After Dark (software)

The Flying Toasters screensaver in After Dark 2.0

After Dark is a series of computer screensaver software introduced in 1989 by Berkeley Systems for the Apple Macintosh, and for Microsoft Windows in 1991.^[1][2]

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.^[2] 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.^[3]

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.^[4] 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.^[5]

A 3D version of the toasters featuring swarms of toasters with airplane wings, rather than bird wings, is available for XScreenSaver.

After Dark Games and onward

An After Dark CD-ROM

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.^[6] "Rodger Dodger" had been a module several years earlier, 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 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.^[7] 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.^[8] 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.^[9]

Modules

Module Name	Description
Starry Night	The original After Dark screen saver, featuring a pixelated 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 one 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 desktop
Bogglins	Green slime creatures are formed and make obnoxious noises
Boris	The opposite of Bad Dog, a good cat plays on the 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 from the top of the screen, but occasionally the bungee cord breaks
Can of Worms	"Worms" emerge from the screen and crawl around
Chameleon	Chameleons walk across the 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 buses, flames, and piranha tanks
Dominoes	A game of dominoes is played on the screen
DOS Shell	A mock DOS shell is run on the screen, reliving earlier days of computing
Dots	A game of "dots" is played on the screen
Down the Drain	The desktop appears to spiral down a drain
Einstein	Complex mathematical and scientific equations are performed on the screen
Fade Away	The desktop fades away in different ways
Fish Pro	Fish module similar to Aquatic Realm
Floating Suns **	Displays the Phoenix Suns basketball team's logos floating around the screen
Flocks	Displays flocks of various creatures on the screen
Flying Toasters	Classic module featuring flying toasters
Flying Toasters Pro	Updated version that allows one to select more than flying toasters and also has music
Flying Toilets	Like Flying Toasters, but with toilets
Fractal Forest	A forest of trees is generated on the screen
FrankenScreen	A digital Frankenstein creates creatures out of various parts
Frost and Fire	Produces patterns 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 the screen
Gravity	Circles bounce around the screen
Guts	Gravity simulation
Hall of Mirrors	Reflects parts of the screen in an infinite mirror style
Hallucinations	The computer "hallucinates"
Hard Rain	Rain falls onto the desktop
Lasers	Lasers create patterns on the screen
Logo	User-supplied image moves randomly on screen
Lunatic Fringe	A playable space shooter game within a module
Magic	Creates soothing patterns
Mandelbrot	Generates a mathematically created Mandelbrot set
Marbles	Marbles bounce around the screen
Meadow	A computer-generated meadow
Message Mayhem	A figure on the screen scrawls out a message
Messages	Displays a crawling marquee message on the screen with selectable font and text colors
Mike's So-called Life	Features a man named Mike, living in his apartment and doing nothing exciting
Mime Hunt	A playable module that features a mime and cross-hairs
Modern Art	Modern Art displayed on the 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 runs 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 the screen
Om Appliances	Various appliances do weird things on the screen
Origami	Computer-generated origami appears on the screen
Pattern	Animated patterns appear on the 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 are emitted from the darkness
Plasma	Plasma-like image generated
Punch Out	Round holes appear to be punched out of the desktop
Puzzle	The desktop becomes a sliding puzzle
Rain	Colorful raindrops fall on the desktop
Rainstorm	Like the Rain module, but with wind and lightning
Rainy Day **	Rain drops on your screen. User can select how fast they fall and how strong the wind is.
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 trigonometry
Satori	Color animated light show
Say What?	Displays humorous phrases
Scrubbing Bubbles **	Displays multiple Scrubbing Bubbles (Dow Brands) floating around the screen
Scrubbing Bubbles II **	Displays multiple Scrubbing Bubbles (Dow Brands) "scrubbing" the screen and going down the drain
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. User can select which gun to use.
Sinkhole **	The desktop appears to fall into sinkholes
Slide Show	A basic slide show of user-supplied images
Snake	A pixelated snake tries to find its way through a maze
Spheres	A number of spheres fill the screen
Spin Brush	Smears points on the screen like wet paper
Spiral Gyro	Vector module that twists lines
Spotlight	The desktop becomes black and parts are "illuminated" by a randomly moving light spot
Squigwig	Generates mathematical circles
Stained Glass	Produces quilt-like patterns
Steam Rollin' **	Displays a guy driving around squishing toys, snakes and babies. (A take-off on the Mowin' Man module.)
Stormy Night	Random lightning bolts, with thunderclap sounds
Strange Attractor	Computer-generated color image
String Theory	Moire patterns
Sunburst	Color pattern that appears to come from the Sun
Swan Lake	Swans swim around the desktop
This Ol' House **	Someone appears to be working on the desktop from the other side with power saws
Toxic Swamp	Like Aquatic Realm, but in a toxic polluted swamp with mutated fish and a mob boss
Tunnel	Makes the screen appear to be a tunnel
Use Your Own! **	Displays multiple images of the users choice moving around the screen
Vertigo	Colorful spirals drawn on the screen
Voyeur	One appears to be spying on an apartment complex with a big city skyline in the background
Warp	One appears to be traveling among stars at high speed
Window Blinds **	Desktop is separated into columns and then each one turns like a window blind
Wrap Around	Draws three-dimensional loops
Wrecking Ball **	A wrecking ball appears to demolish the desktop
You Bet Your Head	Playable quiz game featuring three colored "heads" that are smashed by a hammer if one supplies the wrong answer to a question
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.

• Modules with two asterisks (**) in the list above are from the Still in the Dark collection of 11 modules by Bob Loeffler.

References

Further reading

• Fenton, Erfert. Art of Darkness. Peachpit Press, 1992.

External links

• A Tribute to After Dark — return of the Flying Toasters
• After Dark X — the official version for Mac OS X by Infinisys
• Freeware OS X Flying Toaster clone
• Aggressively Stupid: The Story Behind After Dark
• On Mighty Toaster Wings: More After Dark History
• How After Dark Came to Windows
• Still in the Dark collection