Welcome to a new miniseries within the Friday Know-It-All that we’re calling “Return to the Computer Lab.” This will be a semi-regular series à la TonySPN in which our editorial staff explore the beloved computer games of our childhoods. (Are you surprised to learn many of us spent a lot of time on the computer?) Editor Ruby is up first to tell you all about what it was like to play computer games in the 1990s.

Allow me to start with some obnoxious bloviating about how different things used to be. Was it better then? Only because I was 8 years-old and didn’t know about climate change yet. When I was a kid, games were on computers (and video game consoles, which I wasn’t allowed, so I have no input on them). There were no smartphones. Did that stop me from logging hours and hours of screen time if left to my own devices? Of course not. At my particular microgeneration, I was too young for floppy disks — our Gen X editors will cover that in future editions — but exactly the right age for CDs. Something I think younger people may not know is that CD-ROM games had to be installed on the computer, taking up space and requiring a few hours of install time when nothing else could happen on the computer at all, and you had to put the disk in every time you wanted to play. These games did not require one to be online, which was good because when you were online, no one could make a phone call.

This created a very specific social environment: there were no online multiplayer games to speak of, at least not ones I knew about. No one I knew was going around installing their games on friends’ computers – it simply didn’t occur to us, if it was technically possible at all. That meant that you had games you could only play at a certain friend’s house. In our inaugural edition of Return to the Computer Lab, I won’t be taking you to the computer lab at all. We’re going on a tour of my childhood friends and their computer games.

C (home): At my friend C’s house, we played a ton of “Putt-Putt and Pep’s Balloon-O-Rama,” a game where a little animated car named Putt-Putt popped balloons by throwing his dog friend Pep in the air. Some of the balloons had special powers. Nostalgia moment within my research for this: the striped purple and white question mark balloon. You can watch a three-hour playthrough of this game if you want. Scanning through it, 1) C and I never made it to these space levels, that’s for sure, and 2) games used to have such repetitive sound design! Would I play it today score: 3/10, this does not look like it would genuinely hold my interest.

C (dad’s office): I’m not sure if this is an “it was the ’90s” thing or an “I’m from a very small town” thing, but sometimes after school C and I would go to her dad’s office before dance class. He had a game I only just uncovered in my memory called “Spy Fox: Dry Cereal” about a fox who was a spy. Kind of an asexual James Bond vibe? At one point you play go fish with a mob boss who is a pig. Here is a walkthrough. Nostalgia moment: the way he says “That’s not going to do me any good” when you try to use an inappropriate spy tool. Would I play it today score: 7/10, honestly this looks pretty fun.

E: My friend E’s house had a good sledding hill behind it and her mom was a Pinterest mom before Pinterest, so we didn’t play that many computer games, but when we did, it was “Barbie Magic Hair Styler.” A contemporary review linked on Wikipedia says it was lauded for its replay value, but watching a little clip of play, that does not seem true. Nostalgia moment: those shiny lipsticks, they made lipstick look like it would be so fun. Would I play it today score: 0/10, makeup games have come a long way and are much better now if I wanted to play one.

Grandparents: My Grandma Evy was quite tech savvy and had one of the cool iMacs where you could see the computer guts. It came with two games I was obsessed with: “Nanosaur” and “Cro-Mag Rally.” I don’t remember any of the things in the plot description for “Nanosaur” on Wikipedia, but I definitely remember every sound effect and music cue here. Nostalgia moment: the look of those eggs and the jumping game mechanism. As demonstrated around minute 1:20 of that playthrough, if you went on a mountain and jumped up high enough, all your ammo and fuel got maxed out, so I was actually able to finish this game with that cheat. This is the only game I’ve ever played with guns in it. Would I play it today score: 5/10, this looks pretty fun.

“Cro-Mag Rally” is kind of like an unbranded “Mario Kart” type game, I think (again, I have no skill for a video game controller). Looking at it now, some of the settings feel a little problematic (I doubt any Rapa Nui people were consulted on the Moai-focused level), but the gameplay looks great. Nostalgia moment: the little lightning bolt icons you could pick up to go faster. Total un-nostalgia moment: I never came close to finishing this game, and that Atlantis level looks fun. Would I play it today score: 9/10 if I can skip right to the Atlantis level and skip the racist ones. Maybe I should just learn to play “Mario Kart”!
I have like five more friends’ houses to talk about, but for today, that’s our first edition of “Return to the Computer Lab.” Many of our editors are champing at the bit to talk about their favorite pastimes, but at some point I’ll be back to talk about “Zoombinis” and educational math games for a while.