> Diablo II had just come out in 2000 which had a 450Mhz Pentium III and 64 MB of RAM. 64MB of RAM was probably mid-tier at the time
I like to use Google books to refer to old issues of PC Magazine.
For $1999 in Feburary 1999, you could get the Pentium 450MHz desktop with 128GB of memory.
That said, I could do almost everything I do today on a similar machine back then. Surf the web, admin Linux servers, web development, edit video, play games, Photoshop, IRC, type papers...
> And the 7800 was technologically superior to the Famicom.
I'd never heard this before, in what ways?
The 7800 seemed to be lower resolution and I don't really remember any examples of games that looked close to what a good NES game looked like. But even the basic ports like Galaga/Dig Dug looked better on the NES.
I know there were over 10 times as many games released for the NES and probably just as many more developers so they definitely had more work put into them.
The other big problem with the 7800 was it was mostly arcade ports. They didn't really do any original games.
People were tired of the 5th home version of Galaga, Pac Man, and Dig Dug (even though the 7800 had decent ports, especially compared to the 2600, which it was also backward-compatible with). Nintendo came out with originals like Super Mario Brothers and Zelda, and then all the third party games...
Sort of, but they were all dial-up providers and it ended up being a race to the bottom, which seemed to be $9.95 a month, full of busy signals, then they all merged.
Seeing something similar today, we have the phone company and cable company, and now we've got a third option of fiber, the same lines being re-sold by 4 different companies, I'm sure in few years we'll be down to two companies.
10 ISPs worth of free trials and shortcuts on your Windows 95 desktop. AOL, MSN, Compuserve, Prodigy, AT&T, NetCom, UUNet, NetZero, EarthLink, MindSpring, countless local and regional providers...
Your Windows 98 machine being taken over by viruses minutes after booting up
Pop-ups! Pop-ups everywhere!
Adware infesting your system. WeatherBug, HotBar, BonziBuddy, Ask Jeeves, Gator, you'd have half your screen taken up by add-on toolbars in your browser.
Your system crashing at least once a day. Compared to the 16-bit days, system crashes are rare.
Terrible streaming. Nothing like RealPlayer on a modem, where it sounded like a clock radio placed deep inside a steel 55 gallon drum.
Laptop battery life that was measured in minutes. If you had more than 2 hours of battery life...
ID dominated the PC shooter scene for 4.5 generations in a row. Insane.
Wolf, Doom, Quake, Quake II, Quake 3 Arena
Dark Forces was great, but that tech was too late so it never went anywhere. Duke3D showed up, and while it was entertaining, it was clearly a level below what ID could do. 3D Realms fumbled that tech, then got caught up with the ultimate vaporware, Prey, and it took Epic stepping in with Unreal that finally dethroned ID.
Sandy talks up the people that left ID during that time, but did anyone (other than him) do anything noteworthy in the gaming industry? Romero was responsible for Daikatana of all things, Michael Abrash was never a 'game programmer', despite having a very successful career in Xbox, VR, etc. No idea about the other guys.
The e-bikes aren't that annoying, it's the kids (and adults) riding all over the city on 4 wheelers and UTVs. The cops chase them around but it doesn't do much good.
There's an ice cream shop around here that cashes in on nostalgia.
40 years ago, there was a dairy that made ice cream, and sold it in the summers on the side of the building. We'd go there as kids, line around the block, everyone loved it and it was a very popular and loved place.
It eventually burned down, the company stopped production, you know how it goes.
About ten years ago, someone built a clone of the old dairy's neon sign, rented a new building, and served generic hand-dipped ice cream (blue bunny brand?)
It's just regular ice cream. But they have the sign. And they can charge $8 an ice cream cone, and people line up just like they used to. Ridiculous.
https://bert.org/2021/01/04/t2-pin-cracking/