Stuff we DON'T Miss from the 90s.

[Savryc]

Only having 5 channels, needing to buy a magazine to know whats on that day or using bloody ceefax and waiting for that slow arse number to cycle all the way through just so it can tell me "Yep, it's shit up next too!"

I've seen a lot of people mentioning the five channel thing, and it really confuses me -- I always thought of only having five channels as more of a 70's and earlier thing, 80's at the latest. I had (with basic cable, and using the tuner on the VCR/TV) about 70 channels throughout the 90's, upgraded to "a crapton, but very few of them have anything worth watching" somewhere in the mid 2000's. Did cable take a while to penetrate markets outside the US or something?

I can't speak for everyone but while cable was around (my nana had it) it was pricey, I'd say it really took off in the UK in the 2000's with Sky and NTL/Virgin competing with each-other and the rise of freeview boxes.

 

[Rose and Thorn]

I don't miss my childhood. I was born in 1990, so from 1-10 I lived in the 90's.

 

[XMark]

I don't miss having to make boot disks for different games so the computer would use the right mix of different memory types for the game to run, and have the right drivers running (including a driver for DOS to recognize the CD-ROM drive).

I don't miss the CGA color scheme (only 4 colors and they picked THOSE?)

I don't miss games which, as a copy protection measure, would ask you to look into the manual or the box or something and type in a word, or a paper wheel thing to get a symbol. Those always sucked.

I don't miss actually paying to a get a CD full of shareware demos.

I don't miss the whole ritual of blowing NES cartridges and screaming at them to frickin' work.

I have absolutely no nostalgia towards the Power Rangers or any of the other cheap shows which copied the Power Rangers formula.

 

[Owyn_Merrilin]

I don't miss having to make boot disks for different games so the computer would use the right mix of different memory types for the game to run, and have the right drivers running (including a driver for DOS to recognize the CD-ROM drive).

I don't miss the CGA color scheme (only 4 colors and they picked THOSE?)

I don't miss games which, as a copy protection measure, would ask you to look into the manual or the box or something and type in a word, or a paper wheel thing to get a symbol. Those always sucked.

I don't miss actually paying to a get a CD full of shareware demos.

I don't miss the whole ritual of blowing NES cartridges and screaming at them to frickin' work.

I have absolutely no nostalgia towards the Power Rangers or any of the other cheap shows which copied the Power Rangers formula.

Interesting thing about CGA: if you had an actual composite CGA monitor, it showed more colors than it actually had, because the monitor couldn't crisply display the dithering, mixing the colors instead. The problem was that most of us in the 90's were playing on VGA monitors, which didn't do that and looked horrible as a result. CGA was more of an 80's thing, but you're not alone in having played CGA games in the 90's

For comparison:

The left side is with a composite monitor, the right side is with an RGB monitor, which is the CGA era equivalent of what everyone was using in the VGA era.

Edit: And I don't know left from right. Reverse that, the point was the composite looked better.

 

[GonvilleBromhead]

Neapoliton Ice Cream

 

[Queen Michael]

Flipped manga pages. The way things used to be, the American editions flipped the pages of manga series to make them like American comics are, which means that I'll forever have a mental image of the boarding house Maison Ikkoku that's the reverse of what it's supposed to look like, just because Viz, the publisher, had to flip the pages.

 

[Second World]

TV
Being limited to crappy court shows, sitcoms, and soap operas if you were home all day.
TV shows having one person of every race, gender, stereotype, and disability.
"After-school specials."
Sports cutting into prime-time.
Everything being educational or "rebellious."
"Nothing on TV"
Clay and 3D animation.
Rewinding.

Phone
Having to be AT HOME to get a phone call.
Being able to MISS phone calls if the internet or the Fax is on.
The phone charging you for every second.

Comp
Installing ANYTHING on a computer. "4-8 hours + CD swaps."
Downloading ANYTHING, AND being charged for every minute of it.

Games
Playstation 1 Load Times.
Corrupted Save Files - Have you played Dragon Quest? Fuck that game.
Having to beat a 3-4 hour game in ONE sitting with FOUR lives on an "Easy mode" that's today's "Hard as Fuck."
Playing a platformer with 2 players. If they didn't jump, you died; if they died, you died; if they got in the way, you died.

EDIT: Also, the localization process tv shows and games went through in the 90s was terrible.
Everything that was "foreign" (yes, any kind of foreign) or "morally questionable" had to be edited out of nearly everything.
A character looks too Japanese and he's not a ninja? He's redrawn.
You fight a woman? Now she's says she's transvestite.
Wait, that was too much. Next time a male character is edited into her place.
No black characters in the game? Looks like one of your main characters has got to go. With cliche dialogue added.

Outside of the fashion, entertainment, and technology, I can't really come up with gripes that were from the 90s.

 

[NortherWolf]

Barney the Dinosaur.
Angsty, Brooding Anti-heroes in comics.
The Console War between Sega and Nintendo. (Side note, my Mozilla spell checker doesn't recognize Sega as a word...How low has the mighty fallen...)
Oh, and a pet peeve. 90's era role playing games.
Not Final Fantasy, but stuff like Vampire the Masquerade or the Swedish Drakar och Demoner Chronopia. They exemplified everything awful about that decade.

 

[Souplex]

Rob Liefeld, Dial-Up, and the fact that the 90's ended.

 

[GonzoGamer]

Sleeveless hoodies. Few items of clothing have made such little sense since, most of them are also sleeveless.

Oh, and I forgot: So much shit metal came out in the 90's. Except Pantera. Pantera were ace.

I don't remember the sleeveless hoodies but they sound stupid.
As for the crap metal of the 90s, Sepultura's Roots makes up for all of it.

I for one am glad I haven't heard/seen the macarena in a long time and I hope it continues for the rest of my life.

 

[AgentNein]

Anyone say Buffy The Vampire Slayer yet?

No?

GOOD.

 

[UltraPic]

Fear mongering about the o-zone hole.

That was the 80's, and it was real. The good news is that we won .

 

[BarbaricGoose]

I don't miss how every rock band sounded like Creed. Or at least the singer from Creed. You know he's on Fox News now?

That was... annoying.

 

[Tyler Trahan]

Only having 5 channels, needing to buy a magazine to know whats on that day or using bloody ceefax and waiting for that slow arse number to cycle all the way through just so it can tell me "Yep, it's shit up next too!"

I've seen a lot of people mentioning the five channel thing, and it really confuses me -- I always thought of only having five channels as more of a 70's and earlier thing, 80's at the latest. I had (with basic cable, and using the tuner on the VCR/TV) about 70 channels throughout the 90's, upgraded to "a crapton, but very few of them have anything worth watching" somewhere in the mid 2000's. Did cable take a while to penetrate markets outside the US or something?

I didnt have anything more than 5-6 channels until I was 10 or so, and I was born in 1990. We had to pay for the cable company to come lay cable down our road because we lived in a rural area, so it certainly happened in the US like that as well

 

[Owyn_Merrilin]

Only having 5 channels, needing to buy a magazine to know whats on that day or using bloody ceefax and waiting for that slow arse number to cycle all the way through just so it can tell me "Yep, it's shit up next too!"

I've seen a lot of people mentioning the five channel thing, and it really confuses me -- I always thought of only having five channels as more of a 70's and earlier thing, 80's at the latest. I had (with basic cable, and using the tuner on the VCR/TV) about 70 channels throughout the 90's, upgraded to "a crapton, but very few of them have anything worth watching" somewhere in the mid 2000's. Did cable take a while to penetrate markets outside the US or something?

I didnt have anything more than 5-6 channels until I was 10 or so, and I was born in 1990. We had to pay for the cable company to come lay cable down our road because we lived in a rural area, so it certainly happened in the US like that as well

Maybe it's just because I'm in Florida. We seem to get every new technology standard before anyone else aside from New York and California. Although I guess it depends on how rural you are. There's parts of this overly well connected state that still don't have cable, unless it's come in in the last few years. There's also parts of the state that don't have broadband internet. And we're /really/ well connected here, there's just a few pockets of "middle of nowhere" left.

 

[redmoretrout]

A lot of you people do not sound like you are talking about the nineties, tiedye? only 4 channels? That sounds like the 60's.

Anyways I dont miss Public Service Ads like this

<iframe width="480" height="360" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/up863eQKGUI?rel=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen>

 

[Atmos Duality]

-Celine Dion
-Pauly Shore

"Slacker" culture and dry corporate culture.

But mostly Celine Dion.

 

[Sack of Cheese]

My birth. I didn't miss it since I was there, right from the start.

 

[frizzlebyte]

I'm glad I'm not the only one who hates 90's music. You get so many kids these days gushing about 90's music, and then using bands that were really obscure at the time to justify it. Give me Lady GaGa over Brittany Spears any day. Hell, I'll take Ke$ha if the alternative is The Backstreet Boys.

OT: That, and the primitive internet. Try imagining a world before youtube. It's not pretty.

Yeah, the 90's had crap music for the most part. Most of the really popular groups should have died as one-hit wonders.

 

[crono738]

Captain Planet. Dear God that show was mind bogglingly awful. Dial-up, lack of cell phones, all those damned edutainment games.