Awesome 1990s

Among his talents, musician Alex Melton has a knack for rearranging songs so they sound like they were performed by Blink-182. Here, he takes on the Journey classic Don’t Stop Believin’, and gives it the trademark sounds of late-1990s pop-punk. Can you imagine if The Sopranos ended with this version?

Offering same-day grocery and deliveries in many places, Instacart is one of life’s many modern conveniences. But what might the Instacart experience have been like had it come out on a floppy diskette and run only on Windows 95? Squirrel Monkey has the answer.

After taking on the 1980s with aplomb, The Hood Internet has completed the cycle for the 1990s. Hit play and enjoy this 35-minute playlist of classic hits from nineties hitmakers like Deee-Lite, DJ Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince, No Doubt, Alanis Morissette, Everclear, and Missy Elliott.

The opening credits from Malcolm in the Middle featured a number of memorable images, accompanied by a great They Might Be Giants tune. For a brief moment, we see a man performing a ski jump while completely ablaze. Kid Leaves Stoop digs into the mystery behind this burning man, and who he really was.

Imagine for a moment that the Oasis hit Wonderwall was recorded in the 1980s, and the lead vocals were performed by Jimmy Somerville instead of Liam Gallagher. Deco did a great job mashing up the track with 1984’s Smalltown Boy. Their Spice Girls / Marvin Gaye combo is a good listen too.

Musician Alex Melton is back with another song remade in the pop-punk style of Blink-182. This time, he did it with the Barenaked Ladies track One Week, complete with Chickity China, the Chinese chicken. We wonder if this could be done with any 1990s song. We’d like to request TMBG’s Birdhouse in Your Soul.

As we move more and more towards digital downloads and streaming, there’s less need for packaging. Ahoy looks back at the days when computer games mostly came in oversize packages with bold box art, and started to standardize on a form factor back in the early 1990s. Despite the dry subject matter, Ahoy makes it interesting.

Back in the 1980s, Rax Roast Beef was a popular fast-food chain. But the company lost its way, trying to reinvent itself in the face of competition and is down to its last few locations. And then there’s this disastrous ad campaign which certainly didn’t help. The Vlogbrothers offer their take on the one and only Mr. Delicious.

Back in 2000, Tiger Electronics released HitClips – a tiny audio player designed to get tweens to buy digital music. Techmoan looks back at this ridiculous cash grab for kids’ money and its significant limitations. Along the way, he debunks some misinformation and myths about the toys.

After wowing us with their awesome 1980s music compilations, the guys from The Hood Internet have kicked off a new decade, this time cramming 60 hits from 1990 into a 3-minute, 30-second medley. From Deee-Lite to Depeche Mode and Pixies to Public Enemy, it’s a fantastic flashback to a fondly-remembered time.

Will Smith will welcome five lucky Airbnb renters who snag $30 bookings for overnight stays at the real “Fresh Prince of Bel-Air” mansion from the ‘90s sitcom. Royal perks include meals served on silver platters, a fly wardrobe, and turntables like DJ Jazzy Jeff’s. Book it at 11am PDT 9.29.20 for October 2, 5, 8, 11 or 14.

Hey, kids! It’s time to go back in time. Let’s take a trip back to the 1990s for a supercut of movies and TV shows where characters were so in awe of the time they were living in, that they had to remind us what decade it was. Posted by Everything Is Terrible back at the beginning of the 2010s, which weren’t nearly as memorable.

Peaches come in a can. They were put there by a man, in a factory downtown. Leo Moracchioli dusts of the 1995 Presidents of the U.S.A. hit Peaches, replacing the twangy alt-pop sounds of the original with angry electric guitar, and energetic screams about nature’s candy and some not-so-thinly-veiled sexual innuendo.

Back in the 1990s, the way for people to easily build their own websites was with services like GeoCities. But Squirrel Monkey is here to imagine that a graphical web-building tool like Wix was also around to give Yahoo!’s service a run for its money, complete with MIDI sounds, background textures, and “Under Construction” GIFs.

Postmodern Jukebox and vocalist Cortnie Frazier perform a truly unique rendition of Pearl Jam’s 1991 grunge classic Black. Scott Bradlee’s smoky blues arrangement is perfectly executed through Frazier’s silky smooth vocals and the band’s rich orchestral sounds.

Anyone who lived through the 1990s can tell you that watching movies on videotape was a decidedly lower quality experience than today’s HD and UHD technologies enable. Tom Scott met up with the team from Red Giant to learn how their software can make modern footage look like it was recorded on VHS.

“Why would you make a game based on a sitcom that last aired over 20 years ago and potentially incur the wrath of lawyers?..” Well, because Jacob Janerka and Ivan Dixon are hoping their concept proves there’s enough demand for a point-and-click Seinfeld adventure game that it actually gets licensed and developed.

Originally released in 2015, the latest edition of ARTCADE is packed with even more images of classic arcade marquee and cabinet art. Each of its images has been restored to capture detail, color, and contrast. In all, 300 coin-op machines are represented. Comes in a limited-edition, glow-in-the-dark storage sleeve.

’90s kids might remember a little video game called Full Throttle. Directors Rick & Mario and animation studio Red Knuckles created this awesome re-imagining of Tim Schafer’s classic point-and-click adventure – or at least a very small piece of it. This makes us crave a movie version of Ben and Maureen’s wild motorcycle journey.

The 8-Bit Big Band takes on a track from the 16-bit era, with an appropriately New Jack Swing interpretation of the music from Sonic the Hedgehog’s notoriously tricky Spring Yard Zone level. The only thing it’s missing are the sounds of the bouncy bumpers and gold rings being collected.

Take a trip back to the 1980s and 1990s with a visit to the Internet Archive’s awesomely retro collection of VHS tapes. The catalog features over 20,000 digitized recordings of old video tapes, ranging from cartoons to workout videos, and everything in-between. While there are some classics, there’s also just a whole lot of weird stuff.

These days, everyone carries a videophone in their pocket. But before the days of iPhones and Galaxies, calling someone and seeing them at the same time was difficult and expensive to achieve. Techmoan shows off one of the earlier examples of a working video calling system, British Telecom’s VC 7000, which dates back to 1993.

WeTransfer is one of the most popular file sharing services out there. But what would it have been like back in the early days of the Internet, and 3.5″ floppies were still a thing? Leave it to the guys at Squirrel Monkey to explore that alternative past with their typically dry humor.