Jupiter Owls, do you hunger for Retro-warmth-groin-happiness? Yes, my geeky friends... we all talked about it already! And now I bring it to you...

... all in surround erm, type. Okay, So you most likely have only one to three monitors. Stick with me Retronauts! (14 inch and lower no longer applicable)

The decade was during the 90's, and times of yore were the staging scene of our(Perhaps) teenage years. (So sad, to say this. I still have my 2400 baud modem sitting in the closet)
Prodigy (Internets?)
Sure, CompuServe (First in USA) came before, but fond memories are more often found with Prodigy. Not only did the band after its name sake kicked some ass, but Prodigy was the first to introduce us to the Internets. Not only a series of tubes, but a social/information network which made the world a smaller place over night nearly. 33.6k modems rejoice! Grandchildren will ignore your owners for years to come. AOL deserves no mention. Meh.

If you were lucky enough, you had access to a Freenet, or other free alternative portal to the inter-webs. In 1994, mine was Rio Grande Free Net (RGFN). You would run your phone cord across the house to your modem, tell everyone to write letters instead of call your family, and connect to their lynx based system under a Terminal program for an hour at a time. The world was your oyster baby! I hope you like the colors green and black!





The BBS:

Who could talk about modems and computers retro-style without mentioning the Bulletin Board System! I owned one (Neigh Time BBS, 2 line access) which I spent more on my ASCII welcome screen than customizing the system itself. You would dial into some crazy persons house phone, and connect directly to their computer. And play their door games, or post a message onto their board. If you were lucky(and worthy), you got to talk to the SYSOP themselves! Awesome!

Door Games:

Drug Wars - (The colors... THE COLORS!)
Drug dealer, high roller, frequent nomad. Selling product with the best of them, all for profit! Remember playing this on your TI-82 calculator? Hrm... perhaps not.

Falcon's Eye (FE) - (Medievil Ownage

Legend of the Red Dragon (LORD) - (Who hasn't played this?)

Usurper - (Similar to LORD, good times... good times!)

ASCII Goodness... Mmm



MU*X - MUD's, MUSH's, MUCK's, MOO's, Etc...

Open up that Terminal, and load up Lynx... it's time for some world wide multiplayer text adventures. Before there was Graphical RPG's on the internet, we had MUD, Diku's, Coppers, ROM, PennMUSH, SMAUG, etc. Play styles, story, worlds, and interfaces varied WIDELY. But they all brought people across the world together, to interact with others in a game world. All through text.


ZORK - Speaking of Text! Does this really need introduction? The adventure game that brought a whole fantasy world to so many computer users at home during a time where floppy discs were REALLY floppy.


Master of Orion - I wasted so much time playing this game. Basically, you had a few multicolored dots representing a galaxy relient to your own bidding. Mwuahahahah! Invade, Defend, Rally, and Build your own ambition to control Space. Space is the Place!






Obviously this is just the tip of the iceberg! Do you want to talk about Oregon Trail? Carmen Sandiago, MYST, DOOM, Nomad, TFX, Falcon or Janes simulator and games?
Oh and so much more, well... speak your mind! Talk about how close you were with that 386 in your bedroom, and how Civilization changed your life!

You make me feel so young (in the bad, "I also wanted to mess around with BBSs "-kind of way)...

I grew up with fancy things like the NES and Windows 95 (3.1 was still around, but I only used it much later, for fun).

Epic post.. This thread makes me want to watch the computer chronicles. I think I'll watch those today as a refresher.. TO really put my brain in the time period!

-Chris

Ah... the days when nerds were men and you had the know something about your computer to use it. Also the days of the broken coffee cup holder joke ran rampant...

My favorites of these days were of the Origin systems flight sim series like Wing Commander, Privateer, and my all time favorite Strike Commander! Although I played my fair share of DOOM, side scrolling Duke Nukem, and toward the latter part of the decade Quake and Starcraft. Oh, and who can forget Blake Stone (okay, very few probably have heard of this one) or Wolfenstien 3-D.

Incidentally, my favorite airframes from this gaming time frame are the F-16 & the Heretic from Privateer 2. The Demon of Privateer is a close second...

Do any of you guys know a TRUSTWORTHY and REPUTABLE site for getting Emulators and ROMs? I'd love to point our viewers to a good site for this, but that entire area is so fouled up with spam/spy/malware sites... Any good tips?

Ah I'm only 26, I guess I just geeked out really early in middle school.


Thanks for checking out the thread everyone!

Oh, I also forgot to list the Tiefighter/x-wing games. Too many great games to list... the others said here were great as well

I do. Romulation.net. You need a user account, and downloading larger roms (PSX stuff and larger, mostly) costs "points". However, you get these points just by being a member. I have about a bazillion by now. I don't know if they have a lot of emulators though. For us Linux-folk, you can just search the repo, but for Windows and Mac OS users, I don't know. Zophar's Domain was the king back in the day, but I haven't been there for a LONG time, so the info is probably outdated.