Flying Toasters! Can of Worms! Fish! After Dark was unavoidable and awesome in its day, and this video explores the original releases, released on both the Mac and PC.
Everybody laughs but this was a big deal back in the 90's not only for protecting CRTs but it was a work place status symbol to have a cool screen saver; kinda like power ties.
My father, a LAN admin, had scored the coolest program in the universe. It was called ARABESQUES and it was in fact the final project of a computing grad class where they programmed fractals as a 'screen saver' type program. He used to just run it for hours. I've spent twenty years looking for it online, to no avail.
@@Laeiryn I just found an old screensaver from 1999 with the same name that draws really cool patterns on the screen, could this be it? I'm really sorry I had to base64 encode it because every one of my comments with a link keeps getting removed. aHR0cDovL3d3dy51bHRpbWF0ZXNhdmVycy5jb20vaW5kZXguYXNwP0lEPTI1NDk=
I kind of always had a thing for screensavers throughout my childhood, and After Dark was my gateway drug. Things really amped up later when I had my own PC in middle school and a 6mb Voodoo 3D accelerator. Something about early OpenGL screensavers really felt like the pinnacle of luxury.
Before I started this video I thought to myself " Now, how the **** is he going to talk about a screen saver for almost nine minutes?" Now I'm bewildered that I watched it for almost nine minutes. Life changing experience.
I remember sitting in the office in elementary school in the early 90's waiting to see the principal (Yes, this was a very common occurrence for me) and all the secretaries would have the flying toasters or the bouncing ball screen savers on their computers and sometimes I'd sit and watch them for what felt like hours. Something so relaxing about old screen savers.
Problem is, you'd better not plug it in. No wait what are you doing? Dont plug it in. STOP DONT PLUG IT IN YOU'RE GONNA KILL ALL THE FISH. DONT DO IT. GOD DAMNIT.
After Dark was the shit back in the day. I was amazed how fast and smooth the graphics were, even on my shit ass machine. Its kind of a miracle fitting all this stuff on one floppy, just amazing programming skill. I think people were quite creative back then, because of the limited recources they had.
Compare that to modern day utility applications like text editors that have an installation size of a few hundred megabytes and ship with a full webbrowser...
I feel like being confined under those limits was something that forced programmers and artists to really think outside the box to solve problems in unexpected ways. It's cool to be able to have amazingly easy and innovative engines and 10x as much RAM a VRAM as needed to run the latest games on Ultra, but from me there's a WHOLE LOT of respect to those guys who had to skirt around limitations to make innovations and one-up their competition. Check out the channel GameHut if that's intersting to you, btw!
Tom Krystinik Anyone know where to acquire these screensavers now and use them on modern systems? Also, I'm dealing with a bug on RU-vid that prevents me from commenting unless I reply to someone.
I didn't forget, it simply didn't have music in this original version. You're thinking of Flying Toasters Pro and the subsequent versions, which had music and such.
When I was a little girl, my dad’s media office had this screensaver on his work computer. If we ever went to pick him up early, I would just sit down on his office chair and stare at the flying toasters or Rainstorm until he was finished talking with clients. I used to wonder why we didn’t have such nice screen savers back home. Turns out it was because we had an old Tandy.
When I was a kid I loved the Flying Toaster Brigade, and always imagined they were chasing after the toast. I wish I would have bought the T-shirt all those years ago.
I have very fond memories of After Dark for the Mac, especially one that was Simpsons-themed, with a chalkboard being written on by Bart. We didn't see Bart directly, only what he was writing on the board, but you could choose the quality of his writing and Bart's laziness, with occasional sounds from Bart being tired. Very fun screensaver.
i really love your videos. i like to watch them at night and they just take me away from the day i had, which is a good thing. your voice is a perfect volume and i love when you tell stories. basically, i just really enjoy everything you do
bigstupidgrin There is some AD stuff on ebay right now. www.ebay.com/itm/Vintage-AFTER-DARK-Software-SWEATSHIRT-Sz-Adult-XL-Berkeley-Screen-Saver-Shirt-/261380931722?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item3cdb84808a
Holy shit this comments a year old but thank you! I've been trying to remember what the hell that game was called, I haven't played it since the late 90s.
There used to be a cartoon show on canadian tv called Bad Dog, the dog in the tv show was exactly the same as the one in the After Dark screensaver, he was also named Berkeley, a possible reference to Berkeley systems the creators of After Dark.
Can of worms was my favorite. These bring back such good memories of exploring my first computer. I would by an old Mac today just for the screen savers and old games I used to play.
i don't know which is more embarrassing, the fact that i wanted this really bad when it came out or the fact that when i got it i couldn't figure out why it wouldn't work on my pc i wasn't a bright child
Wow. Flying Toasters put me right back in the early 90s. I had completely forgotten about these. I wonder what nostalgia will be like for this generation. They will never get the chance to forget stuff from their youth only to be reminded of it later on RU-vid like us.
Does anyone else remember 90210 with the Peach Pit After Dark? The "After Dark" logotype above the door was cribbed from the After Dark screensaver logo, and there was a flying toaster on the door. This in an era when there was pretty much nothing computery referenced in a mainstream TV show. Except for Doogie Howser's journal, maybe.
This really reminds me of the absolutely massive collection of X screensavers that is available on Linux, which naturally also has a few ports from the screensavers displayed in this video. The flying toasters screensaver was even remade in glorious 3D.
"Bad dog,bad dog".................. then he'd walk away in shame with his tail between his legs and go off screen. Then you'd see him peek in from the side and eventually he'd come bouncing out, confident that he's alone and ready to tear up the desktop again. Ripping out wires (was supposed to be from inside your computer) and wires would be sparking and hanging out all shredded. And the dog would pee all over, marking his bad deeds. But soon into it, you'd hear, "bad dog, bad dog". He was so fat and cute, I'd actually feel sorry for him (and he was a screensaver, not real). I miss the modules!
i was a kid when it was the mid 2000's. I can think of some of the screensavers from back then on the school computers. It would be such a nostalgia trip to see them again.
I remember once i set my screensaver to a picture of the blue screen of death. I forgot about it for weeks and i almost shit myself when my $2000 gaming laptop bluescreened while i made a sandwich.
Father Hill SysInternals (before being bought by Microsoft) made a version so realistic I once thought it was a real crash in a driver I wrote myself (until I looked at the bottom and saw SysInternals instead of Your Administrator).
I remember when someone brought AfterDark 3.0 into our votech school and installed it on their workstation PC. It got passed around and pretty soon we were all using it. My favorite was the multimodule, Kiss the Sky, which combined the trippiest modules. I copied the floppy and used it on my laptop as well. Just adored AfterDark and kinda wish it were still around today.
Oh I remember this. I loved the After Dark screensaver. And others. Now I want to get them for my current PC. Same with Johnny Castaway, but I think he was a secrutity risk of sorts. Again thank you for your channel. I love every minute of it.
I remember having a few awesome screensavers that I just can't find anywhere. Cows dropping from the sky and breaking into pieces at the bottom of the screen, very gory. Buildings with neighbors on the windows doing different stuff. And a dude using a lawn mower cart to mow all the grass on the screen and run over a cat that is in the way.
You are about to get 1 Million subscribers. it is mandatory that if you ever have to be suit and tied for an event after that, you must get the After Dark Tie.
First of all lol at the 'blue balls' Second thank you so much for uploading this Third please could you upload the cats I've been looking for a decent video with the purring audio Much appreciated
My kids loved the toaster one, and if I remember there was one screen saver that acted like an interactive game show. But might have been when we decided to get a PC. Man am I giving away my age.
+Gavin Walsh There's ToasterClone: download.cnet.com/ToasterClone/3000-2257_4-10597381.html And if you don't need the screensaver but just want to watch the toasters for a few seconds: www.masswerk.at/flyer/
There are a couple of remakes done for the native OS screensavers on both Windows and macOS. I actually have one on my MacBook Pro, which brings back the memories of flying toasters.
If you don't want a clone and want the original version of After Dark, you can download it from here: winworldpc.com/product/after-dark/4x You can use it in Windows 10 by seting a compatibility filter for the installation. After that, the flying toasters screensaver shoud appear in the screensaver menu.
The way you ended this... "Now, if you'll excuse me, I have ______" reminded me of Bill Nye the Science Guy... So much nostalgia in one video I can't handle it! D:
I picked up the flying toaster necktie from a Goodwill when I was in high school, never knew it was "official" merch. That screensaver was a little before my time personally but I definitely remembered seeing it in school. Very cool to see the tie's origin here.
Our second task in programming class was tweaking a screen saver our professor made, then eventually we had to turn said screensaver into a side scrolling game. This was all done in C++. It's cool seeing all these first iterations of this software, and that some were made in C.
I miss screen savers so much. When I was a kid they were one of my favorite things about using the computer and was always the very first thing I did when I got my hands on a new one: looking at all the different screen savers they had and adjusting all the preferences.
I remember After Dark on my grandparents' Mac. As a kid in the early 90s, it was the coolest thing, and I have fond memories of it. Great to see if here!
Great review! There was another fun little screensaver back in the late 80's / early 90's that simulated fireworks. I think it was called "Pyro" or something to that effect. I remember seeing it on my high school secretary's PC and being mesmerized. It was very simple but extremely effective.
When I was a kid, we had a 386, and After Dark was super fun to play with. Also on the subject of screen savers, there was some Looney Tunes version (maybe required After Dark, not sure, I was like 4...) that included Taz the tazmanian devil buzzing around your desktop and eating your icons. That was great!
Yeah, after googling a bit, we had some of the expansion packs, like Looney Tunes, and More After Dark. It was some of the coolest graphics you could get early on.
Today is the day I finally unwrapped and wore my vintage After Dark - Fish T-shirt (as seen @ 1:47), years after I got it. 👕🫧🐠 Thank you for this video to commemorate the occasion!
After Dark was my first experience with computers, as a 7-year-old. My dad took me to work, but needed to do some business, so he plopped me in front of a Windows 3.1 computer and said, "Here's After Dark. Look at all the cool lines and shapes!" then left for a while, trusting me to amuse myself.
Aw, man. I'm getting some mega nostalgia feels from playing around with screensavers on the first ever computer I remember having in my house -- which was when I was like, what, 6 years old? Some of those screensavers just brought back some memories that I didn't know still existed, and that interface in particular (and the idea of being able to customize so many things on each module) is definitely very familiar to me... but a lot of my favorites were missing from this, so, I must've had one of the later versions. o.o Where are ants? Where's the motorcycle trick guy? The bad dog? The hammer guy that pounds the other guys into nothing when they answer trivia questions wrong?? Man, now I want to find the version I used to have, because... I'm having a serious nostalgia trip now. owo""
YESSSS. I remember the Fish! one! The flying toaster would only show up randomly, and it took quite a while for me to convince my dad there was actually a toaster in the screen saver!
