Relive the joy of Berkeley Systems' famous "Flying Toasters" and other “After Dark” screensavers

Long long ago, I had “Johnny Castaway”.

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I remember Johnny Castaway. Hours of watching it just waiting for one of those rare occasions something actually happens to the guy.

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The coolest screensaver I ever had was one that took place in a haunted house. The only noticable animation at first were the candles’ flickering flames. Watching it with patience was repaid with a disembodied skull’s suddenly floating by, a witch flying past, etc. Sometimes it would genuinely make me jump b/c surprise. The artwork was V well done.

Another nice one was for Halloween - a series of creepy cool illustrations with a calendar indicating October’s passage. It was accompanied by a looped section of a great Hauntology tune, The Black Drop by Mount Vernon Arts Lab.

The Séance at Hobs Lane is the scariest album I’ve ever heard.

I also had a great one which had floating Kalachakra symbols, e.g.,


which grew, enshrinkled, multiplied, and disappeared on a color-changing background. It was nowhere near as gaudy as you’re thinking.

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I prefer my sheep to be electric

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I’ve been using flying toasters as an animated Zoom background for a while now. Other oldsters never fail to get a kick out of it

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Sad to think that there are so many screensavers out there that must be going unpreserved, despite all the hundreds of hours they must have spent running back in the day.

I don’t think I ever did find the package that the school computers were running twenty years ago. It featured flying waffle irons that would occasionally go down in flames after being shot by Patriot missiles.

Remember the novelty of setting custom Windows system sounds? To think that there are many young’uns out there who will never even consider doing such a thing.

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Nice, but the toasters & toast don’t change lanes to avoid collisions. I miss that.

I’d really like to see the screen saver from Bill Plympton’s “Take Your Best Shot” CDROM updated for modern systems. Even if you didn’t actually look to see it, the sound effects were funny.

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Do you dream of them?

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“But I also think people are using their computers for more hours in a day than they were in the 1990s […]”

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BTW, I think my favourite screensaver was the Sherman’s Lagoon one.

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I use my Galaxy S8 Active in my old work van to listen to SiriusXM, I turned the screen lock off so I can change channels or skip songs. My phone now has the SiriusXM app screen burned in my screen. I can see it on every other app screen.

There seems to be a method to reset the screen but I haven’t had time to try it. because all those apps say it take hours and I can’t be without my phone for hours. Well, I could but…

Do you sleep?

Anyway, my favorite After Dark screen saver:

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Frost and Fire is the one I miss.That was beautiful.

Okay, and The Screenesaver of Fate, with the little Torgo that stumbled across the scren.

I remember the Torgo one. :smiley:

I had a ton of screensavers back in the day. Probably still have most of them around somewhere.

I know I still have this one: https://archive.org/details/cd_AfterDark_Star_Wars_ScreenSaver_for_Win3.1

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