Live Magazine September 2017

give me a go of Doom on my own
PC cause they hadn’t bough theirs
yet. I played Doom til past midnight
often, in the dark, wife and kids and
bed and headphones on. Some
nights I got so freaked out by those
blocky monsters I had to switch off
and go to bed. Yes blocky graphics
and all, it was still brilliant.
Virtual Fighter was massively popular
even with the big blocky graphics
but wonderfully playable on the
Sega Saturn. I bought my first 3DFX
card for my PC. Windows 95 got released
and people lined up outside
of software stores to hand over
their hard earned money - around
$279 US for a CD copy because
the $300 million launch campaign
was totally brilliant. The internet
was getting popular and Bill Gates
made sure Microsoft were going to
be the choice to browse with Internet
Explorer, and using the Rolling
Stone’s song, Start Me up to really
build awareness was just genius.
The guy spinning the CD-Rom, Jennifer
Aniston and Matthew Perry
from Friends helped and the world
went a little crazy for a while. Over
40 million boxes of Win95 sold in
the first year - you can work out the
cash flow...
Take a look at the launch ad here:
https://youtu.be/OPyWDMmYJhQ
In 1996, Intel released the 100MHz
Pentium and the N64 hit shelves.
We played Pilot Wings 64, Mario 64
and we were in love with gameing!
Quake was all the range with online
battles and in 1997 the Rail Gun
with its’ spiral trail was awesome
fun. I can remember playing against
a guy one on one, rail guns only, I
went to bed tail between my legs
that night, not a single win. Those
were good times in gaming. Political
correctness was decades away,
there was no ISIS, and TV was,
well... limited. If you wanted to see a
movie you probably had a VHS video
player and later in the 90s DVDs
came out with people shelling out
big dollars for a DVD player. Movies
looked better, sounded better and
we thought this was as good as it
gets.
Nostalgia... remembering those
days I get a rush of those nostalgic
feelings, remembering my favourite
times. Playing PC games late
at night, reading quality magazines
with great reviews. Browsing the
game store that had hundreds of
games to choose from. They were
a different time. Today I can choose
what I want to watch with Netflix
or iTunes or Amazon. I have fast
NBN and I don’t know of any Video
Stores anymore... they all closed
up like the corner store of the 70s
did. Now we got to the Petrol Station
that’s open 24/7 for our bread
and milk. We buy movies and rent
them online. We store in the cloud
and I don’t have to fumble my way
through my DVD collection to find
my favourite James Bond film. The
world has changed dramatically.
Some would say it’s better, others
worse. It is what it is for now.
Nostalgia is bittersweet, you enjoy
the feelings of what you loved but
long for them too. Being nostalgic is
a good thing, it defines who you are
today based on who you were. Enjoy
the positives and get rid of the
negatives.