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It's safe to say that the mid-90s were an interesting time at the intersection of computers, internet, art and commerce. Personal computers were near ubiquitous but there was still a large amount of room for creativity when it came to promotional endeavors. Simply put, folks were allowed to try things out and see what sticks!
Hollywood Online created a great deal of "Interactive Press Kits" to promote a wide variety of film titles. A huge chunk of them are available in the Internet archive. I spent just a few minutes with the Mallrats Interactive Kit and was immediately taken back to my days of Flash development and animation. It's all point and click adventure style with a little rudimentary animation and very limited color palettes. I look forward to exploring the kids for The Net, Strange Days, Little Women and, of course, Hackers* to name a few.
These artifacts are nearly 30 years old. It's easy to chalk this up to a walk down memory lane but I honestly think this was a real golden era of computing. Yes these are pieces of a marketing campaign but they are incredibly creative and immersive experiences (for the time). I'm not going to go as far as to say those were better times because I think there is still a great deal of amazing stuff being made today but this is an undeniably excellent time capsule.
HT Abandonware.
* Couldn't resist making this gif.
Hollywood Online created a great deal of "Interactive Press Kits" to promote a wide variety of film titles. A huge chunk of them are available in the Internet archive. I spent just a few minutes with the Mallrats Interactive Kit and was immediately taken back to my days of Flash development and animation. It's all point and click adventure style with a little rudimentary animation and very limited color palettes. I look forward to exploring the kids for The Net, Strange Days, Little Women and, of course, Hackers* to name a few.
These artifacts are nearly 30 years old. It's easy to chalk this up to a walk down memory lane but I honestly think this was a real golden era of computing. Yes these are pieces of a marketing campaign but they are incredibly creative and immersive experiences (for the time). I'm not going to go as far as to say those were better times because I think there is still a great deal of amazing stuff being made today but this is an undeniably excellent time capsule.
HT Abandonware.
* Couldn't resist making this gif.
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