Nostalgic November // Martin

You may be wondering what on Earth is going on in the header for this article. It'll all make sense in a moment!

When I was a kid, I absolutely loved playing games on my family’s Power Macintosh 6500, such as Wolfenstein 3D, Caesar and MDK. When visiting my relatives, I made sure to jump on their later iMacs, including G3 and G4 models, to play a range of other games, including Tony Hawk Pro Skater, Nanosaur, Cro Mag Rally, Bugdom and Harry Potter. All of these games had a huge influence on me and I loved the feeling of being carried away by a combination of action and narrative.

Above all, however, there was one game that was scarred into my brain: the original You Don’t Know Jack by Jellyvision (now Jackbox Games) in 1995.

For those who are unfamiliar, the franchise is a series of TV-style quiz shows that mock the user and throw up a bizarre range of pop-culture references and gibberish. The original version captured the feeling of a TV studio beautifully, and while I was a bit too young at the time to catch and understand all the references, it was the style and use of wordplay and sound effects that really stood out to me.

For Nostalgic November, I present a little taste of that game. In this video, you’ll see it being loaded on iMac G4 in my study—once owned by my late grandmother, Barbara, who loved her Macs—which prompts the running of the Classic (OS 9) environment within Mac OS X, then transitioning to the intro video sequence and one question of the game. I hope that you’ll enjoy it!

This month, share your memories of a thing from your past that brings a smile to your face—be it a movie, song, game, product, whatever! Simply send us a text, image or video in one of the following ways: tag @HemisphericPod on Twitter with #NostalgicNovember; @HemisphericViews on Micro.blog; in our general Discord chat; or by email to hello@hemisphericviews.com.