1994

[greg]

So what are your memories of 1994?

For me, I graduated high school. I was so glad to put that chapter of my life behind me, and I was looking forward to college. From the money I received as graduation gift money, I bought myself a Super Nintendo. But actually before that, I had already bought Ranma 1/2: Hard Battle for the SNES. I got it on clearance at KB Toys in the mall. Even though this game was heavily sponsored by Viz, it still flopped. It was certainly no Street Fighter II, and the only people who bought it were anime fans, and there weren't so many of us back in those days.

That summer, I worked at a Mediterranean food place in the same mall. The place would have been nice if it wasn't bankrupt. They could barely afford to buy even ketchup most of the time. We sold gyros, which aren't bad tasting. But after working there, I hated those things. The meat came packed in these unholy buckets, which I had to impale on a metal rod. It slid out in a bucket shape and they were then slowly rotated next to a grill to cook. They bled grease all day and it dripped into pans. When these pans filled up, we'd dump them into this big huge, evil-smelling barrel of manevolence. On top of that, we had to serve food like hummus (which I thought was gross at the time), and stinky feta cheese (which I also don't mind so much now that I am older). I quit at the end of that summer before I would have eventually snapped from hearing people mispronounce "gyros" all day with a soft "g" sound.

During that summer, I believe that was the beginning of the GTs (get-togethers) for the Anime Archive BBS. We would get together at this guy Bruce's home and watch fansubs (he was a fansubber). His anime collection on laserdisc was eye-popping. He had drawers and drawers of hundreds of fansub tape masters too. Oh man, that was a great experience! That was when I first started collecting fansubs, and I watched Nausicaa for the first real time, as in the non-Warriors of the Wind version.


I believe that was also the summer I built my first anime-related plastic model: the 1:72 scale transformable VF-1S Valkyrie from Macross.

I began school as a freshman in college that fall. I attended a local junior college at first. I took college algebra that semester and there was a Japanese girl named Harue I became acquainted with. She was the one who later bought the soundtracks to Kiki's Delivery Service and Porco Rosso for me when she visited her folks in Japan. I'd given her money to buy them for me.

It was that fall when the sysop of the Anime Archive, Brad, showed me the WWW for the first time. He showed me some KOR fan page and it blew my mind. Wow, pictures! Is this like a BBS? This is cool! It turns out that my community college had a BBS/electronic forum. They also had usenet access and Lynx access to the WWW (text only). So I started browsing stuff like rec.arts.anime and alt.bgcrisis.

For Christmas, my dad got our family true Internet access. Dad said that I could use it for school work too, to do research and such. We had Windows 3.1 and a 2400 baud modem. The software from our ISP came with Netscape Navigator 1.0 with that pulsating N animation, but soon I got version 2 which had the navigation wheel. I believe that was the release that supported animated gifs and background images for webpages. Netscape's logo for that release was the N on the planet with the animated shooting stars.

In all, 1994 was a pretty great, super nerdy year for me. Fansubs, Internet access, a SNES to play anime games like Ranma and Area 88 (aka U.N. Squadron), and I even built a Macross model.

[ParaParaJMo]

Well I went on to the 5th grade and turned 10. I got a Super NES that Christmas and went to a trip to the Philippines to visit my mother's side of the family. And that was the time I became an anime fan. I was big into X-Men, Spider-Man and Batman and video games such as Mortal Kombat and Street Fighter. At the time, my cousin had a Megadrive and they told me of this fighting game called Dragon Ball Z and told me it was better than Mortal Kombat and Street Fighter. I watched them play it and I saw it was cool you could fly, do split screens, and counter fireballs with your own and do a "power struggle." It was too complicated for me at that time because no other game was like that. It was just mind blowing and the artistic design just so distinct to me. Of course the manual and the screen was all in Japanese and it was easy to conclude that it was from Japan.

They also told me it was based on a cartoon from Japan and it was the coolest thing ever and better than X-Men, Spider-Man, Batman, and Superman put together. The first episode I saw was Vegeta getting man handled by 18 and that blew my mind and that made me a fan. During that time I was also exposed to Ranma 1/2, Sailor Moon, Slam Dunk and Yuu Yuu Hakusho but Dragon Ball Z was just out of this universe for me at that time. And when I got home, all I did at school was try to draw Dragon Ball Z pics.

And I also got into rap during that time through Coolio.

[llj]

1994 was a good year for me. I was in the middle of my high school tenure and I was starting to hit my stride both socially and academically. I got a SNES, the only time in my life I owned a console while it was still in its prime years. Anime was really started to penetrate video stores like Blockbusters, so I was exposed to a whole new world of english translated, uncut anime. Console RPGs like FF VI and FF II (IV) was the big thing with my friends at the time.

I was still into superhero comics at this time...I think this year was the tail end of my Image comics fandom, although I could be off a year or two. I know the following year I started getting into Preacher so I was probably already showing signs of moving more towards alternative comics fare this year.

All in all, I struck a nice balance between nerdy interests and non-nerdy pursuits. It was certainly the most exciting and rewarding year in my time at high school, I think.

[Drew_Sutton]

1994 was the year that I started getting introduced to anime as anime (well, Japanimation). We'd been in Atlanta for about a year by that point. I was a huge comic book dork and I twisted my dad's arm into taking me to the local "Atlanta Comic Con" which was a 1-day (Saturday) dealers show (that grew to have some promo/fan tables in the lobby outside the ballroom) and the flyer advertised Japanimation. Which I was instinctively drawn to.

We went to the show and I was spending all of my allowance on comic books but we found "the Japanimation vendor"'s table. Full of clamshelled VHS fansubs for $25 a pop. I looked around at all of the merchandise and I remember a tape of DNA^2 catching my eyes. I also gobbled up whatever cartoon garbage the guy played on the TV at his booth. Repeat that for another few shows until 1995, when my sister and I both started watching Sailor Moon and Ronin Warriors on TV.

[Animusubi]

1994 I was in 5th grade, and my teacher at the time nicknamed me "Shybossy" because I was both shy and bossy around friends. (Tsundere? LOL) I was into sticker trading and pogs. I was so naive though, I would often play with kids who "played for keeps" and I ended up losing all the time. I didn't know any better. All my friends were also moving onto other people. I remember a girl who owned a ranch, and they played with these horses outside, and I didn't have one so I was left out. I didn't like how they weren't poseable. We went to a Goodwill and I got a horse toy that had really good articulation, but he was alot bigger than the ones the girls were playing with. Eventhough I finally had a horse, they still left me out. I also had a big crush on a guy around that time, but he always acted like I didn't exist. I also remember making a diorama out of Legos for a school project. I was drawing alot too, making my own character comic books. One of the stories I made with my brother was called "Galaxy X".

[X-KID Z]

1994 was memorable year for me. I was 10 years old. It was the year my family on my dad's side had a family reunion. My dad had 10 brothers and sisters so it was a big family, even bigger now. The reunion was in Orlando where most of my dad's family live. Half of the family was in the military the other worked at Disney World. My aunts have been taking me to Disney World since before I could remember, this time the entire family was there. I had many cousins around my age, and we'd pass the time playing this card game cops and robbers. It used regular playing cards, it was a really fun game to play with a bunch of people. It was the only time I ever heard of the game. One of the aunties had an Ace of Base cassette and we listened to it on the 8 hour drive to Pensacola. "I Saw the Sign", was stuck in everyone's head for a while.

I had my Game Gear for the trip, Sonic 2, Surf Ninja's, and I think Lion King were the games I had to keep me entertained.
I learned how to rollerblade. The kids in the family went to see D2 The Mighty Ducks. Played with the Mortal Kombat arcade for a bit before going into the movie. D2 became one of my favorite movies along with the first one. I got a hockey stick when I got back home and played pick up games with neighbors. I begged my dad to get me into hockey, but there were no hockey programs where I lived.

Not sure if this was still 1994, but I was at friends house while his mom was babysitting me and my sister. We played guns around the house with only having our fingers to use as guns, and afterwards I watched my first Ghibli movie. It was My Neighbor Totoro. I remember watching it with my sister, my friend, and his older brother while snacking on tortilla chips and salsa. We were all enthralled. I was awakened to two things at that time. How fascinating an animated movie can be, and how good chips and salsa really is. Unfortunately my mom came to pick me and my sister up in the middle of the movie. I never got around to watching the rest of it until the past year. One long 20 year intermission. I have seen much more animations and other Ghibli movies since then, so the raw, virgin fascination was gone. Which is partly the reason why I waited so long to finish it. I didn't want the magic to go away. Nevertheless I still enjoyed it.

I think that was the year the Yomega Yoyo guys came to my school. If anyone remembers that particular Simpsons episode, my school was one of the schools this phenomenon swept through. I purchased the Yomega Brain, with the automatic wind up when doing the sleeper.

Pogs were most definitely another awesome hobby back then. I remember frequenting a local shop that completely got into the Pog craze, becoming my local Pog pusher. I got a WildCATS slammer, and a gold shiruken looking slammer with a Yin Yang on it. Oh yeah, and there were the slap bands.

Other than that it was the usual Saturday morning X-Men cartoon, and doing drawings of the X-Men. Watching Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 1 and 3 (didn't have a copy of 2 sadly ), Surf Ninja's, and 3 Ninja's Kick Back (the one where they go to Japan and Seo Taiji is used for the music) on repeat for the whole year and then some. Along with Mighty Ducks 1 and 2 as well. Then finally getting blisters from Street Fighter II Turbo on the SNES.

I'm sure that this probably did not all happen exactly in 1994, but after all these years it's a bit muddled to me.

[kndy]

Great year as an anime fan!

[Drew_Sutton]

^ That NewType cover - man, how many times did I watch Fatal Fury: The Motion Picture? Way too many, probably. Cover also reminds me that I've still been meaning to watch Ghost Sweeper Mikami all these years.

And those Animerica covers! Here's the burning question I want to know: What was Viz's motivation behind those movie-parody-esque Ranma titles? And they did the same for the Ranma TV series, too.

[labsenpai]

The Fall 1994 schedule for anime showings at my club (Animate Ohio State) included:
Dominion, Macross DYRL, Tenchi Muyo, Maison Ikkoku, Gundam 0080, Patlabor TV, Honneamise, A-KO 1-3, Dragon Half, Natsuki Crisis, Doomed Megalopolis, Char's Counterattack, and Plastic Little.
I wasn't enrolled as a student, having already done my time at a smaller university. I paid my membership dues in VHS tapes and club newsletter production...

[DKop]

I was in 2nd grade living in the Carrollton Texas (the suburb north of Dallas) and went to McCoy Elementary School. What I remember was that Power Rangers started to hit it big at that time, but I didn't pay too much attention towards it since I remember liking Carmen Sandiego cartoon on TV (and watched the PBS show at the same time). I might have been watching Batman:TAS at the time but i'm not remembering that at the moment. I had a friend who was in middle school who I guess he looked at me as a younger brother and friend, and we would pretty much hang out and watch Meteor Man and listen to the Jurrasic Park Wierd Al cassette tape all the time. He did have a Genesis so I would play a few games like the X-Men one, and I think he borrowed a NES so that's how I got to play Spy Hunter for the first time. WallBall was our outdoor game of choice after school, and eventually that summer is when I moved to Pineville North Carolina for my dad's new construction job (which is south of Charlotte). That marked the start of me never moving out of the Carolina's to this day.

I started 3rd grade at Starmount Elementary and meet a friend named Steven, which all we did was have "adventures" in his room and watched the same 3 Ninjas movie over and over. I did own a Game Boy to play Legend of Zelda Links Awakening and Jurrasic Park on to keep me occupied on the car trip to Charlotte, which I still have those games to this day (the Game Boy went with my brother and that's a whole other story). I was also obsessed with Jurassic Park at the time, so Christmas came around and my grandmother got me a rapter claw (those reproduced resin ones) from the Discovery Store in the malls. I loved that thing till my brother ruined it a couple of years later, again long story there.

I think that's all I got on that year, 95 picked up a bit more.