After Dark (software)
After Dark is a series of computer screensaver software introduced in 1989 by Berkeley Systems for the Apple Macintosh, and later for Microsoft Windows.[1]
Following the original, new editions were introduced including More After Dark and Before Dark, as well as editions themed around licensed properties such as Star Trek, The Simpsons, Looney Tunes and Walt Disney Company characters.[1] The screensaver modules were often noted for their intertextuality, such as the flying toasters appearing in the Fish screensaver, and the cat from Boris screensaver appearing in the Bad Dog screensaver.
As well as the included animated screensavers, it allowed the development and use of third-party modules, of which many hundreds were created by the height of After Dark's popularity.[2]
Flying Toasters
Of the screensaver modules included, the most famous is the iconic Flying Toasters which featured 1940s-style chrome toasters sporting bird-like wings, flying across the screen with pieces of toast. A slider enabled users to adjust the toast's darkness and an updated Flying Toasters Pro module added a choice of music: Richard Wagner's Ride of the Valkyries or a flying toaster anthem with optional karaoke lyrics.[3] Yet another version called Flying Toasters! added bagels and pastries, baby toasters, and more elaborate toaster animation. The Flying Toasters were one of the key reasons why After Dark became popular, and Berkeley began to produce other merchandising products such as T-Shirts, with the Flying Toaster image and slogans such as "The 51st Flying Toaster Squadron: On a mission to save your screen!".
The toasters were the subject of two lawsuits, the first in 1993, Berkeley Systems vs Delrina Corporation, over a module of Delrina's Opus 'N Bill screensaver in which Opus the penguin shoots down the toasters. Delrina later changed the wings of the toasters to propellers in order to avoid infringing the trademark. The second case was brought in 1994 by 1960s rock group Jefferson Airplane who claimed that the toasters were a copy of the winged toasters featured on the cover of their 1973 album Thirty Seconds Over Winterland. The case was dismissed because the cover art had not been registered as a trademark by the group prior to Berkeley Systems' release of the screensaver.[4]
A 3D version of the toasters featuring swarms of toasters with plane wings, rather than bird wings, is available for XScreenSaver.
After Dark Games and onward
Sierra Interactive and Berkeley Systems released After Dark Games for the Macintosh and Windows platforms, which contained several games modeled after their previously released screensavers. These games included Mowin' Maniac (a Pac-Man clone based on the "Mowin' Man"/"Mowin' Boris" modules), Roof Rats (similar to SameGame and variants), "Solitaire" (After Dark themed), Toaster Run (a 3D adventure game featuring several After Dark Characters, more notably the Flying Toaster), Zapper (a trivia game), Hula Girl (another 3D adventure game based on the "Hula Twins" module from After Dark 4.0), two word scramble games — Bad Dog 911 (based on the "Bad Dog" modules) and Fish Shtix (based on the "Fish" modules, mainly "Fish World"), Foggy Boxes (a connect the boxes type game based on the "Messages 4.0" module), MooShu tiles (a Mahjong-like game featuring many After Dark characters throughout the years), and Rodger Dodger.[5] "Rodger Dodger" had been a module several years back, but also a playable game inside the module. Not much was changed from the module except some of the music and most of the level's set-ups. Many fans liked the games, but some felt it lacked games based on more fitting modules, such as "Daredevil Dan", "Lunatic Fringe" (which was a game inside its module, like "Rodger Dodger"), and the After Dark re-working of "Rock, Paper Scissors" (also a game inside its module).
In 1997, Berkeley Systems was acquired by the Sierra On-Line division of CUC International.[6] Joan Blades and Wes Boyd, the founders of Berkeley Systems, went on to create MoveOn.org.
Fans have made modern versions of several of the screensavers in the years since. An official version of After Dark was released for Mac OS X by Infinisys Ltd (of Japan) in May 2003.[7] It has yet to be converted to Universal binary, so at the current moment it can only be run on PowerPC computers with OS X.
Sierra released a Flying Toaster video game for cell phones in 2006.[8]
Modules
- Starry Night: The original After Dark screensaver featuring a pixelized city skyline under a night sky
- Aquatic Realm: Underwater world of fish with a black background
- Artist: A digital artist applies artistic touches to images in a slow manner so you can see the artist work
- Bad Dog: Popular module featuring a white dog with a black ring around one of his eyes causing trouble on the user's desktop.
- Bogglins: Green slime creatures are formed and make obnoxious noises
- Boris: The opposite of Bad Dog, a good cat plays on the user's desktop and chases butterflies.
- Bugs: Digital bugs crawl across the screen
- Bulge: Expands portions of the screen, making the screen appear to have a "bulge"
- Bungee Roulette: Various characters bungee jump off the top of the screen, but occasionally the bungee cord will break
- Can of Worms: "Worms" emerge from your screen and crawl around
- Chameleon: Chameleons walk across your screen, changing colors and eating icons
- Clocks: Different objects appear as a clock and move around
- Coming Soon: A salesperson pitches fictitious "products"
- Confetti Factory: Confetti falls from the top of the screen and onto conveyor belts below
- Daredevil Dan: A daredevil motorcyclist attempts dangerous jumps over school busses, flames, and pirhana tanks
- Dominoes: A game of dominoes is played on the screen
- DOS Shell: A mock DOS shell is run on the user's screen, reliving the old days of computing
- Dots: A game of "dots" is played on the user's screen.
- Down the Drain: Your desktop appears to spiral down a drain.
- Einstein: Complex mathematical and scientific equations are performed on screen.
- Fade Away: Your desktop fades away in different ways
- Fish Pro: Fish module similar to Aquatic Realm
- Flocks: Displays flocks of various creatures on the screen
- Flying Toasters: Classic module featuring flying toasters
- Flying Toasters Pro: Updated version that allows you to select more than flying toasters and also has music
- Flying Toilets: Like Flying Toasters, only with toilets
- Fractal Forest: A forest of trees is generated on screen
- FrankenScreen: A digital Frankenstein creates creatures out of various parts
- Frost and Fire: Produces patters similar to splattering paint on paper
- GeoBounce: A geometrical figure bounces around the screen
- Globe: Takes an image and wraps it around a sphere, then spins like a globe
- Graph Stat: Draws scientific and mathematical graphs on your screen
- Gravity: Circles bounce around the screen
- Hall of Mirrors: Reflects parts of the screen in an infinite mirror style
- Hallucinations: Your computer "hallucinating"
- Hard Rain: Rain falls onto the user's desktop
- Lasers: Lasers create patterns on the screen
- Logo: Allows you to use your own image as a screen saver
- Lunatic Fringe: Playable screen saver that allows to run!
- Magic: Creates soothing patterns
- Mandelbrot: Generates a Mandelbrot, mathematically created
- Marbles: Marbles bounce around the screen
- Meadow: A computer generated meadow
- Message Mayhem: A figure on screen sprawls out a message
- Messages: Basic screen saver that shows a message on screen
- Mike's So-called Life: A screen saver featuring a man named Mike living in his apartment and doing nothing exciting
- Mime Hunt: A playable screen saver that features a mime and cross hairs
- Modern Art: Modern Art displayed on screen
- Mondrian: Inverts parts of the screen
- Mosaic: Creates a mosaic of the screen
- Mountains: Generates 3-D mountains
- Mowin' Boris: Mowin Man mows a field with Boris the cat around. When Mowin Man mows over Boris, blood and guts appear
- Mowin' Man: A man mows a constantly growing field
- Nirvana: Generates colorful textures
- Nocturnes: Shows the eyes of various nocturnal creatures such as bats
- Nonsense: Nonsensical phrases are displayed on screen
- Om Appliances: Various appliances do weird things on screen
- Oragami: Computer generated oragami appears on screen
- Pattern: Animated patterns appear on screen
- Pearl: An optical effect featuring squares
- Penrose: Penrose tiling effect
- Phlegm Boy: An obnoxious slimy creature is disgusting and displays bad habits
- Photon: Computer generated particles of light emit from the darkness
- Plasma: Plasma like image generated
- Punch Out: Your desktop appears to be punched with a hole puncher
- Puzzle: Your desktop becomes a sliding puzzle
- Rain: Colorful rain drops fall on the desktop
- Rainstorm: Like the Rain module but with wind and lightning
- Rat Race: A race featuring three rats with names, mindlessly wandering around the track until there is a winner
- Rebound: Balls rebound around the screen
- Rose: Mathematical pattern based on triganometry
- Satori: Color animated light show
- Say What?: Displays humorous phrases
- Shapes: Fills the screen with colorful, geometric shapes
- Shock Clocks: Scary creatures are turned into clocks
- Shooting Spree: The desktop appears to be shot up by a gun
- Sinkhole: The desktop appears to fall into sink holes
- Slide Show: A basic slide show of images
- Snake: A pixelized snake tries to find its way through a maze
- Spheres: A bunch of spheres fill the screen
- Spin Brush: Smears points on the screen like wet paper
- Spiral Gyro: Vector module that twists lines
- Spotlight: Your desktop becomes black and parts are illuminated by a spotlight
- Squigwig: Mathematical circles are generated
- Stained Glass: Produces quilt like patterns
- Strange Attractor: Another computer generated color image
- String Theory: Moire patterns
- Sunburst: Color pattern that appears to come from the sun
- Swan Lake: Swans swim around the user's desktop
- This Ol House: It appears that someone is working on the user's desktop from the outside with power tools
- Toxic Swamp: Like Aquatic Realm, only in a toxic polluted swamp with mutated fish and a mob boss
- Tunnel: Appears your screen is a tunnel
- Vertigo: Colorful spirals drawn on screen
- Voyeur: It appears you are spying on an apartment complex with a big city skyline in the background
- Warp: Appears you are traveling through stars
- Wrap Around: Draws three dimensional loops
- Wrecking Ball: Appears a wrecking ball demolishes your desktop
- You Bet Your Head: Playable quiz game featuring three colored "heads" that get smashed by a hammer if they get the question wrong
- Zoom!: Creates colorful triangular tubes
- Zot: Attempts to generate lightning
An edition called After Dark Totally Twisted includes the more macabre modules, namely Bungee Roulette, Chameleon, Coming Soon!, Flying Toilets, FrankenScreen, Message Mayhem, Mike's So-called Life, Mime Hunt, Mowin' Boris, Phlegm Boy, Shock Clocks, Toxic Swamp and Voyeur.
In popular culture
- Several After Dark modules were featured in the background of interviews for the VH1 show I Love the 90s.
- The Simpsons, which had an official After Dark module package based on the series, has made references to After Dark several times throughout the series. A Flying Toaster appeared in the Simpsons episode The Computer Wore Menace Shoes on Homer Simpson's website full of animated GIFs, one of which was the Flying Toaster. The module "Starry Night" was also referenced in The Simpsons episode, "'Scuse Me While I Miss the Sky". At the end of the episode, while looking at the stars, Marge Simpson says "This is better than our screensaver, and I love our screensaver." The "Starry Night" module is famous for its star filled night sky. In the episode "Radioactive Man", the Flying Toasters screensaver can be seen on Comic Book Guy's computer.
- A Flying Toaster also appears in the Rugrats episode "In the Dreamtime", in which Chuckie Finster sees a Flying Toaster in his dream.
- On the television show Beverly Hills 90210, the Peach Pit After Dark Night Club used a flying toaster as its logo.
- A flying toaster is seen in The Fairly OddParents episode "What's the Difference?" Another one (previously a bird) is also seen in the episode "Nectar of the Odds."
- In the King of the Hill episode "Earthly Girls are Easy," Buck Strickland has a flying toaster screen saver that keeps him happy.
- In the music video of Jean-Jacques Goldman - Les choses, a huge number of flying toaster are trying to take control of the world, attacking the planet by sending frequency and controlling items.
References
Further reading
External links