Technology has advanced so significantly for the past 20 years. Nowadays, all children wants are smartphones or the latest gaming consoles that you can literally do everything on as long as they have the internet!.
Back in the 90s, technology was not so advanced then, nor was the internet as easily accessible compared to now. Oh the pain of using the dial-up internet back in the day! Many of us have gotten too used to the current technology that we have now, so here’s a little reminder of what we used to wish for Christmas back in the 90s!
Sega Genesis aka Mega Drive
Let’s admit it, as much as this was introduced in the very late 80s, during the 90s we all had so much fun with this console. Whether we were playing Sonic the Hedgehog, or Alex the Kidd, or even Echo the Dolphin. Hours of fun that we had on there even when we had to blow the dust out of the gaming cartridge to have the console recognise the games. I remembered a lot of kids back then wished for this for Christmas!
Super Nintendo (SNES)
Another classic gaming console created by the Japanese. Being launched at around 1990, this certainly has given us hours of fun too! Playing the Super Mario game series and similar franchises, or even Street Fighter II. As well as kids, I sure remembered a lot of adults bought this console just so they have a gaming console to play too.
Game Boy and Game Boy Color
Handheld consoles have been about beforehand, however, there were none like the Game Boy and the Game Boy Color. The Game Boy allowed us to play different games when we buy different game cartridges wherever we were (providing we had some spare AA batteries with us) we could play for a long time! The Game Boy Colour was the first to give us a little bit of colour towards our handheld gaming experience, it was rather cool when it came to playing Pokémon on the Colour itself!
TV VHS Combo
This little combination was like a saviour for our own little entertainment, even before digital channels were introduced and we had to suffer through analogue and searching for our own channels through the static! It was small enough to keep in our bedrooms and we didn’t need the extra space to get a VHS player to play our videotapes and enjoy watching movies and pre-recorded television programmes. Not only that, we can also play our gaming consoles on it, and it didn’t even take the whole space on top of the chest of drawers! There were also larger versions of this combo, but it was totally about the small ones that you could fit in your bedroom and had not taken much space!
Tamagochi
Let’s not deny this, we all had one when we were in primary school, showing off how old your little pets were to your friends, and not paying attention in class because it needed food, done a poo or even just playing the mini games to keep its happiness level up!
Sony Walkman and Sony Discman
The time before music downloads were made widely available, back in the 90s we didn’t have much to listen to on the go. These portable music players were a godsend before the iPods were known. The joys of buying music records via cassette tapes or CDs, or going through the grind of recording from the radios to make the perfect mixtapes or playlists. Everyone wanted one of these, not even as kids, a lot of adults definitely bought it for themselves for their own entertainment!
IMac G3
Computers were always a cool thing to have when you were a kid, however, which kid didn’t want a computer that was colourful on the outside? The iMac G3 came in a variety of colours and the mouse came in a different shape to a normal Windows computer (it doesn’t mean that they were better though!).
Nokia 3210/Nokia 3310
As much as these phones were around in the very late 90s and very early noughties, I think it is worth mentioning this as it was released within this timeline! As much as the 3210 was very popular, the 3310 was the best one of the series (even to this day!). The battery life lasted for days, Snake was on there, you could create your own ringtones, the covers could be changed and if you drop it, the screen didn’t smash!
Sony Aibo
What is it? An electronic pet? What kid didn’t want a robotic pet!? First released in 1999, a lot of kids (even me) had this on their Christmas wishlist!
Talkboy
Being hugely advertised by Home Alone 2, everyone wanted one of this tech! I mean, it is practically a recording device for commentating or even recording the sounds around you! Best yet, you can play it back loudly!
Nintendo 64
One of the biggest breakthrough with Nintendo in the 90s. It was so much easier to play more than 2 people on a console, we absolutely loved it especially when you could play with most of your friends and family together without taking in turns! Plenty of the classic games which we played in our childhood through this gaming console too!
Playstation One
Last but not least, there’s no number attached to this console simply because this is the very first that Playstation has released to the world in 1995. This was so popular because the graphics were just pretty much out of this world for that time and that the games came in discs! It was so different and we didn’t need to worry about blowing out the dust in the consoles and the gaming cartridges. Not only that, we were able to save our games on a special memory cartridge so that we never needed to start from the beginning with extra-long games like Tomb Raider or even some driving games where we unlocked certain parts of the game! Definitely top of the Christmas list when we were a kid!
Conclusion
This list brings back memories, doesn’t it? These electronics and gadgets definitely stuck in my mind from my childhood, especially when I kept asking Santa and the parents that I want most of these things because it was so cool to have them! Once we had them, we didn’t even need the internet to keep us all entertained.
Please don’t hesitate to link out any other cool stuff from the 90s which I have missed out on!
