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After Dark (90's screensavers) in CSS (bryanbraun.com)
155 points by thunderbong on Oct 9, 2021 | hide | past | favorite | 26 comments



What a great time for recreating 90's computing nostalgia.

Remember when they used to sell these things in stores?

https://www.amazon.com/After-Dark-Screen-Saver-4-0/dp/B0009H...

https://forum.winworldpc.com/discussion/11461/software-spotl...


It’s hard to believe that people paid $50 for this back in the day.

https://books.google.com/books?id=7k7q-wS0t00C&pg=PA59#v=one...


It’s hard to imagine that everything is “free” now. For context:

1. Megacorps weren’t so mega, so they didn’t provide all this functionality out of the box and generally WANTED 3rd party devs

2. You didn’t have an infinite numbers of things online to grab/use

3. Ad model certainly didn’t exist for software, and VC capital didn’t back the most arbitrary of software

4. Most software was relatively expensive because audience size was far smaller than today

5. People were excited at the random new things their computer could do

6. Screen burn in was a real problem, a new monitor was very expensive, and you rarely bought a new computer


1. Horrible abuse from media and devs since before I was born.

2. No one ever has infinite time and I totally understand that there are devs that can currently just grab and use if they're employed.

3. I dunno and defer

4. That makes sense on a first glance but the efficiency of profit will prolly never be like that again?

5. new people are born every day

6. First time I ever experienced screen burn was this month.


In it's prime it was estimated to be selling 10,000 units a month! https://www.baltimoresun.com/news/bs-xpm-1991-12-30-19913640...


Wonder why I cannot remember playing anything... Guess many more people will fall in nostalgia than those that ran a legal copy. Probably it would not have been so popular if there hadn't been a price tag on it.


I was just about to note same, for younger folks. I may still have the 3.5" floppy somewhere.


I always thought it was strange that they still called the rigid, inflexible 3.5" disks "floppies." They certainly weren't floppy like the 8" and 5.25" were.


The disk inside was floppy


Previously on HN:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28006679

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14429271

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7407447


And only with CSS...didn't see any javascript. It's actually a fairly nice reference on how to do CSS transforms and animations.


If it does not have Lunatic Fringe, I do not want to talk to you. Go away until you fix this travesty. :)


Might be relevant to your interest:

https://jackinloadup.github.io/lunatic-fringe/


I loved playing that game at my dad's office (he was a graphic designer at a university, so they had macs).

I still remember how proud he was when he got upgraded to a Quadra 600 (previously he'd had a Macintosh II).


Damn, what a blast from the past. I worked in a software retail store for most of '96 and remember selling many boxes of v4. IIRC it was one of the few things that flew off the shelves alongside Windows 95.


Flying Toasters is my macOS screensaver. There’s a company that makes a modern port (Infinisys Ltd).


I really miss the addons for this, especially Rat Race. Me and my dad would bet candy on the rats and then yell at them when they turn around and start walking in the opposite direction.

Also the Totally Twisted addon was hilariously office-inappropriate, from lawyers being eaten by piranhas to a guy in a trenchcoat flashing a clock.

So much nostalgia from all this. They just don’t make 'em like they used to.

[0]: https://youtu.be/r81V4PAz_rg

[1]: https://youtu.be/ZsKYXftB68M


My absolute favorite was Johnny Castaway. It was full of surprises.


Not included in the link but I was always fascinated with 'Mowing Man'. It brings back a lot of nostalgia whenever this gets posted.


When I was in middle school I had a science class where the computer was a few feet ahead of my desk. And it always had Warp on the screen. For some reason I couldn’t look at it for more than a few seconds or I’d start falling asleep.


The spotlight one is just a black rectangle with a transparent circle - on a 4K monitor you can see the edges of the rectangle.


The bouncing things aren’t bouncing for me.


Note to the author: Would love to see the totally twisted package. Please.


Barney Blaster!


Pro tip: press F11


Brilliant work.




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