I noticed a new ad today on Instagram for MapleStory and I had to screenshot it in bewilderment. I remember seeing ads for that dang game back in the 2000s and had no idea that it had enough of a userbase to justify an ad on a very mainstream, popular social media platform.
Who else has fun examples? And even more fun, are YOU part of the "problem" that said product is still around? (LOL)
Similarly, Wizard 101 apparently still exists despite me not having heard anyone talk about it. Like I knew NOBODY that ever even heard of that game, with me only knowing about it because of the commercials that would air on Nickelodeon & Cartoon Network. Outside of those commercials & pop-up ads on websites, I had no clue on what the game was.
Related to a recent thread, the Atari name is still being officially used by its current owner, Infogrames despite interest in the brand having been on a slow decline since the early 1990s(and ESPECIALLY after the failure of the Atari Jaguar). I guess those 5th-7th gen Dragon Ball Z games my dad & other DBZ fans liked were enough for Infogrames to keep using the Atari name for a little while, but they were crazy enough to do Atari 50, a compilation of various games made for the 50th anniversary of Atari! I am also likely part of the "problem" seeing as I'm a huge(and I mean HUGE) Atari fan. I have Atari Anniversary Collection on PS1 & Arcade Classics on Sega Genesis which features 3 Atari arcade ports(Pong, Missile Command & Centipede, which are also on Atari Anniversary Collection) & I browse Atarimania, AtariAge & AtariProtos a lot(especially Atarimania). I also play a lot of Atari 2600 games & the occasional Lynx & Jaguar game, but MAINLY Atari 2600 games.
I actually knew one person who posted about her excitement over "getting back into" Wizard101 in her 20s. I do think the Pandemic definitely revived a lot of 2000s-early 2010s web nostalgia for people, and suddenly everyone was talking about Neopets, Club Penguin, ToonTown, etc. again. I knew them through the commercials too, but my parents refused to pay, thought they were a waste time, and were paranoid about stranger danger in those kinds of games.
I remember reading about that Atari name thing and am pretty sure that I'm still confused over it. And wow, do you have a Lynx or Jaguar? Because that's super cool! I'm very sad to see the decline of consoles as we speak, I know PC gamer is a big thing, but I just prefer to play things on consoles 95% of the time. The 90s-mid 00s had so many companies attempting their OWN console breakthrough that you ended up with a lot of neat experiments like the Lynx/Jaguar. I've been recently interested in the WonderSwan myself, since we never got it over here, and there's official licensed games for it.
There's still YouTube uploads of newish episodes coming out still.
EDIT: Here's an example.
Woah, I mean does PBS even show it anymore???
PBS stopped airing reruns back in 2021(the first animated adaptation(this was a BOOK SERIES first) was cancelled in 2010), but it was shown on Cartoonito later on & now it's on some streaming service that I don't care about because I would instead probably consider watching Altair In Starland on freakin' Tubi(it's on there for reasons no one has ever figured out... aside from IDK they got the streaming license) as that's a show that's more up my alley.
Dreams are boundless, imaginations are infinite, space is a multi-directional spiral & Akazukin ChaCha is my favorite anime
Thanks for the info on Caillou! I had forgotten that a number of kids shows have moved into new places in the streaming age, and aren't just confined to traditional TV channels.
Cyberchase, the PBS cartoon about math and logic. I remember watching season 1 as a child when it came out. Apparently they are still making episodes and it's on season 15. I guess they never beat Hacker. 😞
I've heard they've branched into more diverse topics like environmental protection?
I think it would be fun to have an AU where the characters (now grown up) have to utilize calculus or something like that haha.
The dilbert comic, but that is now on its own website, I don’t support dilbert’s creator
TBH, I wonder who still reads the "funnies" in a physical newspaper anymore? I read them until my mid 20s and just tapered off. I preferred to get the big "funnies" books from the library and read those instead.
And yeah. Dilbert's creator is a such a big oof to the point I wonder if people are just reading his stuff to be "contrarian" and/or they just want to support the creator for some "Truth Social butt pats." Too bad, because I know in the 90s and early 00s a lot of people ACTUALLY enjoyed his work.
No I'm not because I have no idea what Foamy the Squirrel is other than I MAY have heard of it before sometime ago.
Oh wow! It was a flash cartoon on Newgrounds back in the day. The style is very similar to Jhonen Vasquez's work, but the humor is more vulgar. Foamy is a squirrel with a high pitched voice who rants a lot, and he lives with this goth chick who was overly sexualized in the beginning, but it got more and more exaggerated as time went on. Some Foamy stuff sold in Hot Topic even. I haven't watched it in ages, but the cartoon wore out its welcome within a year or two, and didn't really maintain the hype it had before. Definitely isn't even mentioned next to its contemporaries such as Salad Fingers or Charlie the Unicorn. I was shocked when I saw they were still making shorts. I imagine it hasn't aged well at all.
This. I remember Foamy being especially popular in the mid to late 2000s. We watched his short on convention etiquette in my college anime club. Not sure how "popular" he was to the ultra "normie mainstream audience" though, at least compared to Charlie the Unicorn WHICH everyone seemed to know about. Maybe because Foamy was still stuck in that mid 00s loop, and mostly confined to Newgrounds, which had mostly tapered off in popularity after 2010? Who knows.
Thanks for the info on Caillou! I had forgotten that a number of kids shows have moved into new places in the streaming age, and aren't just confined to traditional TV channels.
I'm tired of shows changing/being removed from streaming, so I prefer VHS & DVD. When I was around 10 I bought some Blue's Clues episodes from iTunes but I got locked out of the account (I think the only way I might be able to recover it is by accessing the Vista laptop my mom let me have after upgrading to Windows 7, but forgot the password. Do those password bypass USBs on Amazon actually work?)
Similarly, Wizard 101 apparently still exists despite me not having heard anyone talk about it. Like I knew NOBODY that ever even heard of that game, with me only knowing about it because of the commercials that would air on Nickelodeon & Cartoon Network. Outside of those commercials & pop-up ads on websites, I had no clue on what the game was.
Related to a recent thread, the Atari name is still being officially used by its current owner, Infogrames despite interest in the brand having been on a slow decline since the early 1990s(and ESPECIALLY after the failure of the Atari Jaguar). I guess those 5th-7th gen Dragon Ball Z games my dad & other DBZ fans liked were enough for Infogrames to keep using the Atari name for a little while, but they were crazy enough to do Atari 50, a compilation of various games made for the 50th anniversary of Atari! I am also likely part of the "problem" seeing as I'm a huge(and I mean HUGE) Atari fan. I have Atari Anniversary Collection on PS1 & Arcade Classics on Sega Genesis which features 3 Atari arcade ports(Pong, Missile Command & Centipede, which are also on Atari Anniversary Collection) & I browse Atarimania, AtariAge & AtariProtos a lot(especially Atarimania). I also play a lot of Atari 2600 games & the occasional Lynx & Jaguar game, but MAINLY Atari 2600 games.
I actually knew one person who posted about her excitement over "getting back into" Wizard101 in her 20s. I do think the Pandemic definitely revived a lot of 2000s-early 2010s web nostalgia for people, and suddenly everyone was talking about Neopets, Club Penguin, ToonTown, etc. again. I knew them through the commercials too, but my parents refused to pay, thought they were a waste time, and were paranoid about stranger danger in those kinds of games.
I remember reading about that Atari name thing and am pretty sure that I'm still confused over it. And wow, do you have a Lynx or Jaguar? Because that's super cool! I'm very sad to see the decline of consoles as we speak, I know PC gamer is a big thing, but I just prefer to play things on consoles 95% of the time. The 90s-mid 00s had so many companies attempting their OWN console breakthrough that you ended up with a lot of neat experiments like the Lynx/Jaguar. I've been recently interested in the WonderSwan myself, since we never got it over here, and there's official licensed games for it.
I don't have a Lynx, Jaguar or even a 2600 & I certainly don't have the money for the first 2(for the 2600, those games are better emulated IMHO). Emulation is my friend in those cases alongside many other games that I'll never be able to get physical copies of because the retro gaming market has been messed with.
Some people think that the Turbografx-16 mini is more surprising than the Atari brand still being used, but like NEC, Sony, EA, Activision, Nintendo & Sega DID have their failures & controversies, but none of those have overshadowed their legacy (yet). Atari? Oh those failures & controversies HAVE overshadowed their legacy in like 10 home runs. The North American video game crash, the Jaguar's failure, Jack Tramiel's awful decisions, the Atari Corp./Atari Games dividing(the Atari Corp. side is owned by Infogrames, the Atari Games side is owned by Warner Bros. via Midway), E.T. 2600, that whole Atari VCS(THIS THING) console fiasco, all of that has more or less COMPLETELY OVERSHADOWED Atari's legacy in the gaming industry so much that it's just shocking to see their name show up from time to time in markets that aren't flea markets or thrift stores. Like, is Infogrames not even WILLING to go back to being named Infogrames despite the reputation of Atari seemingly having gone down the toilet DECADES AGO & going further down every year? Midway had already abandoned all of their ties to Atari by 2002 & so has Warner Bros. who once owned Atari back in the early-mid 1980s, which is how Midway ended up being bought by Warner Bros. years later, but Infogrames is STILL very much calling itself Atari TO THIS DAY. It's almost kinda bold in a sense, like they just don't care if that legacy company's reputation will never even be a FIFTH as high as it used to be at their peak, they'll still go by that name.
Dreams are boundless, imaginations are infinite, space is a multi-directional spiral & Akazukin ChaCha is my favorite anime
The dilbert comic, but that is now on its own website, I don’t support dilbert’s creator
TBH, I wonder who still reads the "funnies" in a physical newspaper anymore? I read them until my mid 20s and just tapered off. I preferred to get the big "funnies" books from the library and read those instead.
And yeah. Dilbert's creator is a such a big oof to the point I wonder if people are just reading his stuff to be "contrarian" and/or they just want to support the creator for some "Truth Social butt pats." Too bad, because I know in the 90s and early 00s a lot of people ACTUALLY enjoyed his work.
I don’t usually call comic strips “funnies” and I also usually read them In big comic strips collection books. I also think the best way to read dilbert (if you even wanna anymore) is the books.
Chatlands. I'm surprised stuff like WolfHome and Cats Paw Island are still around to this day. Same goes with FeralHeart, despite being a completely different thing, just with a similar concept.
Ahh... Wolfhome. I have fond but also bitter memories on there. I remember having a troll alt account and pretended my wolf character was kissing the clown backdrop from the classroom stage. Both of my accounts got IP banned eventually. I wonder if the moderation team is still strict these days?
