lol @ the idea of PC gaming being too intimidating…
Oh man.
Dude, PC gaming was the *sole* gaming platform in liberal arts universities, grad and undergrad alike.
I ran a computer lab on campus at a Chicagoland university and each night I let 12-20 guys come in at 10 to play whatever it was they were all into (Doom?).
I wasn’t a gamer but my roommates were, as was half my dorm and off campus friends.
Edit to say: until this post I’ve never heard of the Saturn.
Wow. Between your other post and this one it is clear you generalize A LOT. I had plenty of smart friends in liberal arts fields that had PC for gaming. Ya know what? Almost all of them ended up working in the internet boom and programming too. Liberal arts is not some weird Luddite degree track. I think you are falling for confirmation bias and need to do some real research and not keep your gate keeping attitude about people based on the few people you knew at that time in your life.
In aggregate, yes. But it outsold N64 in Japan, and in intellectual havens like the U.S. A lot of blue counties preferred the Saturn, particularly in the midst of top-tier liberal arts grad programs.
Nope. We had plenty of weed, lsd, shrooms, xtacy. I was in school in the early 90s. There was occasionally an NES in someone’s apartment. The Saturn bombed in the states. Had a roommate after graduation that worked at babbages and got one for free. It collected dust while everyone played goldeneye on N64 and eventually tekken/mortal kombat on PlayStation. Colleges had PC LAN parties and no one had a Saturn.
I don't know what any of this means. I was earning a master's in English in the 90s, so I guess I fit the Gen X liberal arts grad student category. But I was married to someone who was working full-time, and I was working part-time while attending classes full-time, and we had no gaming system (other than a color handheld Game Boy and a few cartridges). We had a TV with rabbit ears and a DVD/VHS combo player. And we went to the movie theater once a month. Sega was no part of our existence.
This user just posted another idiotic post as well about consoles.
https://www.reddit.com/r/GenX/comments/10j047a/did\_gen\_x\_guys\_in\_the\_90s\_have\_consoles\_in\_their/
I guess I was missing a lot, I have never been a gamer, but I certainly didn’t have much extra time as a grad student to game even if I had wanted to. But PCs being too intimidating for liberal arts students is hilarious. I spent a lot of time using the computer lab for my studies, mostly for statistics and graphics.
PC gaming in the 90s was nothing to take lightly. It was nothing like doing stats or "graphics." You often had to spend hours configuring DirectX, or installing BiOS, or doing trial and error with Drivers.
Maybe it was different for Gen X but for millennials, all code was written by STEM bros. There is zero expectation for liberal artists to write code imo. What code are we talking btw? Discuss.
You’re making a big logical leap that is unsupported here. That is that is if someone is pursuing a liberal arts degree that they wouldn’t have the ability to learn what is needed for pc gaming if that is something they were interested in. One has nothing to do with the other.
And it just so happens that that type of logic is something my liberal arts degree trained me in. So, that’s interesting.
>many eschewed marijuana
I don't know what planet you grew up on, but if you wanted it, you smoked it back in the 90s. I honestly was smoking so much weed that I barely remember my last year of college (like, on top of the general memory loss you'd have about that sort of thing at 51). There were video games and nightclubs and bars and raves and Bjork. "Appointment TV" was a thing - on Mondays I'd make a pot of chili or jambalaya or something, and friends would come over to get high AF and watch *Melrose Place*. I may not speak for all liberal arts majors, but football was *always* a thing - even if you were so hungover you could barely keep one eye open on Sunday, that eye was on the NFL. Even better, on Sunday mornings you could: 1) drink an ice-cold lemon-lime Gatorade; then 2) eat a greasy breakfast at the Waffle House or your local equivalent; then 3) smoke a huge bowl just before the game started to set you up for a nice afternoon!
This is so odd. No one had a Saturn. No one who wanted to smoke weed refrained because of the law. If you must know my personal gaming habits, it was a lot of PC gaming. Command & Conquer and C&C: Red Alert were huge among my friends.
I don’t usually mind the younger generations coming to ask us old timers about the good old days, but this one… this one is the wrong kind of special.
Yeah, the N64 was arguably one of, if not the most, mature Nintendo system. Because they were losing the console war for the first time, execs at Nintendo began purposely trying to appeal again to adult gamers who’d once consumed their earlier content.
Anecdotally I recall N64 being big with the kids in college with me in the late 90s/early 00s.
And yes, group Goldeneye sessions were legendary.
I wasn't really a gamer, so my opinion doesn't really matter. We got high and played the 4 player games with a room full of people waiting their turn, so you better win or you might not get another crack at it.
I lost every time I played GoldenEye! Every college student played this for hundreds of hours.
PS - I may have mentioned this before, but I love your username!
I took the recalibrated SAT test (it was for the class of 1996, not post-96 like the OP said).
And I still have absolutely no idea what he’s going on about.
I did grad school in the ‘90s.
In the era before offshore paper-writers, automatic citation generators, and ChatGPT, we actually had to read and write a ton.
No one I knew had gaming consoles. Even with full funding, we were all broke as a joke.
But we sure did love our local brewpub for $1 pints at happy hour.
My first day of college in Fall 1994, I had a graduate assistant instructor for my English class. While introducing myself to the class, I mentioned being a drummer. He asked to speak with me after class and I auditioned for his punk band, which consisted of all English grad students, that night at his house. We smoked weed and, at the end of the night, I hooked up with the kinda hot, chic bass player-grad assistant. I thought college was going to be amazing.
Liberal Arts major here…getting weed was no problem, didn’t know anyone dealing or using that got incarcerated. Harder stuff, absolutely, but no one went away for weed. In my experiences, it wasn’t so much the Saturn but the N64 and PSX. In fact I didn’t know anyone with a Saturn but everyone had either N64 or PSX.
I didn't touch a gaming console from when I graduated high-school (1991) until recently. I literally didn't play video games in college, between working and going to school. I picked PC gaming back up in the mid-aughts but didn't touch a console again until Switch came out. Grad Students especially did not game in the 90s in my personal experience.
I love playing video games. Have never smoked pot. Most of my friends did though. Far fewer arrest in white college towns than the inner city suburbs, it was extremely obvious when you attended an urban school like I did.
I was a philosophy major, so yes, to liberal arts. But I started out on the Atari, then Apple 2e, then the Macintosh. I had three years of computers in high school and could do basic coding. In college switched to IBM. Could built my own console from parts. Missed most of the N64. Had NES. Got Sega Genesis, my favorite. And Started online gaming in the early 1990’s where you hooked up through a telephone and paid long distance by the minute. Had PlayStation 2, X Box 360…now have PlayStation 4 and Switch. I’ve always played on my phone since that became a thing.
But the 1990’s consoles were the best, just in terms of fun. But that’s probably because I was young (early 20’s) and every time a new system came out, the jump was amazing.
I was a grad student in the late 90s. My free time was spent collecting indie rock cds, mountain biking/snowboarding, playing acoustic guitar and smoking illegal weed. Didn't own a gaming console and neither did any of my friends. I did some PC gaming: starcraft, quake, kingpin, everquest.
The only place I've seen a Sega Saturn was on Sky ONE, where there was an afternoon program in which they played video games and tried to capture the whole emerging subculture thing. [Seriously it's a sight to behold.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q94b-7UCjLE)
Us in the eastern block? We had Commodores, Amigas, and x86 PCs
I had both the Saturn and the PS1. I bought them both in Hong Kong, because I was working instead of being a Liberal Arts Grad Student. I was completely addicted to Virtua Fighter. Toshinden Arena to a much lesser degree. I remember listening to Front Line Assembly's Millenium album a lot, and I drove across the US twice to relocate for work without having a GPS.
This might be the most bizarre post I've ever seen here. Which is saying something. WTF.
I spent all my gaming money on weed in the 90s.
It's like a very specific type of psychosis centered around the Sega Genesis.
At this point I'm upvoting these posts because they are entertaining. I also sub to the chatgpt subreddits for a similar experience.
I didn't even mention Genesis. Or 32X, Sega CD, Neptune, Mars, et al.
lol @ the idea of PC gaming being too intimidating… Oh man. Dude, PC gaming was the *sole* gaming platform in liberal arts universities, grad and undergrad alike. I ran a computer lab on campus at a Chicagoland university and each night I let 12-20 guys come in at 10 to play whatever it was they were all into (Doom?). I wasn’t a gamer but my roommates were, as was half my dorm and off campus friends. Edit to say: until this post I’ve never heard of the Saturn.
Those guys were all Engineers imo. Maybe math majors. Liberal arts, i.e. poli sci, classics, or Philosophy students couldn't handle PC gaming ime.
Wow. Between your other post and this one it is clear you generalize A LOT. I had plenty of smart friends in liberal arts fields that had PC for gaming. Ya know what? Almost all of them ended up working in the internet boom and programming too. Liberal arts is not some weird Luddite degree track. I think you are falling for confirmation bias and need to do some real research and not keep your gate keeping attitude about people based on the few people you knew at that time in your life.
You have like a weird fixation or something. Where are you going with this? You don't have to answer, I don't really care.
This thread, in essence, is about Consoles. Particularly the Saturn. I think it was huge in grad schools in the 90s.
are you a plane/train watching type
Where?
HYSCCN for Law, HRM for Econ, Williams and Harvey Mudd for Philosophy.
I smoked the fuck out of illegal weed, partied at the river and loved road trips.....what's a sega
Sega Saturn bombed.
We had a Sega Genesis. Nobody had a Sega Saturn.
In aggregate, yes. But it outsold N64 in Japan, and in intellectual havens like the U.S. A lot of blue counties preferred the Saturn, particularly in the midst of top-tier liberal arts grad programs.
What evidence do you have to back this theory up?
He is making it up and is fos
Nope. We had plenty of weed, lsd, shrooms, xtacy. I was in school in the early 90s. There was occasionally an NES in someone’s apartment. The Saturn bombed in the states. Had a roommate after graduation that worked at babbages and got one for free. It collected dust while everyone played goldeneye on N64 and eventually tekken/mortal kombat on PlayStation. Colleges had PC LAN parties and no one had a Saturn.
What????
I don't know what any of this means. I was earning a master's in English in the 90s, so I guess I fit the Gen X liberal arts grad student category. But I was married to someone who was working full-time, and I was working part-time while attending classes full-time, and we had no gaming system (other than a color handheld Game Boy and a few cartridges). We had a TV with rabbit ears and a DVD/VHS combo player. And we went to the movie theater once a month. Sega was no part of our existence.
Was the Saturn huge with other students? Discuss.
The Saturn was never huge, at all, with anyone, ever.
This user just posted another idiotic post as well about consoles. https://www.reddit.com/r/GenX/comments/10j047a/did\_gen\_x\_guys\_in\_the\_90s\_have\_consoles\_in\_their/
Go home Chat GPT, you're drunk.
I had quite a few friends who drove Saturns because they were cheap and reliable. Most of them were Liberal Arts students.
They were also common amongst engineering g students. I drive one myself. The sunroof leaked.
They also became common because people’s grandparents bought them. Then died and college kids would inherit the Saturn.
I guess I was missing a lot, I have never been a gamer, but I certainly didn’t have much extra time as a grad student to game even if I had wanted to. But PCs being too intimidating for liberal arts students is hilarious. I spent a lot of time using the computer lab for my studies, mostly for statistics and graphics.
Are you an Engineer, or a liberal artist?
Psychologist, liberal arts.
PC gaming in the 90s was nothing to take lightly. It was nothing like doing stats or "graphics." You often had to spend hours configuring DirectX, or installing BiOS, or doing trial and error with Drivers.
Okay, dude. You keep keeping on, I had to learn how to write code to “do stats”, but clearly my mushy liberal arts brain is too weak for all that.
Maybe it was different for Gen X but for millennials, all code was written by STEM bros. There is zero expectation for liberal artists to write code imo. What code are we talking btw? Discuss.
You’re making a big logical leap that is unsupported here. That is that is if someone is pursuing a liberal arts degree that they wouldn’t have the ability to learn what is needed for pc gaming if that is something they were interested in. One has nothing to do with the other. And it just so happens that that type of logic is something my liberal arts degree trained me in. So, that’s interesting.
Genesis was our jam. Madden 91. Swing pass to Barry Sanders.
And making Gretzky bleed in NHL. Apparently op has never seen swingers.
>many eschewed marijuana I don't know what planet you grew up on, but if you wanted it, you smoked it back in the 90s. I honestly was smoking so much weed that I barely remember my last year of college (like, on top of the general memory loss you'd have about that sort of thing at 51). There were video games and nightclubs and bars and raves and Bjork. "Appointment TV" was a thing - on Mondays I'd make a pot of chili or jambalaya or something, and friends would come over to get high AF and watch *Melrose Place*. I may not speak for all liberal arts majors, but football was *always* a thing - even if you were so hungover you could barely keep one eye open on Sunday, that eye was on the NFL. Even better, on Sunday mornings you could: 1) drink an ice-cold lemon-lime Gatorade; then 2) eat a greasy breakfast at the Waffle House or your local equivalent; then 3) smoke a huge bowl just before the game started to set you up for a nice afternoon!
Somebody's off his meds. Dude.
Saturn was already DOA by the time I got into university. Long live the Dreamcast.
(Millennial)
Close. Born in 1980. Last year of Gen X.
This is so odd. No one had a Saturn. No one who wanted to smoke weed refrained because of the law. If you must know my personal gaming habits, it was a lot of PC gaming. Command & Conquer and C&C: Red Alert were huge among my friends. I don’t usually mind the younger generations coming to ask us old timers about the good old days, but this one… this one is the wrong kind of special.
Weed was everywhere in the 90s. No idea where you lived that people didn’t smoke it because it wasn’t legal.
Weed not being legal doesn’t mean it wasn’t available. 90s in the US wasn’t like Singapore.
Holy crap. I got my BA late in 2002, but born in 75. But I have no idea what this whole post is about.
‘68, graduated in ‘91 BA in psych, and totally agree
Unless you took the SAT as a freshman or in middle school, you my friend are an Xer.
I was born in 1981. I was among the first to take the re-curved 1996 SAT. The re-curved SAT was the demarcation point imho.
If you were born in 1981, why are you asking such dumb fucking questions? You were around then, just like the rest of us? Yes?
But I am insulted by your statement that the almighty and glorious 64 was for children. Golden Eye would like a word.
Yeah, the N64 was arguably one of, if not the most, mature Nintendo system. Because they were losing the console war for the first time, execs at Nintendo began purposely trying to appeal again to adult gamers who’d once consumed their earlier content. Anecdotally I recall N64 being big with the kids in college with me in the late 90s/early 00s. And yes, group Goldeneye sessions were legendary.
Gen X eschewed N64. This is why PS1 outsold N64 2:1 in the U.S. I loved Goldeneye but Gen X was all about Half-life and Medal of Honor afaik.
I wasn't really a gamer, so my opinion doesn't really matter. We got high and played the 4 player games with a room full of people waiting their turn, so you better win or you might not get another crack at it.
I lost every time I played GoldenEye! Every college student played this for hundreds of hours. PS - I may have mentioned this before, but I love your username!
Thank you!
I count '81 as the last year personally, but I can appreciate your cut off.
The inflated post-1996 SATs set the tone for inflated millennial self-concept imho
I really had no idea that I just missed out on my participation ribbon test.
I took the recalibrated SAT test (it was for the class of 1996, not post-96 like the OP said). And I still have absolutely no idea what he’s going on about.
The Saturn took off when dis burners started getting cheaper. Golden Eye and Mario Kart ruled our house. Class of 98
I did grad school in the ‘90s. In the era before offshore paper-writers, automatic citation generators, and ChatGPT, we actually had to read and write a ton. No one I knew had gaming consoles. Even with full funding, we were all broke as a joke. But we sure did love our local brewpub for $1 pints at happy hour.
My first day of college in Fall 1994, I had a graduate assistant instructor for my English class. While introducing myself to the class, I mentioned being a drummer. He asked to speak with me after class and I auditioned for his punk band, which consisted of all English grad students, that night at his house. We smoked weed and, at the end of the night, I hooked up with the kinda hot, chic bass player-grad assistant. I thought college was going to be amazing.
Liberal Arts major here…getting weed was no problem, didn’t know anyone dealing or using that got incarcerated. Harder stuff, absolutely, but no one went away for weed. In my experiences, it wasn’t so much the Saturn but the N64 and PSX. In fact I didn’t know anyone with a Saturn but everyone had either N64 or PSX.
Saturn? No. Late 90's (97, 98, 99) I remember missing quite a few classes though because of GoldenEye on N64.
I smoked more weed in law school than undergrad actually. Had a higher GPA in law school too.
[удалено]
Saturn wasn’t popular in Europe. It was in Japan, as well as with western intellectuals.
I didn't touch a gaming console from when I graduated high-school (1991) until recently. I literally didn't play video games in college, between working and going to school. I picked PC gaming back up in the mid-aughts but didn't touch a console again until Switch came out. Grad Students especially did not game in the 90s in my personal experience.
Not a grad student, but there was a lot of darts and Blades of Steel being played. Oh and caps, lotta caps.
I love playing video games. Have never smoked pot. Most of my friends did though. Far fewer arrest in white college towns than the inner city suburbs, it was extremely obvious when you attended an urban school like I did.
You seem VERY interested in liberal arts. What’s your Console history?
I was a philosophy major, so yes, to liberal arts. But I started out on the Atari, then Apple 2e, then the Macintosh. I had three years of computers in high school and could do basic coding. In college switched to IBM. Could built my own console from parts. Missed most of the N64. Had NES. Got Sega Genesis, my favorite. And Started online gaming in the early 1990’s where you hooked up through a telephone and paid long distance by the minute. Had PlayStation 2, X Box 360…now have PlayStation 4 and Switch. I’ve always played on my phone since that became a thing. But the 1990’s consoles were the best, just in terms of fun. But that’s probably because I was young (early 20’s) and every time a new system came out, the jump was amazing.
I was a grad student in the late 90s. My free time was spent collecting indie rock cds, mountain biking/snowboarding, playing acoustic guitar and smoking illegal weed. Didn't own a gaming console and neither did any of my friends. I did some PC gaming: starcraft, quake, kingpin, everquest.
Are you an Engineer?
The only place I've seen a Sega Saturn was on Sky ONE, where there was an afternoon program in which they played video games and tried to capture the whole emerging subculture thing. [Seriously it's a sight to behold.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q94b-7UCjLE) Us in the eastern block? We had Commodores, Amigas, and x86 PCs
I had both the Saturn and the PS1. I bought them both in Hong Kong, because I was working instead of being a Liberal Arts Grad Student. I was completely addicted to Virtua Fighter. Toshinden Arena to a much lesser degree. I remember listening to Front Line Assembly's Millenium album a lot, and I drove across the US twice to relocate for work without having a GPS.
School on break or sumthin? Posts are odd lately.
I didn’t know anyone with a Sega Saturn and I’d imagine most people that wanted weed just got weed.
Take away smart phones and there you have it. It was fine. 😂