![]() ![]() Metal Gear Solid - the third in the series - put players in the role of Solid Snake, a special ops agent sent to a remote Alaskan island fortress where he’s got to infiltrate a base, put down tons of highly skilled bad people, and stop a nuclear missile-launching robot from activating. It was a seductive mixture of stealth elements, cinematic storytelling, action setpieces, a bit of Metroidvania exploration, meme quotes, and secrets. There really wasn’t another game like this that I had ever played up to that point in my life. This I played extensively until I bought the whole thing and absolutely feasted on it during my last year of college. Like plenty of others, I first encountered with with a demo disc of the opening level. Yet there were so many amazing titles that I enjoyed during this time, including the legendary Metal Gear Solid. I purchased my PS1 in the summer of 1998, and by 2000 I had gotten a PS2 and was phasing out the original. When I look back at my time with the original PlayStation, what surprises me most is how short of a window I actually spent with it versus the wealth of experiences and memories that came from it. Screensavers are a relic of the past, and ain’t nobody has the time and patience to sit staring at a screen hoping that something will happen. Obviously, it’s not something we’re going to see again today, at least in a similar format. The animations were well-done and the graphics - despite using a rather limited color set - were visually pleasing. Maybe Johnny was a horrible screensaver as a screensaver, but he was rich in entertainment value and laughs. I always liked the idea of little virtual people living on my computer - an idea that emerged in a few subsequent screensavers and desktop apps before exploding into the phenomenon known as The Sims. I had friends who’d sit around watching this goofy bearded dude do his stuff, hoping to see something new that they hadn’t before. Maybe it’s that we didn’t have the internet to constantly distract us, but something as simple and silly like Johnny Castaway ended up being a conversational centerpiece. And there were even special programmed events for certain major holidays, keeping the product feeling relevant year-round. Johnny was forever getting into micro-adventures, such as having his pants stolen by a bird or tiny pirates assaulting him. You’d think that there wouldn’t be a lot to do on this one island, but the devs proved any skeptics wrong. ![]() However, woven between these was a larger narrative that involved a mermaid and a trip back home (before Johnny becomes disillusioned by office life and elects to return to his beloved island). There were many bite-sized vignettes that would play out like funny little comic strips. Within this limited setting, Johnny engages in a variety of activities and tries to figure out a way to get back home. ![]() In Johnny Castaway, the titular character washes up on the shore of a very small desert island with a single palm tree. This provided, oddly enough, a lot of incentive to sit and watch your computer when you weren’t using it, just to see what happened. Rather, this screensaver revolved around a cartoony narrative. This 1992 screensaver attempted to go above and beyond the norm of creating funky designs or being abstractly pleasing. Things like a new operating system or screensavers were truly captivating and seen as exciting as a great new game.Īnd speaking of screensavers, let’s talk about another one that generated a pretty big cult following back in the day, which was Johnny Castaway. The ’90s hit this sweet spot of a growing love and accessibility to computers while not being completely inured to them. I often think that we’ve blitzed through some of the most interesting eras of technological history too fast to really appreciate them. ![]()
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