It was more ominous than outright spooky. Since this was the “Mystery” Screensaver, it made sense that the mansion was less Munsters, more Clue. If you remove the house, I’m pretty sure this was where Jade and Smoke played peekaboo in Mortal Kombat II. The mansion might not have seemed so creepy if it wasn’t situated in the middle of some gothic wooded hell, full of dead trees, fallen leaves, busy bats and pale moonlight. There were enough noises to make listening a part of the fun, but those noises were still scattered enough to make each one hit you like a jump scare. Upon deeper reflection, it was a world of wonder that let you write whole novels in your head.īeginning with a burst of pipe organs that sounded like the bark of a Jersey shore dark ride, the screensaver would then fall mostly-silent, save for the occasional creaking door or solicitous owl. On its face, this was a simple animated mansion with enough spooky elements to create a haunted ambiance. You guys can keep your Doom mazes and waterpark pipes. I’m not 100% sure that it hadn’t debuted prior to Windows 98, but that’s where I met it, and judging by what I see online, that’s where almost everyone else met it, too. Many were auditioned, but in the end, I always came back to the Mystery Screensaver.Īs I recall, the screensaver was part of a theme set for Windows 98. (I hated how the audio dropped out before the reverberations completed.) I can still hear the Undertaker’s gongs alerting me to new arrivals on my AOL Buddy List. By the time I was through, I don’t think there was a single default sound still in play. It was hardly the first computer that I’d messed around on, but it was the first one that was all mine. New Live Share feature for Teams is like screen sharing 2.Back in the late ‘90s, I bought my first computer. Here’s hoping those potential Matrix spinoffs actually get off the ground. Remember, the Matrix is a system and that system is our enemy, and that system may or may not run on Windows Millennium. The 1999 smash hit, The Matrix, inspired this cryptic “digital rain” screensaver. Splice in a couple of galaxies, some nebular remnants, add a dollop of two-dimensional goodness to taste and, my friend, you’ve got yourself a regular desktop hit. This gem stands as a true testament to the seemingly boundless joy human beings once experienced at the mere sight of just about anything glinting off of their monitors. With this digital aquarium, you can experience the same ephemeral, emotional benefits of a pet fish without the cleanup or a constant, electric drone echoing through your lonely apartment. Ocean floorĪs it turns out, this screensaver, much like the vast majority of the ocean floor, is relatively void of life. Behold MOPy fish, a blood parrot cichlid that individuals could feed and cherish - or not. With our lanyards and keychains already loaded with digital pets in varying degrees of neglect and malnourishment, we needed yet another for our desktop machines. MOPy Fish was the result of both screensaver fever and the short-lived digital pet craze of the late-’90s. We get to watch ol’ JC fish, exercise, build sand castles, and enjoy an oddly-formal dinner with a merbae, but is he ever rescued? You’ll just have to buy one of the original, 3.5-inch floppy disks (or download the screensaver) to find out. The screensaver illustrates a day in the life of Johnny Castaway, who is marooned on a deserted island with only a palm tree to hear his woes. Johnny Castaway was a staple in many repurposed “computer rooms” of the mid-’90s. Flying toastersĪfter Dark is a series of screensavers released by Berkely Systems, and the early packages included the popular Flying Toasters screensaver. Later variants even came loaded with all sorts of special features, like, you know, bagels. Note: If you watch long enough you will eventually collide with a portion of a debris field in a galaxy far, far away. You can watch 10 hours of Starfield here, if you’re so inclined. This spacefarer screensaver was ubiquitous at the turn of the Willenium, because nothing says “warp speed ahead” quite like a dial-up connection. You can alter speed and even add some shoddy graphics to go full-on bad batch at Bonnaroo, or even upload images from your media library and have a regular “this is your life” walkabout through a phantasmagoria of low-res images. Who needs virtual reality when you can plop down in front of an HP Pavilion and behold this? The 3D Maze originally came with Windows 95 and 98, and the Doom-esque first-person thriller gave millions of individuals a real hoot. It would be preposterous to have a roundup of the best screensavers and not mention perhaps the most recognizable program of them all.
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