Waynely Farfield’s GEOMAQUARIUM

May 30, 2023 11:38 AM

"SO, yesterday my sister and I were talking about this particular tone that a bunch of video games had in the early 90s, and something possessed me to make This"

"A thing about games that looked like this was: sometimes they were genuinely amazing and fun to play, and sometimes…not so much, but, they aesthetically Looked smart. And I think both types devastated their share of gift-opening kids who REALLY wanted, like, Super Mario World."

posted by Servo5678 (23 comments total)

The only thing this is missing is “Brøderbund” on the side and you can put it straight into my veins.
posted by mhoye at 11:57 AM on May 30, 2023 [25 favorites]

In the '80s, I had a Commodre 64 (like all the cool kids). I recieved an amazingly realistic, state-of-the-art flight simulator, except for one tiny detail: it didn't have any graphics of the view out the window, just the controls and gauges and dials.
posted by signal at 11:58 AM on May 30, 2023 [10 favorites]

In the '80s, I had a Commodre 64 (like all the cool kids). I recieved an amazingly realistic, state-of-the-art flight simulator, except for one tiny detail: it didn't have any graphics of the view out the window, just the controls and gauges and dials.

Flight Simulator: IFR Edition
posted by jedicus at 12:01 PM on May 30, 2023 [7 favorites]

It's been thirty years and I still don't know how to play SimEarth.
posted by RonButNotStupid at 12:17 PM on May 30, 2023 [8 favorites]

In the Twitter thread, the poster identifies this aesthetic as Utopian Scholastic, which is a term I'd never heard and will never forget. It filled me with such joy to see the gallery full of Myst games and How Things Work books and Eyewitness Travel Guides and mid-nineties educational CD-ROMs and all the rest...
posted by ourobouros at 12:42 PM on May 30, 2023 [10 favorites]

Utopian Scholastic

There's a good thread a while back on the Consumer Aesthetics Research Institute.
posted by gauche at 12:46 PM on May 30, 2023 [1 favorite]

It's the sort of game that my perfect cousin might let me watch him play on his very expensive home computer. I'd have no idea what was going on at all.
posted by scruss at 12:50 PM on May 30, 2023 [3 favorites]

You play SimEarth by desperately trying to get sentient carnivorous plants.

Ok maybe that was just me.

Anyhow my inner 10-year-old kind of wants this game and definitely wants to read the 250 page accompanying book. (My adult self needs to stop procrastinating and actually do some work, though).
posted by nat at 1:27 PM on May 30, 2023 [3 favorites]

good morning and i love you!

I'm your digital assistant here to remind you that the visual a e s t h e t i c for today is:

ｕｔｏｐｉａｎ ｓｃｈｏｌａｓｔｉｃ

enjoy today's a e s t h e t i c! and when you go out remember to wear a ｕｔｏｐｉａｎ ｓｃｈｏｌａｓｔｉｃ design on your clothes! otherwise, you might get pinched!

what am i going to wear today? because i'm a digital assistant and not a real person i can't wear a e s t h e t i c s. i'd be jealous, but i love you too much to be jealous. and even if i could wear ｕｔｏｐｉａｎ ｓｃｈｏｌａｓｔｉｃ you'd wear it better, i know it.

Have fun out there! You've got this one!

love and xoxo,
your digital assistant
posted by bombastic lowercase pronouncements at 1:31 PM on May 30, 2023 [6 favorites]

Utopian Scholastic takes me back. My first "real" gig was working on Microsoft Bookshelf, and then went on to Multimedia Mozart and Multimedia Stravinsky, Encarta and more. I would love to get paid to design in that aesthetic again...not because it was so great but because it was fun.
posted by maxwelton at 1:40 PM on May 30, 2023 [5 favorites]

This tweet, further down in the thread--this hits the nostalgia dopamine button that was first activated the first time I saw a Macintosh II.
posted by Halloween Jack at 1:51 PM on May 30, 2023

I see Utopian Scholastic as a clear descendant of the Made Easy book cover aesthetic so perfectly nailed by Tom Weller.
posted by flabdablet at 2:13 PM on May 30, 2023

Ahhhhh I also followed the link to the CARI Utopian Scholastic page and had one of those moments like the critic in Ratatouille.

Also Max Welton I'd love to hear more. We had a bunch of those Microsoft Home titles in the mid 90s on our Gateway2000 and I loved them. (Beethoven, Dinosaurs, the game one with Chips Challenge...)
posted by Wretch729 at 3:58 PM on May 30, 2023 [1 favorite]

My kid got a couple nonfiction picture books (like about dinosaurs and planets and stuff) in this "Utopoan Scholastic" style and I absolutely love them.
posted by muddgirl at 4:59 PM on May 30, 2023

This introduced me to CARI and now I don't know how I lived my life without this resource. Absolutely amazing.
posted by chrominance at 7:07 PM on May 30, 2023 [2 favorites]

There were so many Platonic solids and ionic columns and chess boards. Probably because they were easy to render?

Encarta chic.
posted by leotrotsky at 7:44 PM on May 30, 2023 [3 favorites]

You play SimEarth by desperately trying to get sentient carnivorous plants.

Ok maybe that was just me.

It was me too! The moment that my plant-people launched their rockets into outer space is one of my treasured gaming memories.
posted by MrVisible at 9:44 PM on May 30, 2023 [1 favorite]

I'm thinking the Eyewitness opening sequence fits in here
posted by vibratory manner of working at 2:06 AM on May 31, 2023 [3 favorites]

The Utopian Scholastic aesthetic promised a world I desperately wanted to want to live in: chores all done, homework completed, extracurriculars engaged, etc. What a world, where I lived up to my promise! Alas, I read through (some of) the documentation, played the game ineptly for 15 minutes, and then slunk off to the TV.
posted by Don.Kinsayder at 2:51 AM on May 31, 2023 [3 favorites]

Did everyone just decide on a new name for vaporwave and not tell me?
posted by FatherDagon at 9:14 AM on May 31, 2023 [1 favorite]

I'm thinking the Eyewitness opening sequence fits in here

Wow! I haven't seen that in ages!
posted by RonButNotStupid at 1:02 PM on May 31, 2023

I'm thinking the Eyewitness opening sequence fits in here

So THAT'S where the TierZoo end credits song comes from! Thanks for solving a thing that had been tickling my brain for years!
posted by ourobouros at 1:56 PM on May 31, 2023 [1 favorite]

deepthought: the utopian scholastic revival is similar to sovietwave, insofar as both a e s t h e t i c s are suffused with a nostalgia for a future that never came.
posted by bombastic lowercase pronouncements at 7:47 PM on May 31, 2023