Where we look at the releases of 30 years ago today.
Now in the 90s was a gaming retrospective series hosted by Jared Knabenbauer focusing on Video Games of the 1990s. Each week, the show covered games that were released approximately the same week 30 years ago.
The series began in April 2022 as a featured series of Jared's own YouTube channel. Because the release schedule was far more frequent than his own reviews, it was spun off into its own channel at the end of the year after it gained a following.
Every Friday, Jared discussed three relevant games released that week, giving a historical overview of each along with contemporary ratings from gaming magazines and sales figures, usually stating his own opinion as well. Editor Dylan would then give a quick rundown of the rest of the titles released that week in the Rapid-Fire Releases segment, finishing up with Jared comparing the price of each game he reviewed at launch to the average selling price of a used copy today.
On March 27, 2024, it was announced that Now in the 90s was coming to an end due to difficulties with production and financing. The 98th and final episode was uploaded two days later.
Now in the 90s can be found here
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Tropes from 30 years ago today:
- Abandonware: Jared will mention when a game has never been re-released.
- Acclaimed Flop: Brought up several times for games that reviewed well but sold poorly.
- American Kirby Is Hardcore: Often discussed with anime games releasing in the US with Darker and Edgier cover art, sometimes not resembling the game at all, made to eschew the Kawaisa of the games that companies thought would be unappealing to American audiences.
- Bait-and-Switch:
- Jared can't invite 12 friends to play the 12-player multiplayer mode of Romance Of The Three Kingdoms II for Super Nintendo instead of Super Mario Kart. It's not because it's a very complex and difficult to learn Turn-Based Strategy game that isn't suited for a party, but because he only has three or four friends, all of whom declined wondering why they couldn't just play Mario Kart instead.
- When describing a Genesis game releasing where the player fights with a whip, the cover art for Castlevania: Bloodlines starts to appear, only for Jared to be revealed that he's actually talking about Earnest Evans.
- Broken Pedestal: Jared’s reaction to finding out that Atlus developed the maligned The Karate Kid and Friday the 13th games. Yes, that Atlus.
- Call-Back: When discussing his brother filming him playing The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past as a child he mentions getting 10 arrows. This is referencing his playthrough of the game's randomizer, where he continuously kept opening treasure chests with 10 arrows when he didn't have a bow yet.
- Captain Ersatz: Dirty Larry from Dirty Larry: Dirty Cop is pretty obviously based on Dirty Harry.
- Catchphrase:
- "Welcome to Now in the 90s, where we look at the releases of 30 years ago today."
- "Reviews used to make no sense at the time."
- Covers Always Lie:
- The cover art for Space Football: One on One has lasers, but the game doesn't.
- The Archer from Magic Sword appears with a gun instead of a bow.
- Easily Impressed: GamePro gives such high praise to almost everything to the point where Jared is surprised when it doesn't give a game glowing reviews.
- Edutainment Show: The show regularly discusses the trends of the time and historical context of the games covered.
- Everyone Has Standards: There are times when even Game Pro will admit a game isn't very good.
- He's Got a Weapon!: Editor Dylan's reaction to the starting pistol in Summer Games.
- Hollywood Hype Machine: When discussing Bubsy in: Claws Encounters of the Furred Kind, Jared makes it abundantly clear that the developer Accolade went to great lengths to hype up the character, including lots of advertisements, live events, magazine spreads, and a pilot for a cartoon.
- I Was Young and Needed the Money: Jared reveals that Game Freak only developed Yoshi so they could fund the development of Pokémon.
- It's Easy, So It Sucks!: Invoked by Jared while giving his opinion on Final Fantasy Mystic Quest, which he describes as a "baby game for babies."
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Keep Circulating the Tapes: Conversed: Jared comments about where to find playable versions of 1990s games that have not been available via digital platforms, re-releases or compilations. - LOL, 69: Jared’s reaction to the game boy game Turn and Burn selling for $69.
- Mascot with Attitude: The trend of companies trying to create their own Sonic the Hedgehog is brought up any time a mascot platformer attempting to capture the same success is released.
- Meaningful Echo: The June 23, 1993 episode looked at "a Battletoads game, a Battletoads game, and a Battletoads game" when three separate games in the franchise were released in the same week.
- Mondegreen: Jared misheard "Hadouken" as "RyuKen" in Street Fighter II because it was used by Ryu and Ken.
- Media Watchdog: The US Senate hearing in which the heads of Nintendo, Sega, and others were being questioned about violence in video games shows up when discussing Lethal Enforcers 1, Mortal Kombat (1992), and Night Trap.
- Nostalgia Filter: Strongly averted. While the show is inspired by 90s nostalgia, they are not afraid to point out when games have aged poorly.
- Please Subscribe to Our Channel: Often appears as an Easter Egg:
- Ryu's win quote in Street Fighter II.
- Edited into a clip of the Neon Genesis Evangelion opening when mentioning that Studio Gainax worked on Alisia Dragoon.
- About to show up at the end of his story about having no friends to play Romance of the Three Kingdoms with, but gets cut away.
- The Game Over screen from Friday the 13th.
- Porting Disaster: Many ports and multi-platform releases are shown to be of wildly different quality.
- Rule of Three: Thus far, as of this writing, the webshow has focused on three games per episode, editor Dylan's roundup notwithstanding.
- Running Gag:
- Jared will comment almost Once per Episode that "reviews used to make no sense at the time" whenever a magazine review for a game he's covering contradicts itself.
- Editor Dylan expresses apathy toward any Sports Game he has to cover.
- Jared or Editor Dylan will start to describe a game being bad, only to reveal that it was made by LJN.
- Sarcasm Mode:
- Jared assures us that Rick Taylor from Splatterhouse is not at all reminiscent of Jason Voorhees.
- Upon the release of World Heroes, Jared states "this may sound shocking, but the Neo Geo got a fighting game released for it."
- Springtime for Hitler: Shadowrun for Super Nintendo was intended to fail, so the developer could blame it on a disliked project manager as an excuse to have him fired, but it ended up being a huge critical success.
- Stillborn Franchise: Many games covered end with teasers for sequels that never saw the light of day.
- Title Drop: Often done unintentionally when discussing trends of the 90s.
- Totally Radical:
- Most of the 90s game commercials shown in the series fall into this aesthetic.
- The first thing Jared discusses about Rival Turf! is the totally radical aesthetic of the cover art.
- Jared shows the manual for Chester Cheetah: Too Cool to Fool, which is written in painful rhyming.
- The Voice: Editor Dylan is a slightly downplayed version of this. While we never see his face, we do see his arms via clips of his cat.
Tropes in the 90s used to make no sense.
