Dinosaur Sighting: Take a look back at After Dark 3.0

The Energy Star feature in After Dark 3,0 was called EcoLogic and you configured it in Setup on the EcoLogic tab. As you can see, if you typed in the monitor’s energy usage, After Dark 3.0 would calculate the energy cost as well as the estimated annual savings

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In the Artist screen saver, you selected an image, such as the Windows Splash screen, selected a medium, such as Pastel, and watched as the image was drawn on the screen.

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In Bad Dog!, a little dog roamed around the screen all the while digging holes, scratching the wall, and shedding. It even brought a trash can onto the desktop in order to relieve itself.

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In Bugs, a swarm of insects crawled all over your desktop while avoiding the Baits Motel.

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In Clocks 3.0, you could select from a number of clocks, which floated across your screen. This composite image shows six of the different clocks.

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Daredevil Dan was motorcycle stunt man who raced his bike all over the screen while making daring jumps over buses and through flames. Occasionally he fell off his bike and was then rescued by an ambulance. This composite image shows several of Daredevil Dan’s exploits.

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In DOS Shell, you chose a common DOS color scheme, such as Green or Amber, and the screen saver displayed a never ending list of simulated DOS commands in the fictitious AD-DOS.

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In Draw Morph you could choose one of several stop motion-like animations, such as Pipecleaner Man, who walked and performed somersaults on the screen. If you were feeling artistic, you could use the Edit button to create your own series of still images that would then be animated.

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You used the very rudimentary Morph-O-Matic editor to create your own images for the Draw Morph screen saver.

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In Fish Pro, your screen became an aquarium with fish and other sea creatures swimming back and forth across the seabed.

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Of course, After Dark 3.0 included the infamous flying toasters. In this version, called Flying Toasters Pro, you’d see a squadron of toasters flying across the screen, some performing trick maneuvers, while accompanied by toasted bread, which flew along side or popped in and out of various toasters.

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In Frost and Fire, interesting patterns emerged as the center of the image spun in circles while various colors splattered across it.

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In Guts, random icons or other small images flew across the screen, leaving trails as they were pulled this way and that by a fluctuating gravitational field. Here you can see the After Dark, Program Manager and Notepad icons flying all over the screen.

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In Logo, images floated across the screen. By default, the After Dark logo was used, but you could use any image you wanted.

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In Messages, a text message floated across the screen. You could choose from several whacky messages or type your own.

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In Nirvana, shifting patterns appeared on the screen and dazzled you with their intricacy.

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In Nonsense, randomly generated sentences appeared on the screen. While they didn’t always make sense, they were usually grammatically correct.

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Photon created displayed bright patterns on the screen that resembled a laser light show.

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In Puzzle, the desktop became a sliding puzzle and the pieces began shuffling all over the screen.

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In Rat Race, three rats waddled onto a race track on your screen and lined up at their starting gates. The gun fired and off they went. The training setting determined their skill level, which ranged from Drop Out to Professional.

I remember back in the day, a couple of friends and I would gather around my high powered computer (a Dell Dimension 486 running at a whopping 66 MHz, with 16MB of RAM and 450MB hard disk, topped off with a 15-inch SVGA monitor) and bet quarters on each race. Ha, those were the days!

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In Ray, colorful, transparent, rotating shapes would slowly move across your desktop.

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In Rebound hundreds of metal and/or plastic balls would fly across the screen.

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In Rose, interesting patterns appeared on the screen and slowly grew larger while rotating ever so slightly.

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In Satori, colorful tie-dye-like patterns slowly emerged and swirled on the desktop.

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In Slide Show, you’d see a simple slide show of images of your choice. Here, you see the infamous flying toaster.

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In Spheres, a host of colorful spheres are rendered on the screen creating the illusion of dimensionality.

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In Spotlight, the screen went black and spotlights appeared and illuminated parts of the desktop.

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In Warp!, you saw a Star Trek effect, where colorful stars suddenly swirl past as the warp drive engages.

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You Bet Your Head was a trivia game in which the whacky animated contestants competed for equally whacky prizes. If they answered wrong, the MC, a hammer (get it?), would pound them flat. If you wanted to take over, you pressed Caps Lock and then used the number keys to select your answer.

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Zooommm! created colorful tube like images that appeared to move towards you. This screen saver was mesmerizing and was a favorite at the end of a long workday for many people in my office.

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If you are interested in old screen savers, then you might want to check out the Dinosaur Sightings: Star Trek - The Screen Saver gallery.