"Captain Marvel" '90s-Style Website Will Have You Nostalgic for Dial-Up

Megalith

Megalith

24-bit/48kHz
Staff member
Joined
Aug 20, 2006
Messages
13,003
HTML frames, Comic Sans, and vintage GIFs: being that Captain Marvel predominately takes place during the ‘90s, Marvel had the clever idea of advertising their latest flick with an official website that takes visitors back to the GeoCities era. It’s pretty accurate, down to the guestbook (filled with ‘90s references such as the dancing baby) and "Kree Player," a take on the old Real Player. Of course, WB’s Space Jam site from 1996 is still alive and kicking for those who desire authentic nostalgia.

The Captain Marvel webpage throwback is a really cool way to promote the movie, which also gives younger Marvel Cinematic Universe fans a chance to see what the internet looked like back in the day. Sites like the internet Wayback Machine can take users back to the old days, but a lot of images are usually broken, preventing from the true experience of dial-up internet. The only thing that could have made the Captain Marvel site even better is slow page loading, just to give it a real touch of what it was like surfing the net in the dark ages.
 
Brian_B said:
I wouldn’t exactly call it nostalgia
Click to expand...

Definition of nostalgia. 1 : the state of being homesick : homesickness. 2 : a wistful or excessively sentimental yearning for return to or of some past period or irrecoverable condition also : something that evokes nostalgia.
Click to expand...

I feel absolutely none of that when I look back at 90s era websites.
 
I certainly do. Most of you are probably born in late 90s so your child hood has been high speed cable and wifi etc... when I was a kid we actually played outside and ocassionaly played a computer game and the internet was so unreliable and slow it was a very rare thing to actually want to sit there and "surf" the net.

You've got mail... ah fuck who in the house picked up the damn phone?
 
tangoseal said:
I certainly do. Most of you are probably born in late 90s so your child hood has been high speed cable and wifi etc... when I was a kid we actually played outside and ocassionaly played a computer game and the internet was so unreliable and slow it was a very rare thing to actually want to sit there and "surf" the net.

You've got mail... ah fuck who in the house picked up the damn phone?
Click to expand...

I was born in 84. No nostalgia for dial-up or 90s era internet here.
 
I dig it, i was building websites at the time for clicks running on an alpha 166mhz running winnt4 mine was much cleaner though
 
I got a little nostalgic. Not getting any 8 bit sound though, clicked the speaker. I liked the creepy old lady pop up, I punched her in the face a few times, played the skrulls game.
 
I think they mean Geocities style...
and where's the under construction, webring, and lack of third-party js?

RogueTadhg said:
You don't miss waiting 30 minutes for a 5mb song?
Click to expand...
I'm not sure if that's better or worse than a 5MB website in 30s ;)

Edit: I feel kinda sad seeing that Space Jam site at 62KB (16 reqs) and the "90's" site at 8.5MB (116 reqs)
 
Last edited:
Dragon_Fire said:
Obviously, dialup sucked as a technology, but I do miss the decentralized, decommercialized, and pre social media internet.
Click to expand...

remember.jpg


As for the geocities/nostalgia thing, I don't share the sentiment.

1. The internet didn't become pleasing to the eye until around 2002.
2. I'm glad the internet sucked in the 90's. It gave me the freedom to go to real parties, get laid, and get into kid-level trouble without consequence. (all without the current social media nonsense that's turning kids into zombies - yeah, I said it)
 
Looks awfully F.O.S.I. to me, and I don't mean the Family Online Safety Institute. The question is does it come with crackz that are safe to use...
 
Red Falcon said:
Oh yeah, and if you wanted those hyper fast 48Kbps uploads, you needed to upgrade your 56K V.90 modem to a 56K V.92 modem. :D
Click to expand...

Chuckle, back in the day I submitted my email to a USRobotics giveaway for one of their V.32 models (a Sportster, I think). About a month or three later--don't recall how long it actually took--I got a notification from them that I had won. I was pleased as bat shit having never won anything via the Internet before and actually excited at the prospect of having blazing fast speeds.
 
Yeah I kinda miss looking for Doom WADs or hoping the next Quake patch to get back online was less than 10Mb. Also kinda miss DALNet chat bots when grabbing ummm Linux images...

Not to mention the free AOL frisbees we would receive on a daily basis.
 
I have nostalgia for the 90s but certainly not dial up..ugh.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Youn
like this
The only nostalgia I have for dialup is the handshake sound my 2400 baud Hayes external made, for some reason I always found the 56k handshake annoying but maybe the novelty had just worn off by then.

I don't miss all the ugly and clunky design but I do miss the simplicity of creating a professional website with nothing more than notepad and a few images. I think that modern designers could learn a few things from those old html only websites about doing more with less to minimize bloat(gif and audio heavy websites obviously not included).
 
Dragon_Fire said:
Obviously, dialup sucked as a technology, but I do miss the decentralized, decommercialized, and pre social media internet. Even a site like [H] is a relic of the past
Click to expand...
Like when everyone had handles and your real identity was a closely guarded secret.

I was super stoked when I went from 2400 baud to a 14400 baud modem. The jump to 56k was not as noticeable.
 
  • Like
Reactions: DocNo
like this
It goes without saying that I don't miss the design, but I got hit up good with nostalgia. Looking forward to the movie now.
 
umeng2002 said:
The only thing I don't miss is the slow speed.
Click to expand...

It wasn't that slow though. Its all relative. Everything was designed around whatever the current average modem speed was at the time. The internet is relative speedwise to the content of the generaiton. It only started to honestly feel slow when ISDN came about and my friends got it when I couldn't afford it.
 
horrorshow said:
View attachment 140940

As for the geocities/nostalgia thing, I don't share the sentiment.

1. The internet didn't become pleasing to the eye until around 2002.
2. I'm glad the internet sucked in the 90's. It gave me the freedom to go to real parties, get laid, and get into kid-level trouble without consequence. (all without the current social media nonsense that's turning kids into zombies - yeah, I said it)
Click to expand...
It has come full circle cause a lot websites are not very pleasing to look at now. With ads everywhere espicillyt auto playing movie ads and sounds.
 
horrorshow said:
View attachment 140940

As for the geocities/nostalgia thing, I don't share the sentiment.

1. The internet didn't become pleasing to the eye until around 2002.
2. I'm glad the internet sucked in the 90's. It gave me the freedom to go to real parties, get laid, and get into kid-level trouble without consequence. (all without the current social media nonsense that's turning kids into zombies - yeah, I said it)
Click to expand...

I'm getting laid thanks to the internet. Farming the tinder fields with a good profile is pretty easy though of course it's a daily grind.
 
Gee, they need to to their homework. The site is trying to run a youtube.com script. Youtube wasn't founded until 2005. Or is this supposed 'Marvel' site a Skrull conspiracy?

And where is the reference to the Usenet discussion group?
 
wish i could relive those days again, geocities, ticalc.org, programming games on my calculator, aol 2.5-3.0 era, downloading .mpeg, .mpg porn, and screwing up my 386, win 3.1 laptop with junk drivers found on aol.. man i miss those days
thats the only thing i can hope for when elon brings on the neuralink, being able to relive those old stored memories locked away deep in our brains..
 
I predict the movie will do a 80's/90's Buddy Cop thing between Larson and Jackson.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top