1. The very time-consuming search for the perfect song to play:
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Nostalgia
Dragon’s Lair: The Most Beautiful Scam in Arcade History
There are two types of people in this world: those who remember Dragon’s Lair as a mesmerizing, cinematic leap forward in arcade gaming, and those who remember it as the most humiliating waste of a quarter they ever experienced. If you belong to the latter camp, you are correct. If you belong to the former camp, you’re probably lying.
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22 Life Hacks That Got Us Through the 90s
25 Photos That Take You Back—And Hit You Right in the Feels
How Urban Legends Spread Like Gospel in the Pre-Internet Era
There was a time—not that long ago—when completely absurd urban legends could be whispered in a middle school hallway and, within weeks, become a universally accepted fact. They were repeated with the same certainty as the Pledge of Allegiance. They required no proof, no citations, no real thought—just a strong enough delivery and the unwavering confidence of the person telling them.
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Weepuls: The Dumbest Yet Most Important Prize of Your Childhood
If you went to an American elementary school in the late ’80s or early ’90s, you probably remember Weepuls. Or at least, you remember something suspiciously close to Weepuls: tiny, fluffy, googly-eyed creatures with adhesive feet and an aura of manufactured whimsy. They were the kind of thing a six-year-old would cherish like a sacred talisman for approximately 48 hours before inevitably losing it in the bottom of a backpack or having it violently stripped from existence by an overzealous vacuum cleaner. But before that—before they succumbed to entropy—Weepuls mattered.
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The Kid Who Had the Neo-Geo
Every neighborhood in the 90s had that kid. The one whose existence subtly reshaped your understanding of social class. For most of us, wealth wasn’t an abstract concept; it was tangible, like a pool in the backyard or a second story on a house. But then there was the Neo-Geo kid, and their wealth felt different. It wasn’t about having more—it was about living in a completely different dimension of existence.
The Day Mortal Kombat Changed Everything
There are certain moments in life that don’t just make an impression—they leave a scar. And for anyone who walked into an arcade in the early ’90s, seeing Mortal Kombat for the first time was less about playing a game and more about realizing the world had changed overnight. It was like when Bob Dylan went electric or when someone played Nevermind on repeat and said, “You have to listen to this.” There was a palpable shift, and it smelled like stale nachos and quarters that had been in circulation since 1972.
How MySpace’s Top 8 Weaponized Friendship
Before TikTok algorithms and Instagram Stories, there was MySpace. It was the digital Wild West—a place where you could slap glittery GIFs on your profile, autoplay whatever Panic! at the Disco song you wanted people to associate with your soul, and design an HTML Frankenstein of teenage angst. But the crown jewel of MySpace wasn’t your profile song or your “About Me” section; it was your Top 8—an eight-slot ranking system that turned your friendships into a blood sport.
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Why Did Our Parents Treat the Dome Light Like a Weapon of Mass Destruction?
When you’re young, the car isn’t just a mode of transportation; it’s a liminal space. A place where rules are both enforced and ignored, where the sacred (your parents’ cassette collection) intersects with the profane (whatever’s rotting in the cup holder). But there’s one rule every kid who grew up in a pre-smartphone world knows by heart: never, ever touch the dome light.
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The Cool S: The Greatest Unsolved Mystery of Middle School
There’s a strange cultural artifact that unites us, a low-stakes hieroglyph that transcends generations, geographies, and even subcultures. It’s not a song or a movie or a fashion trend. It’s an S. Not just any S, though—a very specific S. You know the one. Six straight lines, two stacked triangles, and suddenly, you were Picasso with a pencil. Every middle school desk in America bore its mark, every notebook margin carried its banner. If aliens ever excavate our ruins, they might think we worshipped it. Maybe we did.
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A Love Letter to 90s POG Culture
Let me take you back to a time when the only thing that mattered was recess, and the single greatest existential crisis was losing your best slammer.
Yes, I’m talking about POGs. Those little cardboard discs that somehow captured the spirit of an entire generation while simultaneously being utterly useless.