Lets reminisce about the good old days!

[AleXXX UK]

Who remembers VHS or the tape cassette? Did you make a mix tape off the radio? Did you buy comics, you know paper ones, not the iPad ones. I remember I used to buy weekly magazines that had parts to build our own dinosaur. My first school PC was some kinda windows 3.1 25mhz machine the size of a fridge with those boxy green screen monitors and 5" disks and a noisy dot matrix printer.

I used to play on my Genesis which I wouldn't share, my brother then got a gameboy. I used to have a Sony Walkman. I used love my BMX bike.

Maybe I'm just feeling nostalgic but I think those of us 35+ were really lucky to be born when we were and there were so many wonderful things before the Internet spoiled everything.

I remember porn mags were top secret, xxx, it was so hard to come by. You had get your best friends big brother to supply with a dirty picture. I dunno if it was just me but I think growing up in the 80s and 90s was awesome. I know those born earlier would feel their their decade was just as rosy.

 

[fkboy1]

Under 35 here and remember most of it!! VCR VHS, audio cassettes, boomboxes, board games, paper comics..........i still buy those sometimes!!
Had handheld Nintendo video games.......Donkey Kong, Greenhouse, Mario. Fun times.
Had the Sony Walkman as well!!! Does anyone remember the Viewmaster?? Still have a couple of those with the reels.

Got my first PC at 19.......had Windows 95, a 2.1GB HDD and a Floppy drive!!! Internet was the slow dial-up at 28.8kbps (I think) and Netscape Navigator was what I used for browsing back then. Porn on the net was limited to those free photo-gallery pics and videos which were lo-res and too slow to load.....no fun.

But...as the OP rightly said.........."growing up in the 80s and 90s was awesome." :thumbs up:

 

[HettoreConti]

I grew up in the 90's. But we were so poor, my mother could never afford any of those fancy baubles you guys so very nostalgically depict. Later in my life, however, I had access to a desktop computer and an assortment of playing consoles and music players, such as the PS2 and a Sony Walkman (all of this circa 04-05). Much later I discovered the internet... and I've been down the path or wreck and ruin ever since.

I agree with you, AleXXX_UK, I too believe the kids born in the late 70's and 80's had it better than us born at millennium's end. The music, the incipient technology, the t.v shows, etc.

 

[tonka]

Every era had it's good and bad.
We didn't have a TV till I was in grade school (black and white, no remote of course). But what we had was freedom.
"I'm going out". No other explaination was expected. You had to be home for supper. You had to be home for sleep. Other than that, your life was your own. And this was not rural Huckleberry Finn. It was a workingclass area of a big city.
That's a gift the 50s gave to kids. I feel lucky that I had it.

 

[dargelos]

Back in the day gay porn was unobtainable, but everybodies mom had a big Littlewoods clothing catalogue. You know what comes next dont you. Yes I turned to the sports section to look at the pictures of hunks advertising Speedos and gym shorts. That was our jack off material. It was very important to not get spunk stains on the book, for when it had to be handed back.

 

[c750dt]

I remember when I was in elementary school, I was in a part of town with good enough money each classroom had an Apple II. Math Blaster was fun on those things. I'm older than the world wide web, graphing calculators and my very first personal stash of porn consisted of a couple of floppy disks filled to the brim with 256 color JPEGs. Funny enough, I actually figured out sex on my own. I had sex very damn early on, in school with a classmate; I was the one who corrupted him. It was years later when I would eventually discover porn, then another year or two later when I eventually got "the talk."

 

[jw4833]

It's pretty ironic that you posted this topic of discussion on the forum because over the weekend, I was going through some items that were in storage, and I found some old cassettes and VHS tapes that are in excellent condition in their boxes. While going through the boxes, I decided to keep them because they hold good memories for me.

 

[XMan101]

I still use VHS tape ! ) So do many, I have 2 video machines and they work fine. I also have a DVD player alongside them, I also have many vinyl records and cassette tapes, although they were always crap , even so, they were handy and portable.

I'm not one to chuck out stuff that works , even if I add new technology alongside them, in fact I recently bought a small USB cassette tape machine in case there is anything on my tapes I want to digitise.

Oh, somewhere in a box I still have a Viewmaster & reels too

 

[js324]

I grew up in the 90's


Gaming

my parent's had an old pc in which you still had to type "dos" to start it up, and the games they got me for it (treasure mountain) were on the bigger wobblier floppies... my cousins had super nintendo I could play on but I didn't get a gaming system till sega genesis, and I would play mortal kombat all day. And before there were gameboys there were these one game portable game console things kind of like a gameboy. I had a ninja turtle one, and 101 dalmatians one. Sometime after that though I got the black and white gameboy, with a mario game that had no save, so somehow by the time I'd finally make it near the end the batteries would die. As the 90's progressed I got better gameboys and went through the pokemon craze(PIKA!!!) I also went through a Zelda phase for N64. Later I got a ps2, and then eventually in the 2000's an xbox, but I didn't use it that much, I never even played halo, and now I never play video games anymore.


Music
At some point I got a radio with a cassette tape player and made my parents by me millions of of blank tapes so i could record songs off the radio. The first album I bought on tape was "Bringing Down The Horse" by The Wallflowers. And soon I got a portable cassette player. As time went on I got a cd walkman and I'd buy some cds but burn way more (NAPSTER!). I thought my burned cds looked to bland, so to decorate them I messed with my walkman so it could play while it was open and then I'd take sharpies and hold it against the spinning cds then go over them with my sister's clear nail polish to seal it. I thought that I was so cool for that, lol. I finally got an ipod my senior year of hs

Movies

My parents used to record me movies on tape so I'd have stuff to watch. One time my mom recorded princess diana's funeral over some disney movie of mine.. oh i was livid. We eventually got a dvd player, but never got the device to transfer vhs films to dvd and got rid of the vhs player. Though I think the vhs's are somewhere in my parents garage now

Porn

at some point at the end of the 90's I realized I was into guys, so I'd try to get my hands on any sorts of pics I could. At department stores I'd wander through the mens underwear area and stare at the models on the underwear packages. At the grocery store I'd thumb through all the mens fitness magazines. Later I learned that Barnes & Nobles and Borders had Gay sections both for books and magazines. I'd sneak whatever I could and run into the bathroom go in a stall and read them and then I'd hide leave them there. In one of those books I learned about some gay web sites, not porn sites, but it introduced me to the concept that there were gay web pages, and so I went home and started googling "men without clothes" Unfortunately there weren't as many free porn sites back then or at least free ones I could find, so I only got to look at pictures. I also found some erotic stories websites which broadened my knowledge quite a bit. But like HettoreConti said, I've been down a bad path ever since.

 

[Tjerk12]

I am born in 1946.
Some highlights from my memory as a kid:



1. Till about 1952 we had no traffic lights in our town. When traffic was busy it was regulated by a policeman with a mechanical sign. Green was GO and the other message was STOP.
2. 1951. The whole family went to Zandvoort (at the coast). The girls to the beach and the men (I was five years old, but a man!) visited the Grand Prix. Ascani with Ferrari won the race.
3. 1952. The first car my father owned (together with a friend). A Fiat Topolino. An oldie, they had to overhaul it before it was useable.
4. Direction indicator of a car. A kind of hand coming out of a closet.
5. 1957 my first visit to the TT-Assen. The Scottish rider Bob McIntyre on a 350cc Gilera four cylinder.
6. 1958. My first Photo Camera. An Agfa Clack. Black and White, 12 pictures on a film.
7. My calculator on the secondary school, a rekenlineaal (slide rule). Multiply, divide, take root; exponentiation; logarithms; sinus; cosines; tangents; cotangents; all possible on this simple machine.
8. 1962. My first Hot-Rod, a Solex oto. 49 cc Two stroke. One liter fuel for about 50 km. It was an oldie, so I had to overhaul it before I could use it. Price about 10 dollars. I had to save money for about three month to gather 10 dollars.
I sold it two years later, again for 10 dollars.
9. 1964 I visited with my school the Friden factory in Nymegen. They made a computerized typing machine (price about 20.000 dollars). A stone-age version of Excel.
10. Much later, about 1980 my first PC, a Proton combidos. CPU 8 Mhz. I used it with WordStar.


Our family was rather poor, but I had a wonderful youth. It could not have been better.
Things are different now and when my kids are old, things will differ completely from now. Times are as good as you make them. My kids are happy people. Maybe because I gave them the same love and tenderness as my parents gave me. Love and caring about each other that is all that counts.

 

[trencherman]

When I went to the Gaiety in NYC for the first time, Kip Knoll danced to the tune of the Young Turks and Olivia Newton John’s Physical so I bought 45s of the two tunes as soon as I came out of the theater.

 

[parucci]

Old days..

GTA 5 is soon to come out and I still remember when I played GTA 1 and
thought that the graphics was awesome.

I think that it is scary that there are kids that don't know what
a VHS tape is.. oh god I feel old.

 

[XMan101]

When I went to the Gaiety in NYC for the first time, Kip Knoll danced to the tune of the Young Turks and Olivia Newton John’s Physical so I bought 45s of the two tunes as soon as I came out of the theater.

You actually saw Kip Noll in person ??? (swoon)

Old days..

GTA 5 is soon to come out and I still remember when I played GTA 1 and
thought that the graphics was awesome.

I think that it is scary that there are kids that don't know what
a VHS tape is.. oh god I feel old.

Someone was asking me about records the other day "Is that where you put a needle down onto it?" )

 

[Z.C.]

although I may no be in my 30's I remember growing up in the late 90's when I was around 3-4 years old. I remember playing my sega genesis games: Sonic the hedgehog 1&2, jurassic park, the lion king, aladdin, tiny toons, that one dolphin game "echo" i think, with my mom and we would literally stay up late trying to get past the super hard levels. We had vhs tapes out the wazoo, i remember those tapes that would play videos when it only gave you static. When Fox Kids was still on tv. My top favorite playlist consists of mostly 90's hits music. When I was talking with my 11 year old cousin and I made a joke about snoopy and woodstock and one of the peanuts specials, he was like "what is that?" and I just gave him a look like :O

 

[dargelos]

OMFG. That must have been a night to remember, seeing the real live Kip Noll performing at the Gaiety Theatre. In those days, so I am told, the audience could take a sample of the goods and for more money enjoy a private show. Not many sleaze pits like that anymore sad to say.

 

[AleXXX UK]

The music and flamboyance of the 80s and 90s music especially rock music was amazing

Who could forget these guys?


Or these guys?











I'm guessing concerts in the were much better in the past.

 

[trencherman]

OMFG. That must have been a night to remember, seeing the real live Kip Noll performing at the Gaiety Theatre. In those days, so I am told, the audience could take a sample of the goods and for more money enjoy a private show. Not many sleaze pits like that anymore sad to say.

That was one of the reasons you go to the Gaiety instead of to the Rounds. To make it certain you are not buying a pig in a poke. Quite a few featured stars were simply not available though, not even for any tchotchke from China. There was this guy I was absolutely nuts about (still am) that remained unattainable except in videos where he resolutely appeared solo, Sean Colby.

 

[haiducii]

I grew up in the 80's

I grew up in the late 80's...I was a tenager then, I miss it like hell...I miss a lot of things about the 80's...For a start I was much more younger then...So i miss that for one...My favourite thing was definitely 80's music & TV shows...You're an '80s child if you can remember watching Sky One's 'UK Top 40' presented by Pat Sharp shown across Europe via satellite & cable throughout the 80’s...Best decade ever?

 

[AleXXX UK]

I was going to say 90s were the best decade ever, probably because I was a teenager then too and probably because pre-9/11 the world was so much more and easy place.

Things I would miss if we were stuck in the 90s would be iphone, GPS, MP3s, HD TVs, broadband, wifi, Curiosity on Mars, more modern medicine, electric cars, I guess mainly tech science and tech. Everything else seems to be regressing.

 

[tonka]

The old days had lots of good. But let's also remember....they were not so good for gay people, or a lot of other people who didn't fit a very narrow mold.

In some ways, right now is the best time ever.