90s-2000s NOSTALGIA

From reading through posts on this forum it has occured to me that most Talkers are closer to my father’s age than mine. Even so I can’t be the only youngin’ in this kijiji who was ‘Born City’ with no idea what it was like to have only VoK as a channel, or to drink maziwa ya Nyayo in school, or to tremble at the voice of Daniel Arap Moi.

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Back then there was no base ya PS. Gaming was done at home. If you couldn’t afford a console you all went to one kid’s house and played games for hours until their mother told you to get the hell out of her home. We spent countless hours on such classics as GTA, Gran Turismo, Need for Speed, Prince of Persia, God of War, Tekken and Mortal Kombat. PES, FIFA, Quake, Unreal Tournament and Halo. We also had the Gameboy, the OG handheld console before the PSP and Nintendo Switch. When the game cartridge failed to work you’d pull it out, blow on it, slap it on your knee a couple of times and you’re good to go. If it still didn’t work you were screwed. Remember when memory cards were a physical thing you had to carry around to store your data? Nowadays you download a game and the progress is saved digitally. Kids today will never know the struggle of losing a memory card and all your gaming progress with it. Or handling a CD like a pigeon’s egg because the slightest scratch will stop it from playing.
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The Poor Man’s version was the Brick Game
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TV was so good. Back then cable TV was for the rich, but local channels like KTN, NTV, STV and Metro (remember those ones?) actually aired quality content especially for kids. Citizen used to run cartoons up until 7PM. I remember waking up early every Saturday morning to watch reruns and of course Club Kiboko. As for the shows and movies we were spoiled for choice. The mid 80s through to the tail end of 90s were the peak years of true Hollywood macho men like Schwarzenegger, Stallone, Van Damme, Cage, Travolta, DeNiro, Pacino, Pesci, Liotta, Eastwood and many more. Tapes of their films were highly coveted. We would rewind our favourite scenes until the damn things stopped working. For some reason we used to believe it works better when you push the button instead of using the remote. TVs were fatscreens not flatscreens.
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Badass female action heroes like Sarah Connor from the Terminator franchise and Ripley from Aliens were done right. There was none of that politically correct forced diversity or pandering to audiences. Nobody rewrote movies with all female casts. If characters were gay or black or female it wasn’t made the central point of their existence. God I miss those days. Nowadays Hollywood hits you over the head with their diversity in the name of representation. Even cartoons aren’t free of the politically correct disease.
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There is only one Charmed. The remake is garbage.

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X-Files. Had a huge crush on Scully.
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This show was just plain weird and horrifying
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Still one of the best spy shows ever to have a female lead. Better than Alias in my opinion.

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Before Prison Break, before Orange is the New Black, there was Oz. Hardest prison show ever. There was no Ezekiel Mutua to tell us it was too dirty or violent for children. I pity kids nowadays. PG rating for everything. Actors can’t even be shown kissing on screen.
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Before Ray Donovan there was Tony Soprano.
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Who can forget Jack Bauer? The baddest superspy in America?
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And the legend himself, Chuck Norris as Walker, the Texas Ranger who took down entire gangs with roundhouse kicks and judo flips. I wanted a cowboy hat and a leather jacket so bad because of this dude.
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So many cartoons to choose from. Not a single bad one. My mother always hated Johhny Bravo. As I got older I understood why.
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Real OGs know what this game was all about. Can’t even imagine how much I played this.
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And this.

Cellphones went from this
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To this
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Everyone wanted one of these. Flip phones were the shit after Kibaki improved telecommunications and made phones more accessible to the common man. Touch screen phones were for corporate types.
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Every girl had a phone that looked like this. Kids today will never know the struggle. Texting was a skill and some people were damn good at it.
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Blackberries were the iPhones of that time. If you had one of these you were either a corporate guy or filthy rich. They only started to become useless around the mid 2000s.

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The music. Who can forget the music? The 90s-2000s was a period where all music from rock to reggae to hip hop to soul to RnB was good. My parents would drive me to school with Justin Timberlake or E-Sir or Nameless playing and they didn’t mind, in fact they sang along. The days of Fareed Kimani and Dusty Rhodes. Rick Dees and the Weekly Top 40. When Capital FM was Capital FM and I didn’t know DJ CK was actually a corrupt billionaire. When Kenyan radio wasn’t gossip and BS hekayas about wives finding their husbands in bed with the pastor. I wonder how many parents today would endure the garbage their kids listen to while giving them a ride to school. I would slap my son if he listened to Lil Pump or Ethic entertainment. The mid to late 2000s marked a strange marriage of pop-rock and new school hip-hop and everything went downhill from there IMO but that’s a discussion for another day.

I know I can’t have covered everything. There’s a lot I’ve missed but these are the things that stood out for me the most when I think of my childhood. What do you remember about being a 90s baby? Or just living in the 90s in general?

Brings back memories. Good and bad

Do tell…

Shiet man this takes me back… The iPod of our generation…
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Haha, yes! The WalkMan! How could I forget? My big sis used to have one, this exact one in fact. On the rare occasions she let me use it I’d walk around the neighbourhood flossing with it.

Simpler times…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qvNTAG5UFeg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EkdSUhJCKYg

I feel old. Sigh! Saturday mornings it was Cartoon Network thereafter a swim at Splash in the afternoon…

Nation TV / NTV used to air MTV as well
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hahaha

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Esther Mbondo, Jackline Kamonya, Regina Re with who is smarter now. Pia warehouse hosted by Debbie Asila ilikuwa na some good upcoming wasanii.

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Charmed?
Discman?
Pimp my ride?

Well,i guess im too old for this village sheet. All that mentioned seems like yesterday stuff. But hey…

Sawa grandpa, ushapita these 3 stages?

I’m currently on 2 but can feel 3 creeping up on me already

“Ayo dawg, we heard you like tropical beaches, so we hooked you up with your very own miniature jungle and sandbox in the back-seat, right next to the 54 inch flatscreen TV and surround sound system.” That show was just over the top :smiley:
And MTV actually played music back then.

I’ve just read your name slowly and realized what it means.
You say Charmed was just the other day bro? Come on. That show is over 20 years old. But I guess the past seems closer when you are older. The other day Sundowner played Vanessa Carlton and I wondered if I’m getting old because her music was just the other day for me too. Now it’s being played on ferking KBC.

Channel O was also good hata kama they played a lot of kwaito

Those were fantastic times to grow up, not like now. The entertainment was simple and dignified. I miss shows like ‘Beat time’ on KBC general service and ‘Shaky Leggy’ on Metro FM. I also miss STV, a Seuth Afrika TV channel that aired movies and music the whole day.

So is my baby sister.
I would like to explain to you but you wouldnt understand

Sunset Beach, Friends, Just Shoot Me, Moesha, NewsRadio, Live Premier League games,

If you can remember the programme V.
Neighbours and Sunset Beach
Better yet Crossbow then we are on the same page.

Pimp my ride ya exibit, Amka kumekucha song hapo kwa redio, China redio kimataifa lady, PS 1, The sentinel, Charmed pale KTN, Neighbours, kucheza kadi, bottle tops, banta, kuwinda ndege na fea, Magora, kati, Chapati, maindi na maembe ya bob, etc…