Follow your curiosity
What takes you back?
A name, a year, a game you played after school. There is more than one way into the archive.
Your daily detour
There goes the afternoon.
Play something. Watch something. Follow a memory somewhere new.
A different starting point every day.239 places to go
- 01
Game / 1990s
Retro consoles →
NES, SNES, Game Boy, GBA, and Genesis emulation. Play the included 2048 Game Boy homebrew or open a local game file.
- 02
Story / 1990s
The world inside Rewind →
A kitchen with MTV, a working museum computer, music and radio, a classroom, and a painting you can enter.
- 03
Story / 1990s
Saturday Morning 1999 →
The cereal goes soggy. The television stays on. Watch, read, play, and save your place through 8 curated stops.
- 04
Story / 2000s
After School 2004 →
Drop the backpack. Somebody has the good controller. Watch, read, play, and save your place through 9 curated stops.
- 05
Story / 2000s
Friday Night 2007 →
Skate until dinner. Halo until somebody calls it a night. Watch, read, play, and save your place through 9 curated stops.
- 06
Story / 1990s
The world already playing in the background →
Commercial breaks. A birth year is not the same thing as a memory year. Start here as a look at the television world you arrived into: cereal pitches, sports tie-ins, network promos, and a commercial break that nobody could skip with a button.
- 07
Story / 1990s
The part of television we used to complain about →
Commercial breaks. The uploader traces this hour of ads to 1997 broadcasts of The Simpsons, The X-Files, and Married with Children on Fox 8 Cleveland, with some Late Night with David Letterman breaks mixed in. That makes it a local slice of television, not a reconstruction of everybody’s childhood.
- 08
Story / 1990s
Pop, rock, and hip-hop in one class photo →
MTV & music. MTV’s archive revisits the TRL class-of-1999 photo shoot with Britney Spears, NSYNC, Fred Durst, Jennifer Lopez, the Goo Goo Dolls, and others. The behind-the-scenes footage puts people from very different record-store aisles in the same frame.
- 09
Story / 1990s
A contest ran out of time. Tony kept trying. →
Skate culture. On June 27, 1999, Tony Hawk landed the first 900 at the X Games in San Francisco. X Games’ own retrospective recounts how the competition clock had expired, but the attempts continued until he landed it.
- 10
Story / 2000s
A new box under the television →
Halo & Xbox. The original Xbox launched in North America on November 15, 2001. Microsoft’s announcement put its estimated US price at $299 and listed Halo among the launch games. That is the launch record; what happened in living rooms after that belongs to the players.
- 11
Story / 2000s
The Cribs tour that felt like somebody actually lived there →
MTV & music. MTV dates Redman’s Staten Island house tour to 2001. Its official archive upload preserves a visit that is easy to discuss alongside the more polished celebrity-home tours: the appeal comes from the host and the lived-in details.
- 12
Story / 2000s
The channel had a personality between the cartoons →
Commercial breaks. SchfiftyThreeRetroTV dates this recording to March 24, 2002, around Cartoon Cartoons Top 5, Johnny Bravo, and Ed, Edd n Eddy. The upload’s list includes channel bumpers, national commercials, and local advertising.
- 13
Story / 2000s
Your game console was also introducing you to bands →
Skate culture. Activision’s October 2002 announcement for Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 4 advertised 35 soundtrack tracks. The lineup crossed punk, hip-hop, and rock, making the music part of the game’s identity rather than anonymous background sound.
- 14
Story / 2000s
Halo night started before the store even opened →
Halo & Xbox. Microsoft’s October 2004 launch announcement said more than 6,500 participating US retailers planned to open at 12:01 a.m. on November 9 for Halo 2. The list included names such as EB Games, Circuit City, and Gamecrazy: the shops are part of the time capsule, too.
- 15
Story / 2000s
A link could become the thing everyone talked about →
Early web. YouTube was registered as a website in February 2005. On April 23, Jawed Karim uploaded Me at the zoo: a nineteen-second clip that remains available on his channel. There is no big production reveal; the ordinary scale is part of the interest.
- 16
Story / 2000s
A flick of the stick changed the feel →
Skate culture. EA’s own franchise history places the original Skate in 2007, developed by EA Black Box. The Flick-It control approach made the movement of the analog stick central to performing tricks, a different feel from memorizing button combinations.
- 17
Story / 2000s
Even the ad felt like an event →
Halo & Xbox. Halo 3’s US midnight launch was September 25, 2007. Microsoft’s announcement treated the release as a shared event, with retailers opening at midnight and launch celebrations planned around it.
- 18
Game / 1990s
Pocket Snake →
Chase the next pixel. Two speeds, a growing tail, and your own high score to beat.