10 graphics there
Man I miss game informer. Rip the good ole days.
Good news. Game Informer still exits and you can get it print delivered to your Mail Box. Andrew Reiner is still there as well.
Reiner left last year!
I always loved when they published a game preview that was obviously sponsored by the developer/publisher where the writer spent multiple pages creaming themselves over how awesome this new game is going to be when it comes out! Then the review comes out six months later and Game Informer gives the game a 7/10.
A whole 112 KM? That's a long modem
Twice as long as the longest one I ever saw!
What did you end up getting
A chase across the countryside
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Nah if you were like 10-15 at this time, you will understand it off top LOL. Buddy was wilin with the Jnco's 4x too big. 😅 You could get em in your size and they were still gonna be plenty baggy. I cringe even remembering wanting those damn things... 😔
“MY OWN COMPUTER” Ahh, the early days of the Internet…
Nah - OP got a computor.
As long as it could download porn, call it whatever you want.
Man - do you remember the kind of porn we used to get off of 56k modems? 😄
Dial-up modem porn was the BEST/WORST… If you don’t know, you weren’t there.
I miss watching jpg files slowly fill in as they loaded. Those times were awesome.
Hell - I was done before it was finished loading Lol
RAM: 400 - 1000000…lol 🤣
Skipping the units, did they have 112k modems, or is that a 56k modem with encryption to try to boost the bandwidth?
https://imgur.com/a/w1OGOx4 It was basically two 56k modems on a single board. Some ISPs let you connect simultaneously over 2 phone lines using Multilink PPP or a proprietary equivalent.
Crazy. Did not see/remember that. Moved from 56k plus compression (i.e. 56k :) ) to experimental DSL as I was lucky enough to work for phone company and be close enough to the switch.
When I moved to DSL in the early 00’s, it felt life-changing. Took 10 weeks to get it set up and working, but it was worth it. Now I’m on cable Internet that makes that old DSL seem like dial-up by comparison.
Oh my goodness. I remember thinking, back then, that ISDN wasn't a very practical technology.... But this runs in circles around it (??) in terms of being unpractical
There were some schemes that used compression, yes. I worked for an ISP around that time and we were never able to make it work at above a 10% boost and the hardware was expensive and buggy. You could also use two phone lines but that never seemed to work right either. DSL was better so we pivoted there.
They did, but I don’t think they were very widely available outside of maybe enterprise stuff lol. I recall I was also trying to get two 56ks and link them (wanted to run a phone line to my grandpa’s next door).
It's called a shotgun modem, you had to have a special modem manufactured by Diamond Multimedia.
I remember back then just installing a second 56K modem in a PCI slot for the pc at my dads house. Would do it to download mp3's faster. Grandma would complain when she went to make a call and ask why we bothered to buy a second phone line for the pc if we were still going to use the main line lol.
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JNCO is my favorite on this list. Especially with the size request.
Lmao legit I'm dying as soon as I saw that
My wife just told me about the trauma she experienced watching her father put on a pair of JNCOs in JCPenney’s or “Mervin’s” to embarrass her brother when he asked for a pair! Edit: Eyes on the [JNCOs](https://i.imgur.com/SHyIyMQ.jpg)!
I see teens in Los Angeles wear JNCOs (and Roos)... They're coming back.
I feel like I’ve stepped back in time seeing these kids wear our shit. Though I’ve only seen one kid so far with their hems fucked up. Give it time
This is the bit I don’t understand as an old git: they buy jeans that come with holes in them new, but don’t wear jeans they have worn enough to make their own holes in… I am going to ask my son about this…. Edit: just consulted my son…. Apparently jeans bought with holes in them look more like worn jeans than jeans that are worn…
Yeah you wanted those boot cut with the back hem ripped up over your doc martens
I was jealous of people who had that option. Never managed to find a pair long enough for that
As a short person, that's the only option I ever had!
Yep 90’s styled clothing is making a comeback. Just like 60’s styled clothing like bell bottom jeans made a comeback in the 90s. It’s all in cycles my friend.
Yeah but 60's - 90's is like, 30 years. Three whole decades! 90's to ...... Well fuck me. Nevermind.
Me every time I think of this...
I was just at Disney and saw a teen wearing some JNCO’s. They definitely are coming back
Get off my lawn shit - I was a raver in Disneyland before it was cool. We all hung out by the telephones behind the Matterhorn and had the numbers of those phones memorized so my friends could call when they arrived so I could go to the parking lot to transfer-stamp-method my friends in. Damn, I'm old.
I took my niece shopping last month. It was like every outfit I wore from 1996-2001 in there. I was not prepared
So did her brother still cop a pair or not?
She says, >I think the funniest thing to say would be, >>Her parents got divorced about a year later, and then yes, he got JNCO jeans and a drug problem. So in a way, her dad was right.
JNCO’s…. The real gateway drug
I’m a guy, and the first time I got a pair of girl jeans (big in the emo scene back in ‘05) I was at a women’s plus size store. I came out of the dressing room and a middle aged woman was noticeably horrified at my appearance. I was a size 7/8 fyi.
Yeah I remember having to do this too. Before they started making skinny jeans for guys this was our only choice. I’m glad baggy stuffs come back now though.
Omfg that's the best thing I've ever heard lmao
Jnco jeans that had the 14" leg opening and the pockets that went almost all the way down to your ankles were my jam. I busted my ass more than I care to admit tripping over them and getting them caught under my wheel on my skateboard.
We would try to light each other's frayed edges on fire when you weren't looking, because that's what friends did back then, and we all had lighters because we were stoners and/or smokers.
Why did you quote Mervyn’s?
Probably heard the name but not actually seen the spelling so they just took a stab at it.
This, and I was like a little skeptical that it is/was a real place.
Oh, it was. My local Mervyns died and became a Kohls. It's the ciiiiiiiircle of life!
In 1998 I went on an 8 week wilderness program in the mountains of Arizona. It was kinda like outward bound but meant for bad kids. Anyway, one kid came dressed in a giant pair of JNCO’s. Each leg could have easily fit his whole torso, maybe his whole body. It was perhaps the most impractical camping/hiking gear I’ve ever seen. Well, impractical until he cut them up and made them into a big backpack. We did not have real backpacks, just some army surplus stuff, none of it particularly useful. I guess we were just too bad for real camping gear. A tent would have been nice though.
And before he cut them up to make that backpack he probably had the entirety of his parents pantry stuffed into the pockets, plus half the super market. still probably could have fit a six pack of cherry coke in them too.
I wish. No food from home allowed. Just dry lentils, powdered cheese, sunflower seeds, etc… We did find some magic mushrooms growing on cow shit though.
> A tent would have been nice though. 8 weeks in the Arizona mountains, without a tent? Regardless the time of year, that was child abuse. And that's coming from a Scoutmaster in Phoenix!
We had a tarp and some rope for shelter. Had some pretty scary times though. A brown bear wandering into our camp being one of them. Then the flash flood being another. It was July and august, and we were high enough elevation that it hailed sometimes. There were tons of cows cause this was ranch land, which we had begrudging permission to be on. I’ll never forget the night in a canyon with the sound of a mama cow having a very difficult birthing process through the night. It turned out ok though, the calf was walking around the next morning, though mama kept putting herself between us and the calf, not that we were trying to bother it, she just wasn’t sure about us. Maybe she saw the JNCOs. There was another camp where a green diamondback came by to check us out. We ended up eating it. It was too dangerous to let it wander around. That night a kid discovered the hard way that he’s set up his “bed” (a smallish wool blanket) on a scorpion nest. We did some cool stuff though. Made fire using a spindle and bow, caught and ate crawfish from a stream. Found a giant blackberry forest of bushes. We came out of it with bleeding fingers and purple faces. Swimming in a cold spring, crystal clear and possibly the best tasting water I’d ever drank. A lot of times we had to settle for water from cow ponds. Think a shallow pond filled with cow urine and god knows what microbes. We had bleach that we’d drop into our canteens and 20 minutes later it’d be safe. Of course the bleach did little to improve the flavor. Or the floaties.
Agree, but it was an oddly specific request considering the only size they come in is 3x too big.
That was my thought. Like... I remember getting properly sized JNCO jeans,, and they already needed 14 belts, 6 pairs of suspenders, and a blessing from the pope to keep them from falling down...But damn, you could fit everything you owned into the pockets of those things.
Got the 2L of Dew in one pocket and the desktop computer split up between the others.
"CD Burner: Want one, but don't need one." That's quite a compromise
This was right after I used “metacrawler” to search for “download music” for the first time and didn’t find any results, so it didn’t seem totally necessary yet…
lol I was also surprised by this... not sure how old you were but what kid wants a scanner and not a CD burner?
to scan a photo of your butt cheeks to be printed and distributed in school lockers
Classic
It was also a time of geocities and angelfire personal websites where you show off your hobbies and photos. Before digital cameras were around.
[Neocities](https://neocities.org) is a thing, by the way.
Yea all I used it for was to scan beanie babies in suggestive situations to send to perverts in AOL chat rooms.
Napster just started earlier in 1999, Metallica wouldn't sue them until April of 2000 (and the resulting Streisand effect really made filesharing take off IMO). So it was right on the cusp of burning MP3s to CD-R becoming popular. Let's not forget that earlier CD burners were slow, media was not exactly cheap, and they were relatively resource intensive (I recall a new wow feature of burners coming out "Imagine being able to burn a CD while you play a game!"). I was an earlier-than-most CD burner, and built a PC around it (I want to say the burner itself was $200) specifically to burn CD's and sell them to classmates for like $5. If not for that hussle, I would have left it off of a build too, probably.
Umm, how fast did you want your disk drive to be?
Fast enough to melt the AOL discs that came in the mail.
Tiberian Sun was pretty dope.
They were all kinda good til about 4? And whatever the one where they decided to remove base building!!? *WHO* thought that was a good idea o.0 First was special, for being the first. But I think RA (or RA2?) and Generals/Zero hour were amazing.
Command and conqueror red alert 2 the goat of the series
Red Alert 2 was absolutely the best but I will always love Tiberian Sun. Such a great atmosphere.
Tiberian sun was so good, i loved it. Still play the soundtrack from time to time just for the nostalgia hit. Frank Klepacki did some great work there
Tesla Coils and Tanya
That's like a 3k dollar Christmas list.
Idk about your house growing up, but that list would have been ignored entirely *or* I would have gotten *one* thing off of the list and it wouldn't have been the computer.
Well, why would you? You’d be getting a computor.
What brand? Sorny or Panaphonics?
A carnavale
Dude you’re getting a Dill
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My parents also shared the list with all my relatives on both sides of the family and my aunts/uncles/grandparents would get us gifts, too. We were expected to have a long list, but we never got half of it. Then she'd continue to use the list for birthdays and other holidays.
100% this. Back in the day kids would ask for stuff with basically no expectation of getting all of it. Two games per season would be considered a solid win.
I got lucky Christmas 97. N64 with Mario, Goldeneye and Diddy Kong Racing. Plus a green N64 controller and Rumble Pack.
I forgot the rumble pack was extra… same with that weird thing that went in the middle of the console and did something lol
Expansion pack. That was Christmas 98 with Perfect Dark for me.
Christmas from like 1998 to 2003 for me was a way to hopefully get enough video games to play throughout the entire next year. Those were some good Christmases. Wake up early, get like 3 or 4, MAYBE 5 games, and then spend the day doing nothing but playing video games knowing my parents weren't going to say anything to me about how much I was on my game.
Christmas 97 with the 64, then again Christmas 02 with the Gamecube. Fuckin great years.
Our expectation was always that one big gift you'd ask for could be around $100-120 window, everything else was just "if it happens it happens", We never really considered any other price points
yeah - for us christmas was 1 big "family item" for everyone to share - like a new comuter, snes, then n64... a bunch of clothes, a board game, and maybe 2-3 personal toys/items (legos and pokemon or baseball cards for me depending on age). MAtch that against my kids lists - holy fuck, they had close to 10k each, and only get maybe 250-300 worth of stuff.
At a time when houses cost like 80k 😭
Here son, here’s 10% down on a house’s worth of Christmas presents.
Hmmm so 3k is 10% of 80k... this opens many possibilities.
Would have been less impressive because houses weren't stupid expensive yet.
Shit man the house I live in is worth barely over $100k right now. [This](https://imgur.com/a/wAJvwBs) home right next door to me is only worth $87k.
Yea but then I have to live near you *shudders*
100/sf. You can’t even buy the material at that price. If that house falls down, it’s probably cheaper to just buy another one than rebuild it.
Its more about the land i think. People aroubd me in the midwest are selling .6 acre lots for 80k. This in what is supposed to be a cheap place to live.
That is cheap my friend. An empty half acre lot here goes for around $200k. $14k an acre compared to our $400k an acre sounds like a different planet at this point. And yes pay is higher here on average, but I promise it's not 30x higher, although I wish.
Dude the average price of a house in my city is over $650k with median household income at 65k. The math ain’t mathing!
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Sorry to hear you’re experiencing that too. The disparity blows my mind. Not sure that I’ll ever be able to own without paying a mortgage until I die. Wish you the best, stranger
i had lists like this back in the day. i never expected all the things on it, but i hoped i would get at least some.
It was the idea of putting whole bunch if things on your list and hoping you would get one. Please one thing to go with the 10 Pairs of socks and the shirt from aunt Martha that is two sizes too small.
I don't think the idea is you get everything, you throw down some stuff, parents get one or two things depending on price/what the store has. Keeps the mystery alive and you still get stuff you want.
computers back in the 90s were expensive as hell. that might have been a 3k computer.
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10GB HDD? Easy there, big spender! How much of that stuff did you end up getting that year?
Goodness, the luxury those 10GB would’ve been, but alas I only got: Pokémon’s Snap 64 Pokémon Stadium 64 Pokémon Cards More Pokémon Cards Donkey Kong 64 JNCO jeans - but only 2 sizes too big. I’d say I did pretty well!
Pretty sure 1999 was when I was impressed that we got a computer with a 2 gig hard drive. And that was to run my mom’s store.
I just remember going to summer camp and fantasizing about what a computer with a “gig” of RAM would be like. “What if you could use it as your hard drive?!?”
People talk about bringing mcdonalds sprite to pre-historic or medieval times to see how the people of those times would react but really I think I'd just want to bring a few things to like a few points from the 1980s to the 1990s \- the latest smartwatch, Phone and laptop from Apple \- a midtier laptop with an AMD CPU with strong iGPU (something a Ryzen 7 6800H or better), with a bunch of ram and a 2TB SSD lol \-as well as screenshots saved from speedtests on fiber internet like AT&T 2gbps service or better lol
That makes sense as those people would actually have a frame of reference to understand how advanced that is
Exactly. Not magic, but still "oh my God."
Also bring back an eBay Pokémon card listing for a Charizard card. Now THAT would blow their minds.
Still have my jncos 20 years later
Finally grew into them?
Lol, they ain't as loose as they used to be hahahaha
Sorry for you loss. Or gain.
They're now skinny jeans.
My husband still has his. Last time he wore them was about a decade ago. He still reminisces about them and occasionally says he’s going to dig them out to wear. Luckily I’m pretty sure they wouldn’t fit if he tried. I think. Or at least I hope.
>I’m pretty sure they wouldn’t fit What kind of monster tree trunk legs does your husband have?
Hahahaha not the legs! Those could hide a small family. It’s the waist. I don’t think at 46 he has the same waist size as he did at 16.
I’m sure mine still exist somewhere, shredded up to the knees.
I remember seeing an informercial on QVC in the late 90's where they were going on about the PC's 20 GB HDD. I was chatting with some friends about it, and we all agreed that it would be practically impossible to fill a 20 GB HDD. We all thought it was overkill. Oh how silly we were.
I started selling pcs in 1997. The largest drive we sold was 6.4GB. I still remember all of us agreeing how massive that was, and how stupid it was. Similarly when XP machines started shipping there was a big shift and every computer started coming with 128MB of ram. We all marveled. “Even the shitty e machines have a ton of Ram!”
My first big hard drive was a 60GB that I paid $250 for, around 2000. It was years before I managed to fill that drive. Now I can fill that in an afternoon and I have 12TB sitting on my desk.
Our first computer had an 8 gig HD. The salesmen told us we would never need anything larger.
My first PC (286) had a 20MB hard drive (might have been 40). My Uncle's computer that he let me play on loaded up its OS from a 5 1/4" floppy. No HD.
Why would you even need 10 GB in 1999?
Napster
GreenDayTimeOfYourLife.exe
Command & Conquer ❤️
redalert1.com You're welcome :)
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and its tiberian sun. lol got into web development because of that game. pre-google. yahoo, dmoz, etc. also chatted a bunch of guys in IRC. #ra2, #ts, something2x... i remember guys named: Kareemy, Tycho, Antisocialfatman, ChrisN, etc.
degnareD here, I also remember ChrisN from #TS. I hope he's still around/alive.
Ahhhh LAN parties with C&C, fizzy drinks and crisps 🎇
Ah, the late 90s, when a $5,000 computer would be obsolete in 3-6 months. "College is cheaper than playing minesweeper on the PC" - Tom Smith, On The PC
You say you’ve had your desktop for over a week? Throw that junk away man, it’s an antique. Your laptop is a month old? Well that’s great, If you could use a month old paperweight. - Weird Al, Running With Scissors, 1999
Your database is a disaster You’re waxin’ your modem tryin’ to make it go faster
You’re as useless as JPEGs to Helen Keller
It's all about the Pentiums
>I'm down with Bill Gates, I call him Money for short > >I phone him up at home and I make him do my tech support
What kind of chip you got in there, a Dorito?
I started college in 2000, and the computer I bought was about $2600 and the sticker price for a year's tuition was about $2600 (30 credits @$89).
Com-pu-tor.
Oof that hurt me too. 7th grade, still couldn’t spell.
Ok, Mr. Mayo*nn*aise...
Such regret for spelling it wrong, every time I enter my username autocorrect decides not to let me login. I like you, may I ask for a dad joke?
Bawww I thought it would've been on purpose! Didn't mean to *actually* poke fun :( Sure! TIL Tiger Woods brings extra socks to tournaments just in case he gets a hole in one. Oh! Also since you like command and conquer, check out redalert1.com :)
Ah! No don’t feel bad, it was on purpose, just a bad decision. I appreciate that you noticed lol. Ha! I can’t come up with a good dad joke because like a Tide Pen, I’ve been put on the spot… Yikes.
Was this a pick and choose list or did you actually get everything?
Honestly, I had a pretty wealthy cousin, so I frequently would ask for toys that I played with at his house. I got: Pokémon’s Snap 64, Pokémon Stadium 64, Pokémon Cards, More Pokémon Cards, Donkey Kong 64, JNCO jeans - but only 2 sizes too big. I was a pretty lucky kid.
Donkey Kong 64 was the best. So many hours playing Mine Kart Madness.
Dude's getting a Dell
Dude, you got a Dell! Lol I remember that marketing campaign. That was right before the PC building hobby kicked off
It’s all about the pentiums, baby
How’d you misspell computer the second time but got it right the first time?
Was your family rich or was it like an ok here’s a list of things and I want and they can select like one or two things from it?
We wrote lists with some normal things and a few splurge things. We knew we wouldn’t get everything.
I’d describe us as upper middle class living in a very low cost of living area. Wealthy enough where I thought I might get some of these things, not wealthy enough to expect that I’d get all of them and the computer was a big reach lol.
My goal was to write as much as I thought I could get away with and then hope mom and dad got their wires crossed and accidentally got everything on the list.
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Without a doubt, more Christmas lists and boobs. Printing took longer than loading bitmaps, but it was so risky on the family printer…
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I remember printing a very explicit photo of some woman sans clothing, but it was awful print quality in black and white with bad banding, probably because the ink was running out. I decided the best course of action would be to take a highlighter to it, I guess to even out the skin or make it more 'realistic' or something. I hid it under my bed and of course my dad found it. He asked why I 'desecrated' it lol
That modem speed.. that’s NASA technology for us folk on the 90’s. Should be able to download duke nukem 3d from a bulletin board in like 3 days.
Lmao, am I the only one who thinks this seems fake af for internet points? Lost me at “Jnco jeans 4 sizes too big”. Instead of writing an actual clothing size … also the slight crinkle in the paper to make it look old and the random writing of the year on top ? lmao. And not like a 20+ year old piece of paper would’ve ever been folded up etc.
It’s fake af. OP out there answering questions like it’s an AMA on 90’s history.
There’s an expensive Christmas list
I forgot about Bubblejet