Hello Reaction Readers. We have a very special addition of Reaction.

We look at the media in the early to mid nineties. It's also the first ever time that the column is being guested. I went to his office where the media roundups usually happen. It's time for Mongoose Media Roundup (c) 1995

V3.1: Step into my office

Analyst: So it's the mid nineties Goose

V3.1: Don't call me Goose Analyst we are not friends. We share the same brain that is all. So the mid to late nineties. Music wise the CD is pretty big.

Analyst: No MP3

V3.1: Towards the end the MP3 take over had started but it was nowhere near what we see today. Also largely it was illegal downloads as apposed to the pay sites we see now. Napster was a big deal from 1999 onwards. But for the most part it was the CD and the cassette tape. Recording from the radio was still there. Towards the end mini disk's became popular too.

Analyst: What about portable music

V3.1: Mini disk that we touched upon. There were portable CD players but almost every household had a ghetto blaster. a battery powered CD and / or tape player that you could carry around on your shoulder.

Analyst: I only had the tape one I was poor. So TV What's different there.

V3.1: We covered teletext right? Well towards the end of the 1990s saw the rise of fast text as well as video plus. Fast text was like teletext but a tiny bit faster and video plus was a system where you could put in the code from the newspaper TV guide and your VCR would record the program.

Analyst: (laughs) Like a PVR

(Mongoose looks stern. Seems confused by the laughter. Analyst stops laughing abruptly)

Analyst: OK Home PC's and consoles

V3.1: The home PC scene by the mid nineties was dominated by the release of Windows 95 and 98. 95 in particular gave us the look that desktops would have for the next ten plus years. We also saw a growth in the word wide web. Firstly with dial up Internet. Many companies offered it names like Freeserve, AOL, even supermarkets Tesco, and Asda offered their own dial up services. Most offered the Internet free for the first 30 days.

The drawback here was that if someone was using he Internet their phone line would be busy.

Analyst: I remember that It sounded like a Spectrum tape loading.

V3.1 - Console wise we saw the end of the 16 bit era and the beginning of the 32bit era. By 1997 there weren't many houses that didn't have a Playstation. The Sega Saturn tried but was so unfriendly to the games designers that it sank. A big marketing campaign from Sony and a competitive price that made a difference.

Analyst: I remember that well. Because until that point it had been Sega and Nintendo. Even building up to the new consoles the emphasis was on the Sega Saturn and Nintendo's N64. The N64 produced a lot of classic games that have stood the test of time. I am talking in particular about some of Nintendo's franchise players. Mario made the jump to 3d in this time. Link had perhaps his greatest adventure to date in Oceania of time.

V3.1: Of course from a business point of view there was no guarantee that the Playstation would be a success. The emphasis going in was very much on Sega and Nintendo. It was something we would see later when Microsoft entered the hardware market and sadly Sega ceased to produce hardware.

Analyst: That's going to do it for this weeks Retro Reaction

V3.1: Please don't say it...

Analyst Have a great..

V3.1: You do this every time why?

Analyt: Have a great dayyyyyyyy!!