Stuff we DON'T Miss from the 90s.

[Snownine]

I suppose it could partially be the rose tinted glasses of memories from my childhood, but I have few complaints about the 90's. I do not remember anything really bothering me back then and little that does even in retrospect. Sure I do not miss the less sophisticated and user friendly technologies but that is something that every decade has when looked back upon from the present.

 

[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?

Cable did not hit the uk until the mid to late 90's, satellite was around 88/89 but was a massive bust until they had some content around 92, and even then it was too much money just for a game football a few time a week and the simpsons. I can barely remember having only 3 channels that stopped all programming at midnight.

Huh, never knew that. Thanks for the clarification!

 

[The_Waspman]

Friends (The tv-series), large phones, skateboarding, the music (with some, although few, exceptions), ps1/N64 graphics, having to wait to rewind VHS tapes.

This! And only this.

Well, not only this obviously, but out of all the blights the 90s cursed us with, I hate this the most.

 

[For.I.Am.Mad]

Sam Goody, minidisc. The 'You're Welcome' attitude of the entertainment industry.

 

[lunam-kardas]

You know what I don't miss? The Spice Girls.

What I do miss?

I I I
I I I



Make a letter

 

[For.I.Am.Mad]

Fear mongering about the o-zone hole.

 

[Murais]

Absolutely nothing. My life will never be as xtreme to the max as it was during the decade.

... Fred Durst.

 

[Zeldias]

Dial-up, shitty comics, and people on TV looking like they were vomited out of a closet that got sick from eating tie-dye.

I do miss good TV shows like A Different World and Living Single, though.

 

[For.I.Am.Mad]

4:3 aspect ratio on everything.

 

[Murais]

I just looked through five pages and discovered that I was the only person to mention Fred Durst.

... D-did everyone forget what a shapeless, talentless, grotesque pile of ape-meat he was? It's like the only manifestation of 90's PTSD that I have.

 

[Scars Unseen]

Anyone remember Hypercolor shirts?

Anyone?

No?

GOOD.

And then there's this:

Apparently Scott Summers' secret superpower is his skin's involuntary ability to repel clothing. Why else would he need straps and buckles tightened around every single article of clothing he has on him? I'm sure he's not the worst, but he is the most memorable since I was chiefly an X-Men fan back in the days when comics had a reasonable cost/page ratio.

 

[Waaghpowa]

Only four channels on tv.
.

we had only four chanels (non-pay tv)up untill 2008 or so when the introduced digital

I still don't have TV! I win

 

[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.