Insects. At night there would be plenty of insects under every singe street lamp. The windscreen would be full of yellow goo after driving in summer.
Snow. It used to last the whole winter and not just 2 days here and there.
You could only watch cartoons after school or on Saturday mornings.
To continue installing a game you had to type in the 7th word found on page 16, paragraph 3 on line 4.
Huh? What does this mean?
Old anti piracy measure.
Games were on floppies and could be copied trivially. Games also came with a printed instruction manual. If you bought it, you’d have the manual. If you’re just playing a copy you wouldn’t. So type one word from a specific page so we know you own the game.
Games used to come with books to read, and their anti-piracy measure was to give you a page number and tell you to enter the first word on the page to activate the software.
Of course, you’d copy that floppy and write the code word on the label for your friends.
Tamagotchi and a Walkman with skip protection
Using two VCRs to edit a video project for English class.
I referred to Jennifer Connolly as Stifler’s mom and this zoomer gave me a blank stare.
If I wanted to talk to someone who wasn’t in the same location as me, I had to know the ten digit number assigned to them.
If they were in the same city, you only needed 7…
Using pencils to manually rewind cassette tapes.
IRQ 5, DMA 1
BLESSED THE DAY PLUG AND PLAY WAS INVENTED
Once a person left the house, you couldn’t reach them unless you know where they will be and called that place.
It is now safe to turn off your computer
Driving long distances to places you had never been before usually involved books of maps, pre-planning, a navigator, and help from strangers.
I remember when printers would print without being sassy & extortionate.
Big caveat, printers have always been unholy hellish abominations that sense your fear and exploit it right before delivering that so important THING you need to print
When you turned the TV on you had to wait a minute for it to ‘warm up’. The black and white image would slowly emerge out of the darkness.
And then it made that “warm up” sound, like a “klank!” Or something clicking inside the tv