Remember the 1990s? It was a wonderful time, a time when Microsoft would pay Jennifer Aniston to beat a child actor at video games, all in the service of helping explain how to use Windows 95.
We’ve actually written about this video before, in which Jennifer Aniston and Matthew Perry, high on Friends fame, signed on to act in an instructional video for Windows 95. But when The Atlantic re-posted it a couple days ago, describing it as “The Most 90s Thing That Could Ever Exist”, I decided to actually watch the whole thing.
And that brought me to the glorious bit at the 25-minute mark, when one Mr “Joystick Johnny” enters the scene.
You know Joystick Johnny, right? “The most feared video game warrior in the territory?” Well, he has a challenge for our friends Rachel and Chandler: Who can beat him at 3D Pinball? Ms. Aniston accepts his challenge.
“A GIRL??” he says, mugging so hard for the camera that I worry his face is going to fall off. “Har-de-har-har.”
The rest, as they say, is history. Increasingly ancient, uncomfortably dorky history.
If you don’t have anything else to do, stick around for the bit afterward, where everyone finally “uses the brown floppies” and things get trippy, man. And hey, stay around a while longer if you actually want to have a helpful disembodied voice explain how to use Windows 95.
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5 responses to “Jennifer Aniston’s Greatest Gaming Moment”
Ok, I’ve been ignoring this as much as possible for the last week or so, expecting it to be really terrible, way outdated and also make me a little nostalgic… Did not disappoint.
I took the advice of jumping straight in at around the 25min mark and watched until a little way into the tech demo, then I backtracked out of curiosity. A little surprised at how obnoxious and awkward the characters and dialogue were, and the acid trip end to the story ark is a giant WTF moment, but I think this video helps capture just how far we have come in 20 years, yet how little has changed at the same time.
This should be mandatory viewing for anyone born after Windows 95 was released. However anyone who was old enough at the time to remember Windows 95 should be wary of watching this, I now have a sudden urge to hunt down my VCR player and watch some 90s films, although it would probably be easier just to hunt them down online instead.
I also wonder if my old 386 would still work, and what would happen if I tried to boot-up Windows 3.1 and try take it on a tour of the internet at today’s broadband speeds. I can’t remember if it even had a web browser on it.
It wouldn’t work online would it?
I want to punch each and every face in this video.
Glorious, I tell you, that was GLORIOUS! I feel like I truly understood Windows 95 now, an OS that came out when I was 2.
I kept waiting for two guys to walk in and spitroast Jennifer Anniston….
Wait, what do you MEAN this isn’t a porno!?
Boy, that Sam Huntington’s done a lot of weird stuff in his career.