Before I begin this post, let me preface it with the fact that I am not really that old. A lot has changed in the past 20 years, here is a list of a few of my favorites.
When I was young, unlocking characters and levels in video games normally involved beating the game or completing a secret mission. The concept of In App Purchases or DLC was unheard of and would actually cause a riot.
When I was young, when we scratched our CDs or if the magnetic tape in our cassettes came off, we were unable to listen to our favorite music unless it played again on the radio. Fortunately I grew up in the transition period where cassettes were being phased out for CDs but I did need to deal with scratched CDs.
When I was young, Digital Cameras were limited to 20 photos. I took one of these early digital cameras on a camping/cave exploring trip when I was around 14 and quickly filled it up. The worst part of this camera is that it did not have a screen so it was impossible to tell if you got a good shot or a bad shot, as laptops were not yet affordable, I had to wait until I got home to view the photos in their 320 x 240 glory.
When I was young, having a computer in our school classroom was a rarity. My first grade class was one of the few to have a computer for students to use. It was primitive by early 90’s standards as we had to insert the Number Cruncher or Oregon Trail 5 1⁄4 inch floppy disk before turning the machine on to play. Many games were monochrome however Number Cruncher had a very primitive color palate. I spent many hours playing these simple educational games. Most classes at the time needed to book time in the schools computer lab to use a computer.
When I was young and our teachers made us do a Power Point slideshow deck for an assignment, we were forced to put the presentation onto multiple floppy drives via a Power Point feature known as “pack and go”. This would essentially put your presentation onto anywhere between 3 and 50 floppy disks. If you happen to loose one of these disks on your way to school, you would be screwed. CD Burners were just starting to come onto the market and were too expensive to be practical and flash drives did not exist. We did have an IOMEGA ZIP Disk Drive at home but this was mostly useless as few machines had a ZIP Disk Reader. Flash Drives and (Affiliate Link)Portable Hard Drives did not exist due to the fact that USB ports did not exist.
Did I miss any? Leave yours in the comments section below.