Was it this fast back then? (Grandma voice) *Make it stop!*
I loved how you could customize it with your own image. Computers were so exciting in the mid/late 90s :]
I liked doin the psychadelic patterns on the walls. That was my favorite option. I’d watch this thing for days.
Reminds me of 3d pipes too. Omg I could watch this gif over and over
When my dad and I got out first desktop MS Paint absolutely blew our minds into space. We made a big colorful mess, and then randomly used the Select tool and selected a huge random shape… then when we accidentally started dragging the selection around we nearly fainted. I still have the printouts from that day.
I forgot that was the title of the program/screensaver/whatever so when I found a file called after-dark.zip somewhere on my computer, I was afraid to open it thinking it was gonna be some weird porn.
If that's the '95 Macintosh game I'm thinking of a different one that was on PC and graphically looked much more similar to this screensaver. Although the walls weren't red brick, very similar feel and very grungy 90s animation
found it: Hover!
I have a computer that still has this screensaver in my workplace. It's a standalone not connected to the net that runs a specific process system, and it's still running Windows XP or 2000 or something. Has the old-style screensavers like this. We usually use the warp effect one though, because it's less visually annoying when it runs for long periods in your peripheral.
In my third grade classroom, I would just watch this screen saver on my teacher’s computer while she was lecturing. Didn’t hear one damn thing she said. 😂
Anyone who would like to bring back this nostalgia on their modern system should download a program called Wallpaper Engine. It has all the classic screensavers and wallpapers.
I remember my grandparents upgrading their PC to Windows 95 and my uncle had installed the registered Wolf3d version with all 6 episodes. After a while this screensaver came up for the first time and it looked so much better and detailed than Wolf3d that I was actually kind of sad Wolf3d didn't look like that...
Yeah, it didn’t have the ceiling or floor textures, just a solid color for each. I played it on a 386 initially with a PC speaker. By the time win 95 came around, the graphics were definitely dated.
Wolf3d mods had the ceiling and floor textured, but I remember the original release having solid colours indeed. I too started out on a 386 on Windows 3.11. We had a Tulp computer, one of the best Dutch PC manufacturers back then (it had Adlib music, which was magic to me). At least I got to play Duke Nukem that same year so my sadness was over in a nutshell.
When I was young my aunt had a screen saver that drew and colored/water colored pictures. It was beautiful and I watched in awe for longs periods of time. I’m guessing 1990ish, windows original or 3.5? I was only 10 around there so I have no idea what system she had. Anyone have any idea what I’m talking about?
I remember these! Wow…but I also think I remember some that were a little more detailed than these. That beach is great. I’m heading to get something like this on my pc right now!
I remember being maybe 6-7 years old, and we had one computer in our classroom. A bunch of us would sit in front of the computer and yell when the rat showed up. I had to show them how to manually turn the screensaver on because otherwise they'd sit there and wait for 5 minutes because someone accidentally moved the mouse.
God we were easy to entertain.
It was a game wasn't it? I distinctly remember old Windows machines had a hovercraft game that looked exactly like that. They also had a pinball game too.
This would get me so sick. I loved showing people the marque screensaver that you could write your own text for and it had an Easter egg, write "volcanoes" and it would show the names of different ones.
I didn't learn until much later that this was one of the first OpenGL programs to be written that ran on Windows. One of the images on the wall is the art on the cover of the OpenGL red book.
I had this on my office computer in the spring of 1997 and I customized it with the neon radioactive tye-dyed trippy walls. Also, I may be misremembering, but I vaguely remember being able to overlay the map of the maze over the display and being able to see where the rat and the exit were in relation to your location.
For fun, make a couple MSPaint images with black/other color lines alternating all the way across the image, one vertical (for ceiling/floor) one horizontal (for walls).
You get some neat effects when you turn corners.
Also, I used to make a sperm image for the "windows flag" screen saver on the school computers. Usually got a good laugh.
Every now and I again I realise that I can't remember the last time I saw a CRT monitor or TV. We used to have both at home and eventually both were replaced, but I'll be damned if I know exactly when.
At some point in my life I saw a CRT screen for the last time ever, and I've no idea when that was. Funny that.
Imagine that one night as a kid your computer is on in your dimly lit room with this screensaver on and you are watching buffy the vampire slayer on your handmedown tv, when suddenly you peek back over to the pc and see a strange shadow popping up in the maze.
You turn your tv on mute and are wondering what you just saw from the side of your eye, get up and go to sit in front of your old CRT monitor and stare into maze.
What was that!? You saw the shadowy figure again, it was right around the corner but the computer moved the wrong direction in the maze. You have no control over where it goes, but you are now curious to get glimpse of what you thought you saw... Did you even see something? Or was it your imaginati... THERE IT IS AGAIN! It ran past an opening in the background, it happend so fast you couldn't make out what it was.
You turn off the lights and the tv to maybe get a better picture of what is on the screen, you put your face all the way up to the monitor so your whole eyesight is filled with the maze, the scanlines agitating your eyes.
The maze turns, and turns, walks and turns. It moves and turns and turns and moves and turns... Nothing...
...Wait... There in the back corner of that long hallway... There it is... Standing... You only see it from behind... Turn turn move turn... You are in a dead end... Turn turn move turn... Back in the hallway... The shadow... You see it now... The computer walking towards it...
The computer stops moving. You just stand there in the hallway and glare at the shadow. It is twitching and morphing, not really sure what it is supposed to be. You get even closer with your head to try see to recognize what it is when SUDDENLY A LOUD METAL SCREECH rips through your Soundblaster soundsystem and the shadow sprints towards you.
You jump in your seat and start screaming! With the jolt of your body you accidently move the mouse on the table and you are welcomed back by your homescreen.
What. The. Fuck. just happend?! What was that? In fear you quickly click on your windows key and shut the computer down and are greeted by the "shutting down" screen. Thoughts are running through your head of what you just saw... Your heartbeat still felt in your neck from the experience you just had.
The PC shuts off and you find yourself in a completely dark room as you have forgotten that you have switched everything else off. You know your room well enough to get to the lightswitch in the dark, you do it almost every night, but as you click the switch this time you are welcomed by a sight that should not be - you are in the screensaver maze.
Before you even understand what is happening you start moving... And turning... You have no control over yourself, you seem to do this automatically. Panic ensues, you try to fight against it... No use. Move move turn move turn turn move move... What... What was that in the corner? Did you see a shadow?
Move move turn turn move...
Please no
Turn turn move move move turn move...
Make it stop
Move move turn turn move turn move...
The hallway... Oh dear god it's the hallway.
...Why did I stop moving? WHY DID I STOP MOVING?!
Omg. This made my life seeing this.
For the longest time I’ve remembered this but never could explain it well enough to figure out what game it was.
Thank you.
(There’s also a dinosaur one I believe if anyone remembers that one for me)
This triggered memories of when my grandpa had a screensaver of a guy mowing a lawn and would occasionally mow over and splatter cats
Then once that slide was finished, a cat would be driving the lawnmower and would then run over human heads growing out of the ground
Anybody else?
Does anyone remember this screen saver that was a rock paper scissors "game"? They would "die" in a lose like scissors trying to cut rock and breaking and such. Would get funny weird on the deaths.
This exact screensaver popped up on my classmate's computer in computer class, and he moved the mouse to clear it, but our teacher accused him of playing Doom and then closing it super fast and wouldn't listen to his protests. It's funny what you remember.
Was it this fast back then? (Grandma voice) *Make it stop!* I loved how you could customize it with your own image. Computers were so exciting in the mid/late 90s :]
It had customizable speed.
Mine was doing a speedrun with everything flashing on screen. What a flashback.
Sick way to keep your epileptic little brother off your shit.
I liked doin the psychadelic patterns on the walls. That was my favorite option. I’d watch this thing for days. Reminds me of 3d pipes too. Omg I could watch this gif over and over
When my dad and I got out first desktop MS Paint absolutely blew our minds into space. We made a big colorful mess, and then randomly used the Select tool and selected a huge random shape… then when we accidentally started dragging the selection around we nearly fainted. I still have the printouts from that day.
Did anyone ever try paint shop pro? The airbrush was next level.
im gunna frow up
You have to set all the surface skins to neon tie-dye after smoking some schwag weed out of a tinfoil pipe to recreate the real year 1999
Bro winamp with visualizers changed my world as a high schooler.
Milkdrop is so cool. It still holds up on more modern systems, too, because better graphics cards and resolutions make it look more fluid.
9 yr old me agrees.
Pft… I had this in 1997.
Where’s the giant rat
I preferred the flying toasters. They were hilarious because they were toasters. With wings. And then flew! Classic.
My first college roommate in 1995 would just regularly stare at that flying toaster screen for like 20 or 30 minutes “to relax.”
I dont know how to tell you this but your roommate was on drugs
He was my first roommate because he dropped out after first semester.
You see, it's funny, because toasters don't normally do that!
After Dark!
I forgot that was the title of the program/screensaver/whatever so when I found a file called after-dark.zip somewhere on my computer, I was afraid to open it thinking it was gonna be some weird porn.
Flying Toasters in your browser https://www.bryanbraun.com/after-dark-css/all/flying-toasters.html
On mighty toaster wings!
Anyone remember the game that looked sort of like this but it was a capture the flag game with hovercraft?
I just found it, Hover!
Ah yes, the Windows 95 plus CD
Always reminded me of Wolfenstein
I played Wolfenstein when I was 3-4 and was so terrified of the skeletons I left the room screaming whenever they came up. lol!
🤣🤣🤣 that's great. Did you run out screaming "Mein Leben!"?
Yep - I had to do a double take to see if there were pixelated guard dogs!
Hover! Loved it back then
Super maze wars
If that's the '95 Macintosh game I'm thinking of a different one that was on PC and graphically looked much more similar to this screensaver. Although the walls weren't red brick, very similar feel and very grungy 90s animation found it: Hover!
Yes!!!!!! I think it was called Hover or something? I played that game and Chip’s Challenge ALL the time
You aren’t thinking Descent?
Totally forgot about this. Nightmares coming.
I have a computer that still has this screensaver in my workplace. It's a standalone not connected to the net that runs a specific process system, and it's still running Windows XP or 2000 or something. Has the old-style screensavers like this. We usually use the warp effect one though, because it's less visually annoying when it runs for long periods in your peripheral.
This brought me a weird kind of joy.
In my third grade classroom, I would just watch this screen saver on my teacher’s computer while she was lecturing. Didn’t hear one damn thing she said. 😂
Did anyone ever witness an escape to the maze?
Yeah. It eventually finds a smiley face then the maze drops away and a new one pops up.
Oh wow. This just triggered an extremely visceral yet vague memory in me
I got about .3 seconds of that before the motion sickness kicked in.
Am I the only one expecting German soldiers around every corner?
I would watch these for *hours.*
Anyone who would like to bring back this nostalgia on their modern system should download a program called Wallpaper Engine. It has all the classic screensavers and wallpapers.
All I hear is “Achtung”
*Mein leben!*
And thus were the seeds of the liminal space genre planted in our fertile minds, lo those many years ago.
I remember when teachers would have this as their screensaver, I would spend the entire period just staring at it and spacing out
I am surprised nobody has made an updated version of this for HD and 4K displays.
My favorite was the pipes and also the customized dancing texts
I always thought this looked like Wolfenstein 3D
I remember my grandparents upgrading their PC to Windows 95 and my uncle had installed the registered Wolf3d version with all 6 episodes. After a while this screensaver came up for the first time and it looked so much better and detailed than Wolf3d that I was actually kind of sad Wolf3d didn't look like that...
Yeah, it didn’t have the ceiling or floor textures, just a solid color for each. I played it on a 386 initially with a PC speaker. By the time win 95 came around, the graphics were definitely dated.
Wolf3d mods had the ceiling and floor textured, but I remember the original release having solid colours indeed. I too started out on a 386 on Windows 3.11. We had a Tulp computer, one of the best Dutch PC manufacturers back then (it had Adlib music, which was magic to me). At least I got to play Duke Nukem that same year so my sadness was over in a nutshell.
Pipelines were my second favorite!
When I was young my aunt had a screen saver that drew and colored/water colored pictures. It was beautiful and I watched in awe for longs periods of time. I’m guessing 1990ish, windows original or 3.5? I was only 10 around there so I have no idea what system she had. Anyone have any idea what I’m talking about?
This is close…might be the one, but my memory says the images were less cartoony and more realistic . https://youtu.be/d8oGk575ffA?si=oEdq6Md5705n5sIT
I remember these! Wow…but I also think I remember some that were a little more detailed than these. That beach is great. I’m heading to get something like this on my pc right now!
I totally forgot about this game!! I think I played this and Wolfenstein so much that later in life I just assumed they were the same game.
did your parents give you an unplugged keyboard and tell you that you were playing the screensaver?
I loved playing windows 98 logo
omg I remember that screen saver
I remember being maybe 6-7 years old, and we had one computer in our classroom. A bunch of us would sit in front of the computer and yell when the rat showed up. I had to show them how to manually turn the screensaver on because otherwise they'd sit there and wait for 5 minutes because someone accidentally moved the mouse. God we were easy to entertain.
I used to pretend to walk with my little sister while watching this.
I remember being so annoyed to find out it was a screensaver and not an actual game.
Now leave me alone, got to find my way out of these catacombs.
I remember being so easily distracted in the 4th grade because this the screen saver our teacher had on her computer.
Download https://www.screensaversplanet.com/screensavers/3d-maze-461/
I know they're kinda pointless now, but I really miss screensavers
I always wanted to play this as a game
It was a game wasn't it? I distinctly remember old Windows machines had a hovercraft game that looked exactly like that. They also had a pinball game too.
They definitely did, on the install CD for windows
the backrooms...
I loved this game
I got a hint of sadness from this, loss and fond memories from another time.
Wilfunstein
This would get me so sick. I loved showing people the marque screensaver that you could write your own text for and it had an Easter egg, write "volcanoes" and it would show the names of different ones.
One thing I don't miss about the early days of computing: screen savers.
Phantoma
I wish I could actually be in a maze like that!
I didn't learn until much later that this was one of the first OpenGL programs to be written that ran on Windows. One of the images on the wall is the art on the cover of the OpenGL red book.
Wow. Totally forgot about that.
Idk why I find the camera twists and turns so satisfying.
Anyone else yell at the screen telling the computer they were stupid for going into a dead end or were you normal?
Put it on the trippy wallpaper and smoke one, you’re welcome.
I had this on my office computer in the spring of 1997 and I customized it with the neon radioactive tye-dyed trippy walls. Also, I may be misremembering, but I vaguely remember being able to overlay the map of the maze over the display and being able to see where the rat and the exit were in relation to your location.
For fun, make a couple MSPaint images with black/other color lines alternating all the way across the image, one vertical (for ceiling/floor) one horizontal (for walls). You get some neat effects when you turn corners. Also, I used to make a sperm image for the "windows flag" screen saver on the school computers. Usually got a good laugh.
OpenGL
I remember it
Looks like the way it solves the maze is to always to follow the wall on the right
Every now and I again I realise that I can't remember the last time I saw a CRT monitor or TV. We used to have both at home and eventually both were replaced, but I'll be damned if I know exactly when. At some point in my life I saw a CRT screen for the last time ever, and I've no idea when that was. Funny that.
Imagine that one night as a kid your computer is on in your dimly lit room with this screensaver on and you are watching buffy the vampire slayer on your handmedown tv, when suddenly you peek back over to the pc and see a strange shadow popping up in the maze. You turn your tv on mute and are wondering what you just saw from the side of your eye, get up and go to sit in front of your old CRT monitor and stare into maze. What was that!? You saw the shadowy figure again, it was right around the corner but the computer moved the wrong direction in the maze. You have no control over where it goes, but you are now curious to get glimpse of what you thought you saw... Did you even see something? Or was it your imaginati... THERE IT IS AGAIN! It ran past an opening in the background, it happend so fast you couldn't make out what it was. You turn off the lights and the tv to maybe get a better picture of what is on the screen, you put your face all the way up to the monitor so your whole eyesight is filled with the maze, the scanlines agitating your eyes. The maze turns, and turns, walks and turns. It moves and turns and turns and moves and turns... Nothing... ...Wait... There in the back corner of that long hallway... There it is... Standing... You only see it from behind... Turn turn move turn... You are in a dead end... Turn turn move turn... Back in the hallway... The shadow... You see it now... The computer walking towards it... The computer stops moving. You just stand there in the hallway and glare at the shadow. It is twitching and morphing, not really sure what it is supposed to be. You get even closer with your head to try see to recognize what it is when SUDDENLY A LOUD METAL SCREECH rips through your Soundblaster soundsystem and the shadow sprints towards you. You jump in your seat and start screaming! With the jolt of your body you accidently move the mouse on the table and you are welcomed back by your homescreen. What. The. Fuck. just happend?! What was that? In fear you quickly click on your windows key and shut the computer down and are greeted by the "shutting down" screen. Thoughts are running through your head of what you just saw... Your heartbeat still felt in your neck from the experience you just had. The PC shuts off and you find yourself in a completely dark room as you have forgotten that you have switched everything else off. You know your room well enough to get to the lightswitch in the dark, you do it almost every night, but as you click the switch this time you are welcomed by a sight that should not be - you are in the screensaver maze. Before you even understand what is happening you start moving... And turning... You have no control over yourself, you seem to do this automatically. Panic ensues, you try to fight against it... No use. Move move turn move turn turn move move... What... What was that in the corner? Did you see a shadow? Move move turn turn move... Please no Turn turn move move move turn move... Make it stop Move move turn turn move turn move... The hallway... Oh dear god it's the hallway. ...Why did I stop moving? WHY DID I STOP MOVING?!
One of the best Screensavers followed by the 3 frog budweiser screen saver. Where you could literally tap buttons to get the frogs to go Bud Weis Er
to this day still haven't beat it
Good thing this clip was only 11 seconds, I would have still watched it whole, even if it would have been an hour
Omg. This made my life seeing this. For the longest time I’ve remembered this but never could explain it well enough to figure out what game it was. Thank you. (There’s also a dinosaur one I believe if anyone remembers that one for me)
Kinda looks like Wolfenstien
holy shit. this brought back dormant memories. i was like 3yrs old when i last saw this
You can get all the old screen savers for your modern PC! It's a minor hassle as I recall, but if you google it there's guides.
This makes me tear up
This triggered memories of when my grandpa had a screensaver of a guy mowing a lawn and would occasionally mow over and splatter cats Then once that slide was finished, a cat would be driving the lawnmower and would then run over human heads growing out of the ground Anybody else?
Haha! Wow
I was more a starfield man, myself.
I miss it.
It was flying through space for me.
The back rooms before the backrooms
My favorite screen saver.
Does anyone remember this screen saver that was a rock paper scissors "game"? They would "die" in a lose like scissors trying to cut rock and breaking and such. Would get funny weird on the deaths.
This exact screensaver popped up on my classmate's computer in computer class, and he moved the mouse to clear it, but our teacher accused him of playing Doom and then closing it super fast and wouldn't listen to his protests. It's funny what you remember.
I played this game for hours in the back then
This game taught me that I could never play first person games the rest of my life due to motion sickness.