Does anyone else remember this screensaver from the late 90s which was basically a first person view of somebody going through a maze?
It was legitimately the most entertaining thing I ever saw when I first saw it and would watch it for up to 10 minutes whenever I saw it. Reminded me of Doom.
I had a tiny program called Neko (I can’t find any reference to it now). It was not so much a screen saver as a gimmick. When installed, a small animated cat would nondestructively follow your cursor around the screen. When the cursor paused, the cat would sit, scratch, then take a nap. It was amusing for about 10 minutes.
Of course I remember Flying Toasters and much of the screensavers mentioned above, but for me the coolest was the one which created a gravitational lens effect on your screen. It was like a black hole wandering around your screen and distorting it. I think you could tweak some parameters to change the distortion effects. IIRC, this screen saver first came with Windows XP.
Neko …
We had one - I thought it was After Dark, but maybe not - that was a guy on a riding mower that ran over cats. It was disgusting and hilarious. I like cats, I don’t advocate violence against any animals, but that screen saver cracked me up - it was so out there!
My favorite screen saver was Pipes. You could make them textured.
It drew more complicated designs when the computer was unattended for hours.
Back in the day when screensavers were actually necessary, I pondered that one could write a virus to modify the screensavers, so that they wouldn’t actually work: You’d pick a few points on the screen, and design the screensaver in such a way that those few points would never actually be changed by what was happening with the screensaver. The virus would then pick out those few-points-at-a-time until eventually some recognizable pattern would be burnt into the screen.
Nowadays the only reason to blank out the screen is to save power, which means blanking it out completely. That’s no fun any more.
Still available (updated version called oneko) in various Linux repositories or in source.
Mowin’ Boris, one of the official After Dark screensavers (in the Totally Twisted package). A humorous hybrid of two other AD screensavers, Mowin’ Man (guy cuts grass on a riding mower) and Boris (cute kitten mewing, chasing butterflies, and doing other cute kitten things).
I seem to remember having a Bloom County screensaver where Opus and Bill were fighting against flying toasters.
Found the link: Opus 'n Bill Bloom County Screensaver (1993) [04/16] 'Censored Toast' - YouTube
I miss the flying toasters so much… I had replaced the toast with bagels on mine.
Also must put in a word for the After Dark screensaver version of alien invaders. So adorable! Such cute screams when you died.
I liked the “Marquis” screensaver that was on Windows way back. It let you type messages which would then float around on the screen. I’d get on other people’s computers and type in things like “Hey! Who messed with my computer!” I did this to my sister’s PC and to several in the library at the school I taught at.
Ah, good times.
I just asked a 22 year old woman, “Do you remember flying toasters?” She told me she’s never done anything harder than weed.
And Pipes could pop up a random teapot now and then.
My friends and I played a lot of Lunatic Fringe in the study hall computer lab.
Since it first appeared I’ve always preferred Windows own “Mystify” screensaver (“pipes” was pretty cool too), but since Win7 the options for customization were limited to almost none. So for about the past ten (?) years I’ve used “Euphoria” for an extremely versatile alternative. Once I determined my preferred configuration I’ve never changed it. And it’s free.
For the record, I have no affiliation with Euphoria. I’m just a satisfied non-paying customer.
From the software’s notes: …It uses OpenGL and requires
OpenGL hardware acceleration for optimum performance. If you don’t have
it, you’ll see a pitifully slow framerate.
This saver is freeware, so there is no support available for it, but feel
free to send comments and suggestions to me (Terry). Contact information
is available on my website: http://www.reallyslick.com
That one came with Windows 95 and all later versions up until Windows stopped including them (and the concept was phased out). It’s just called 3D maze.
Here’s an open source recreation in your browser:
As it says, the project can be tested live here.
(I’d link actual screensaver files, but I was under the impression that Windows removed the ability for them to work out of the box.)