I remember when twerking was called booty shaking?

I remember when a booty could sit still long enough its perfection could be fully appreciated. Oh for those days to return.

I remember when the West Edmonton Mall theme park was called Fantasyland and not Galaxy world… I remember $8 oil and $0.29 McDonalds burger. and $0.29 a litre gas. gold was $290 an once, and Wane Gretsky was an Edmonton Oiler, and the Dow was 2900 as a record high.
29 seemed to be an important number.

Ahem, twerking and booty-shaking are not necessarily the same thing. You can shake your booty without it qualifying as a twerk.

This reminds me of that corny Tim McGraw song…“back when a hoe was a hoe, a coke was a coke, and crack’s what you were doin’ when you were crackin’ jokes….back when a screw was a screw, the wind was all that blew, and when you said that you were ‘down with that,” it meant you had the flu.” Heh…

I remember when kid shows were actually good. I remember when you were cool if you had a beeper. I remember when flip phones were the shit. I remember when it was completely normal to have a perm. I remember when the WWE was the WWF.

Ecto Cooler

Robin Hood: penis Prince of Thieves breakfast cereal

and Bedazzled t-shirt clips

@livelaughlove21 I miss the Ultimate Warrior from WWF.

I remember when beauty standards hadn’t gone off the rails!

:D

I remember when everyone had those short stumpy Nokia cell phones.

They used to have a machine that did it for you.

Mom had one. Fun for the kids too.

Oh man I been waiting for a chance to do a top ten personal list of stuff about video games that I remember, but no longer exists anymore. I think I’m old enough to give this a shot.

I Two Players
Playing with others these days all happens online, where you don’t know who you’re playing with most of the time, although you can usually invite specific friends. But that will never beat having sleepovers with your girlfriends and playing Super Mario Bros 3 all night long while chowing away on junk food and badmouthing guys you have a crush on. Sure, you can still do it, if you have old consoles and all, but point is, today the two player thing is now multiplayer, (up to 48 at once, bro!) and it happens online, with each nerd sitting alone in their living room, devoid of warmth and fuzzy magic that old crappy consoles brought.

II Instruction Booklets
In video games today, most instruction books that come with the games are about three pages long, and most of it is just telling you how the packaging is made from recycled material as well as telling you to push start to begin. Most instruction books now are digitized, you can check em out in digitized form while playing the game. (guys, this isn’t a joke) That’s nothing bad mind you, but back in the day I loved looking at big beefy instruction books that came with my games. All thick and colored. There ARE still cool instruction books out there, but it’s a dying breed. Although I saw that coming at the end of the nineties and early thousands when all instruction books were black and white.

III Arcades
Well, those certainly are dead. Some places still have them, others specialize in them, people collect them, but thing is, they’re no longer in production, so what we remember of them outside our memory will depend on how long the existing ones remain. Thankfully, there are many people dedicated to maintaining them, But I suspect that in at least 20 years from now, they will be no more.
Bad part of this memory; spending so much money playing some arcade games that, had I saved the cash I used on em, I could have just bought the home version like 5 times over. (note, lots of arcade ports ended up sucking on home versions)

IV Save Points
Maybe they still have save points in Japanese Role Playing Games, as that genre refuses to evolve, (thankfully, that is a good thing) but otherwise, in most modern video games, you don’t even have to worry about that. No more entering passwords or hoping you can survive to the next save point, games save accordingly and on their own these days. It amounts to the same really, it’s just that you don’t have to manually do it once you get to a checkpoint and whatnot. To quote the great Seanbaby; seriously? You asking me if I want to overwrite my progress? Do it, and stop asking me questions. Ass jacker.

V High Scores
Back in the day, high scores were your proof that you got somewhere in games, that you were just totally badass. Today, point systems still exist, but they usually have other purposes attached to them. Unlocking something if you get a certain amount of points, stuff like that. Whatever scoring system exists now goes beyond bragging rights. And that is good, because, to quote James Rolfe, even back then, we didn’t really give a fuck bout no score, we just wanted to get further into the game. (sept maybe for that Pacman guy who got his own hot sauce on the market after getting into Guinness records)

VI Beat em up Genre
Anyone who knows gaming knows what I’m talking about. Streets of Rage, Golden Axe, Final Fight. This genre now only appears as either HD ports or throwbacks to that age. Dragon’s Crown is a good mention. But otherwise, this is a dead genre. (which also went well with the junk food sleepover thing from my number one)

VII Cheat Codes
Back in the day there were all sorts of secret codes you could input at certain times. Like right right up B for extra lives or infinite ammo or whatever. (what is that combination actually for? I don’t remember) That is still around, but pretty much barely. A dying breed.

VIII Video Game Magazines
Back before the net, there were oodles of game mags. TONS. I have a lot. They had reviews, previews, strategies, codes, you name it…video game magazines these days are few and far between, and reserved for intelligent articles, with no pictures, about how eating eggs makes you a good game player. Game magazines that are left are desperately holding on by trying to be unique, thing is, they’ll just die, because whatever they say can be found online for free.

IX Simple Fighting Games

Mortal Kombat, Street Fighter, Killer Instinct, what do you think of when you hear those titles? Pick a guy, fight some fuckers, unleash special moves and combos, and try not to die. Fighting games these days are too complex for me. Back in my day, you had one to two bars on top of the screen; one for your health, another for special moves.
Modern fighting games have like, seven bars per character. Blocking bars, special move bars, retaliation bars, how cool your hair looks bars, flashing skull icons and anime action lines whenever you do something besides walking. I miss the old days when it was a fight to the death, and you relied on basic rule and skill to achieve this.

X Unlocking Content
My biggest video game pet peeve. Years ago, you could unlock special characters, weapons, costumes, levels and everything else by achieving certain things in video games. These days though, you just buy the extra content online. I think this is complete bullshit. The magic was only real and fulfilling when you unlocked something because you were a fucking badass, and not because you just had the money to do so. I see games that offer extra in game currency, experience points, weapon bundles and stuff, if you’re willing to pay for it with real money. What the fuck is that? Play the game or go home, weakling.

Alright that’s it, although I could probably think of more. I know I should get my own blog instead of posting stuff like that on this site, but thank you for reading, if you did. :) Game on, motherfuckers.

@Symbeline great answer! I totally forgot about instruction booklets for games! One one for sonic 2 for the megadrive/genesis was about an inch thick and all you did was run left or right and jump!

Also to stick to your theme of games, I don’t really game much these days, but I’ve noticed that on most new games the players health will just regenerate slowly by itself. What’s all that about?!

@Crumpet YES. This is something I should have mentioned…never seen that before back in my day. You lost health? Too bad. Get through the rest if you can, and hope you find some health along the way. It seems common these days that if you just run away or stand still where you can’t be hit, the health will regenerate slowly. Kinda lame, and I was gonna say, at least they have the decency to make the game hard enough so that this is justified…most times…but in the 16 bit era, games were harder, and your health did not come back. :/ That is, for the games where health was included, as opposed to one or two hit deaths.

My guess is, this thing was born with online gaming, as you can never predict a human opponent, therefore they give you a break. Seems to have seeped its way into offline gaming though.

I remember when it was called epilepsy.

I remember when Carl’s Jr. used to have hot dogs on the menu.

I remember when we wore roller skates with metal wheels that got caught in the cracks of the sidewalks, and we didn’t wear helmets.

I remember when my brother would get a phone call from a girl and he would string the cord clear out into the garage and shut the door so he could speak privately.

I remember having dinner with my parents every single night of my life until I got my first job.

I remember when parents used to tell us to go play outside. The only time we were allowed to watch TV for more than a couple of hours was on Saturday mornings. The toons were over by noon, so after that you were told to go outside and play.

I remember when it only cost you a quarter to ride the bus.

I remember when you could get 3 pieces of Chiclets gum out of a gum machine for a penny.

I remember when after school, we would change into play clothes. You weren’t allowed to play in your school clothes.

I remember when Disneyland still had the ride called The Carousel of Progress, and the Skyway and the People Mover.

I remember when Gilbert Gottfried did the voice for the Aflac duck.

I remember when TV dinners came in a foil container and took over an hour to cook in your oven. We never ate them, because my Mom was a really good cook and could make dinner much quicker than it took those TV dinners. We owned TV trays, but we never sat in front of the TV eating dinner off of TV trays, those were used for games, or coloring books.

I remember when I used to go camping and sleep on a thin mattress in a tent and it didn’t hurt my back.

I remember when I was a kid, there were hardly any obese kids.

I remember knowing exactly when the tape would click over to the next track on my 8 track tape of Abbey Road (right in the middle of the song!).

I remember thumbing through albums and 45’s with picture sleeves at Licorice Pizza. Later, I remember looking at VCR tapes in that same store when it became a Blockbuster video store.

I remember waiting all year just to get to see The Wizard of Oz on TV.

I remember being taught how to act properly in a restaurant from a very young age. I remember what a thrill it was to go out to a very fancy restaurant each year on my parents’ anniversary.

I remember going to our elementary school Halloween carnival each year and getting to purchase some homemade fudge, brownies, cookies or rice crispy treats.

I remember going to the beach every day during summer and laying out getting a tan. We would always stop at the 7/11 and get Funnyons.

I remember one year, our whole community stood in line for hours at the local junior high school to get our rubella immunization. It must have been around 1970.

Here is what I remember:

• We had stewardess, now we have flight attendants.
• We had policemen, now we have law enforcement officers.
• We use to have retarded people, now we have mentally challenged.
• We use to have fat people, now we have metabolically challenged.
• We use to have midgets, now we have vertically challenged, or ”Little people”.
• We use to have toilet paper, now we have bathroom tissue.
• We use to have mothers and fathers, now we have baby mammas and baby daddies
• We had firemen, now we have firefighters.
• We had nurses, now we have medical attendants.

I am sure there are other things, but I don’t have the time.

@Hypocrisy_Central Huh? I’m pretty sure over half of the things you say we “used to have” are still the accepted term. Who the hell corrects someone for saying policeman, toilet paper, mother/father, fireman, or nurse?

And who the hell says “metabolically challenged”? I believe “overweight” is what should go there. And “vertically challenged” should be replaced with “dwarf,” which is another PC term for little people.

we had bigots, now we have family values conservatives.
we had racists, now we have “patriots”

We used to have homophobes, and now we’ve got traditionalists.

Ah, but we all know they’re still homophobes.