Blog:Grust's Top 15 Reasons Why the 90s Rocked For Entertainment

2020 was such a horrible shithole of a year. With Covid-19, social distancing, Karens, SJWs becoming more and more insane, and worst of all, the fucking riots which as an American isn't doing my mental health any favors. This has been so bad I withdraw into my childhood memories which of course was the 90s. Often times I think that if I had one wish, it would be to live my childhood and teen years in a perpetual timeloop. So I thought to myself, why did the 90s rock so much? Originally I had an idea for a top 10 list to figure this out, but I instead had to make it a top 15 to hold it all in. So come with me on a journey on my Top 15 Reasons the 90s rocked.

15. Gross-Out Humor Done Right: Today, gross-out humor has almost no charm and exists solely for shock value or cuz writers suck, but back in the 90s, we had writers that knew how to do it. Because of that we had cartoons like Rugrats, Rocko's Modern Life and of course the grandaddy of great gross-out, Ren and Stimpy. They used gross-out in moderation and didn't use it for shock but for the story itself such as Ren going insane, the Rugrats naivety since they are infants and Rocko dealing with a new world outside Australia. Still it's 15 cuz not everybody did it right. Nintendo Power's ads were pretty gross (AVGN even stapled a page shut) and we did get Megababies.

14. CGI wasn't overused: We all heard the criticism, everything in movies is CGI now. But back in the 90s, while CGI was new and fresh, it wasn't overused. Animatronics and makeup were still in great use. What made Jurassic Park a timeless classic was that some dinosaurs were animatronic but used CGI only when necessary. Another example is Ivan Ooze from the first Power Rangers movie. If he was made today, he'd just be CGI. But back then, Paul Freeman spent hours getting into make-up to look like a menacing alien wizard. And that effort paid off as Ivan Ooze is still a favorite villain among Power Rangers fans today. I even lament the Rangers had to kill him.

13. JRPGs Finally Became Awesome: JRPGs originated in the 80s and while a hit in Japan, most sold poorly in the U.S. Japan attempted to get us into the genre with Mystic Quest which not only failed but is regarded as one of the worst JRPGs of all time. However two games would eventually get us into the genre, Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars since Mario is the icon for gaming in general, and Final Fantasy 7, with its large budget and stunning 3D graphics (at the time, it was mindblowing) as well as coming at a time when anime was becoming the rage. RPGs are now my all time favorite genre of gaming which I summed up as "For any other game I'll have a beer, but for RPGs, I'll have a fine wine."

12. The Pokemon Craze: Today Pokemon is still a great franchise even if I'm no longer a fan but when it entered our lives in 1996 as well as the anime we got in 1997, it was a massive explosion in popularity. It gave new life to the fading Game Boy as the Game Boy Color hit the scene, tons of plushies, merchandise and the theme song allowed Pokemon to essentially rule the friggin world for a time. Pikachu even appeared in the first Super Smash Bros game for the Nintendo 64. The hype kind of went down by the time Yu-Gi-Oh! entered the scene though and the anime has now become the Japanese equivalent of "The Simpsons." Still a phenomenal time to be a kid or a nerd.

11. Western Entertainment Was Actually Entertainment: Today everything has to have a woke lecture or change things to be more PC or to virtue signal. It's now at the point where I barely view western entertainment as entertainment anymore. Back in the 90s though many shows and movies were made just for fun. Say what you want about The first Power Rangers movie but it was just a fun movie. Many shows which I'll get to later were just fun to watch and while they did give some messages and aesops, they had no lecture to give. The only exception was Captain Planet and the Planeteers which I hated even as a kid because it felt like a lecture. Today we thankfully have Japanese Entertainment with anime, manga and Japanese video games and if lucky some Indie games.

10. The Birth of Survival Horror: My second favorite genre is easily survival horror with limited resources, puzzles to solve, and ungodly horrors trying to kill you or even take your very soul. It was born in 1992 with the release of Alone in the Dark which was inspired by H.P. Lovecraft. Capcom would be inspired to make their own game with the same mechanics and would be the much more beloved Resident Evil or Biohazard in Japan which launched a much more successful franchise.

9. Creative Commercials: Oh boy I did not appreciate these commercials as a kid. After I watched Erin Plays (Mike Matei's girlfriend) 90s commercials video, I began binge watching old 90s commercials and had a blast, even hit with nostalgia attacks seeing some commercials I haven't seen in decades. Part of the reason these commercials were so awesome were creative writing and impressive effects. My favorites were the cereal commercials that were actual serials. That's right, several cereal mascots appeared in serials. Some villain tries to get the cereal and we had to wait probably a month to see how the mascot gets his cereal back. But my favorite cereal commercials were the Corn Pops ones where kids seemingly gets no Corn Pops and they go through a psychosis until inevitably they get Corn Pops after all.

8. Anime Became Awesome In The U.S.: Today anime is one of our last bastions for apolitical entertainment (which reminds me, fuck you Borimation) with likable characters, great stories, super powers, and great fanservice for any geek to drool over, unless you're a prude (and yes I hate anyone that whines about fanservice). And it's popularity began around 1997 when Toonami began airing the big two, Dragon Ball Z and Sailor Moon which while the dubs may not have aged well, began to see a revolution in entertainment. We even got the first incarnation of Voltron (of which I own the steelbooks DVDs) which was originally voice over work of Beast King Go-Lion. And of course The Gundam Series became a hit with Gundam Wing.

7. Great Kids' Cartoons: I'm a huge animation fan but by 2010, there was barely any kids' cartoons I liked. The only two that ever really come to mind are Adventure Time and Regular Show. MLP:FIS was also was good but I wouldn't really call myself a bronie and I quit watching Steven Universe after the SJW fanbase drove a fanartist to attempt suicide over a FUCKING DRAWING. Meanwhile the 2000s had great cartoons as well with Xiaolin Showdown, The Batman, and while it gets hate, I liked Loonatics Unleashed. But the 90s, we had Animaniacs, Tiny Toon Adventures, Road Rovers, Mighty Max (which I actually reviewed on Best TV Shows), Problem Child the animated series (first season here), Pinky and the Brain, Gargoyles, Darkwing Duck, Dexter's Laboratory, Johnny Bravo, Cow and Chicken and many others. But hands down the absolute best is Batman: The Animated Series which is still regarded as possibly the BEST superhero cartoon period.

6. The Dawn of 3D Gaming: For almost 20 years, gaming had been strictly 2D gaming with some attempts at 3D despite limitations, by the 90s however, that changed. Take a look at early 3D gaming like Virtua Fighter or the Nintendo 64 and maybe you'll cringe at the blockiness. By the 90s however this was mindblowing. I remember when a got VHS from Nintendo Power and was impressed with the N64 at the time and me and my older brother pooled our money to get one (I still have it and it works great). Today 3D is the norm and at this point, you're thinking at a new release, cool another game. But when it began, we got hyped as hell and thought of a new game in the new era of gaming. Amazingly while I still hold a love for 2D gaming with SNES being my favorite console of all time, my top 2 favorite games are 3D, Super Mario 64 and Ocarina of Time.

5. The Disney Renaissance: When I think of 90s movies, this is what first comes to my mind, a collection of 8 (Little Mermaid was 1989) of the best movies Disney made, oh and Pocahontas. 4 of these movies are still some of my all time favorite films with Beauty and the Beast being my all time favorite animated film and Frollo being my all time favorite animated villain and Aladdin being my favorite Disney Hero. I even consider Mulan a good feminist film because while it encourages young girls and shows how tough they can be, it doesn't treat men like shit and Mulan is well written. The Lion King still holds up as one the best films ever made. A little trivia, 1993 is the only year that didn't have a film.

4. The Simpsons At Its Peak: Today many people, even me, just want the Simpsons to end. It's lost all interest and worse as shown in Bart Vs. Itchy and Scratcy, might be caving in to SJW pandering, though you could just blame the writers which come and go. Back in the 90s, the Simpsons was at its best with classic episodes like Homer Badman which holds relevance because of its take on Fake News, Bart of Darkness, which shows Bart going mad from isolation and suspects Ned of killing his wife, Bart Star with a feminist Lisa getting owned, and A Milhouse Divided which breaks off a Status Quo is God moment by keeping Kirk and Luann divorced. And yes it also started the decline with around Season 8 when Mike Scully entered the scene and Homer became Jerkass Homer in the 200th episode.

3. Sega Vs. Nintendo: Show me a console war today. Shows me two fanboys arguing over XBox Series X and PS5. "Boring!" Want to see a good console war, go back in time and watch Sega and Nintendo duke it out. Back when the Genesis showed up, Sega made an ad saying that Genesis Does what Nintendon't. Nintendo in response made an almost superior console which would become my all time favorite console (I hit like 2 seconds after Projared put SNES in S Rank). However the Megahertz Processor was better in the Genesis so Sega advertised they had blast processing and used that to make their games look faster and more epic while making SNES look primitive. However the better hardware SNES had still allowed better games to be made and its FX Chip in some games allowed the games to surpass the SNES's limits whereas Genesis needed two add-ons just to compete which made the SNES outsell the Genesis. The war eventually ended when Sega's many screw-ups along with the PS2 doomed the Dreamcast and ended with Nintendo the victor. What an epic battle. Much blood was shed.

2. Social Media was almost Non-Existent: Social Media was a good idea on paper, but it caused idiots to voice their ideologies, form echochambers to make themselves look bigger than they are and helped to ruin entertainment and make laws meant to cater to pure idiocy like arresting a person for misgendering. Thankfully it was practically non-existent back in the 90s when the internet was fairly young. We had stuff like chat rooms which were basically DMs and some forums but that was it. It's allowed for some interaction but not on a huge scale like we see with Twitter or Facebook. And thanks to that these idiots never got heard and because of that....

1. Political Correctness, Prudes, and Other Killjoys Were Often Mocked And Laughed At: Today these idiots are ruining the world and ruining our fun. A sexy girl appears in a game or anime, ooh that's mu-soggy-knee, (though when a ripped dude shows up, crickets). People can go to prison simply for misgendering a person and now things are so bad a civil war in the U.S. may now be unavoidable thanks to the riots caused by SJW terrorists. Back in the 90s, these killjoys were laughingstocks and made targets for comedy or made into villains. The best example is with Married With Children (technically it started in 1987 but continued well into the 90s) where Al's feminazi neighbor is mistaken for a boy for laughs, fat women who lie about their shoe size were shamed and insulted, and Al's favorite show was Psycho Dad who "killed his wife cuz she had a cold but might as well she was getting old," and Al even formed the National Organization of Men Against Amazonian Masterhood. Al is now even seen as a symbol for people who despise third wave feminists and political correctness. Another example is in The Simpsons episode "Duffless" where Homer, while being off beer for a month, sees a Duff ad where feminists where screeching "down with sexism" and two dudes spray them with Duff beer turning them into hot bikini babes. And finally an example was with a Nesquik commercial where an evil scientist was turning the world's chocolate Chocolate, CHOCOLATE, CHOCOLATE into brussel sprouts so a girl and the Nesquik bunny have to stop him. Looking back, it's so gratifying to see these losers demonized as they deserve to be and it's why I consider it the best reason the 90s rocked.

Any other reason the 90s rocked? Let me know in the comments.

