Awesome 1990s

Say goodbye to productivity today. Thanks to the folks at the amazing Internet Archive, you can play thousands of retro PC games right in your web browser. Their extensive software library is packed with classics like The Oregon Trail, SimCity, Prince of Persia, Wolfenstein 3D, DOOM, Leisure Suit Larry, and many more.

When you make games that are as whimsical in nature as Nintendo, you’re bound to have some weird moments over the years. Nintendo fan Shiromi edited together a reel of some of the wackiest things that have happened to Mario, Link, and Kid Icarus and others over the years. Man, the 1990s were a strange time.

Back in the 1990s, the internet was a kinder, gentler, and downright sillier place than it is today. Quartz looks back at some of the primitive and cheesy websites of the era, and pontificates on what may happen to the information and content they housed as these sites gradually go offline.

An awesome time capsule of what life was like on the Internet more than 20 years ago, just as it was starting to take off. If you remember Netscape, dial-up modems, or Excite!, you’ll get a kick out of this old VHS tape. We like he calls URLs “YEEERLS.”

Editor The Unusual Suspect diced up bits and pieces from 156 different movies in order to replicate the vocals from one of the greatest one-hit wonders of all time – Mambo No. 5 by Lou Bega, replacing the names of his female conquests with those of various movie characters.

Do you keep all your computer icons sitting out on your desktop? Does Netscape Navigator no longer spark joy? Go back in time to the 1990s for some advice on how to tidy things up, Marie Kondo style, with a little help from the folks at Squirrel Monkey.

Now this is a story all about how… my life got flipped turned upside down. Filmmaker Morgan Cooper presents a modern take on The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, in which Will Smith’s character is subject to 21st century problems as he adjusts from life in Philly to Souther Cali.

YouTube’s resident metalnerd Leo Moracchioli takes on one-hit wonder Chumbawamba’s 1997 track Tubthumping, a song about getting drunk and in bar fights that will infect your ear by simply hearing “I get knocked down, but I get up again, you’re never gonna keep me down…”

Nickelodeon went gangbusters in the 1990s with Rugrats, Rocko’s Modern Life, Ren and Stimpy, and the almighty Spongebob Squarepants. To celebrate the success of the latter, they merchandised everything in sight, and even opened a mediocre hotel in Orlando.

These days, we’re accustomed to such seamless and realistic visual effects on the big screen and even some TV series that we’ve become pretty jaded by CGI. But one look at Diane Bullock’s reel of 1990’s movie VFX should serve as a reminder of just how good we’ve got it today.

Go back to the ’90s with this so-bad-its-good trailer from the 1999 TV mini-series Atomic Train, which not only perfectly captures the era, it manages to give away the entire story from start to finish. The tagline for the series was the equally awesome “The Final Stop is Deadly.”

We saw Weezer and Pixies in concert this summer, and they were both amazing. Seattle band Tiger Rider thought so too, and decided to pay tribute to this epic double bill with their own seamless mashup of Where Is My Mind and Say It Ain’t So.

YouTuber ChesterCopperpot5 dug up this little gem dating back to August 1994, when Dave Matthews did a solo acoustic performance at a Blockbuster Music store (yes that was a thing), just 6 weeks before his band’s breakout studio album Under the Table and Dreaming debuted.

(PG-13: Language) Academy award-nominated actor Jonah Hill makes his feature directorial debut with this gritty, minimal film about a young boy coming of age in the 1990s in Los Angeles, as he finds his place among a crew of skateboarders. Hill also wrote the original story.

YouTuber Squirrel Monkey continues to build an archive of historical videos for modern applications had they existed back in the 1980s and 1990s. This time, music and podcast streaming service SoundCloud gets the CD-ROM and floppy disk installation kit.

(PG-13: Language) ’90s alt-rock sensation The Breeders return to the lineup that gave them hits like Cannonball and Divine Hammer. This three song set offers a stripped down and fuzzed-out mix of folk and garage rock, including two from their new album All Nerve.

Musician John Tracey presents a medley of some theme songs from classic kids TV shows from the 1980s and 1990s, performed with a smooth fingerstyle vibe on his acoustic guitar. We can still never get enough of those DuckTales and Inspector Gadget themes.

Bill Hader’s return to host Saturday Night Live featured this sketch, featuring hilarious cast impressions of numerous 1990s celebrities as they each tried out for a role in the Steven Spielberg’s original Jurassic Park. That Sinbad joke. Ouch.

For their latest episode of “Wonders of the World Wide Web,” Squirrel Monkey envisions what it might have been like to used Netflix to stream movies and other videos back in the days of dial-up modems, HotBot, and Excite!

Ready to feel old? 1990s nostalgia is now officially a thing. This new Netflix original series is about relationships and coming of age in the heyday of Beavis and Butthead, Nickelodeon, and America Online. Drops 2/16/18.

Will Ferrell is slated to host Saturday Night Live on 1/27/18. To celebrate his long-awaited return to the series that made him a star, SNL has released this gem – the actual audition tape that landed him the gig back in 1995, and includes his hilarious Harry Caray impression.

Kidrobot presents an awesome series of blind-boxed collectible mini vinyl figures for any fan of Nickelodeon cartoons of the 1990s. Includes characters from Ren & Stimpy, Hey Arnold!, Rocko’s Modern Life, Spongebob Squarepants, CatDog, Rugrats, and more.

Continuing his series of overly literal musical interpretations, Davie504 played a surprisingly entertaining cover of Blink 182’s 1999 pop hit All the Small Things, entirely on instruments that are way too small for him.