Dinosaur Screen Saver

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Good day to all,

I have a question about an old screen-saver that I’ve searched for and could not find anywhere.

I do not recall the name of the screen-saver nor the name of the company that made it, but I’m wonder if I describe it whether anyone knows what it is or can identify it?

It came out in the mid-90’s, so it is quite old.

The screen-saver showed a bunch of cartoon dinosaurs playing games like ping-pong or driving taxi cabs. I did exhaustive web searches for keywords but could not find anything like it, although there are plenty of screen-savers featuring various dinosaur’s, I could not find this one.

Anyone have any ideas on who made it or where I could find it?

Dan

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Have you tried searching Wayback Machine
note of caution: check links with VirusTotal prior to each link click.

Windows - commercial by definition and now function...

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I saw this on Reddit from 3 months ago. If it isn’t YOU :), here’s some more information, at least:

[TOMT][Screensaver][Late 90s/Early 2000s] Voiced screensaver involving dinosaurs in a city

I remember there was this screensaver that started (rather abruptly) with a raptor saying something sounding like “My name is Nex K’nex” followed by a dramatic music sting. This was then followed by music and animated city shots broken up by several skits. Among them were two dinos playing a game of ping pong that goes nowhere, ending with one of them asking “How does this even work?” It then ended with another dino playing the piano in a suit. Anyone know where this is?

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Thank you for your comment on what you found in Reddit.

That is very interesting and I’ll try to search for that and see what I can find.

The prior comment that suggested looking in the ‘wayback’ site did not turn up anything for me…it is just too huge a site and hard (at least for me) to search it; keywords or search criteria really did not turn up anything there. So, I’ll try Reddit and see what I can find…thanks for quoting though, maybe some keywords from your quote can turn up something.

Happy Thanksgiving.

Dan

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I used that screen saver for quite a few years.

Imaginaria – “The Associates” (Socha Computing / Claris, 1993)

there is also several additional scenes that were produced by a German firm that I had at one time, but have lost in the past.

the problem is that this screen saver is designed for WIN 95 or earlier editions and does not run on WIN10.

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forgot to add the YOUTUBE video url that displays the initial version of this software:
https://youtu.be/T94-QCLE32s

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So, Dan…was that it?
That HAS to be it!
“Anonymous” for the win ;).

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This is amazing!!! I have been searching for this screensaver for nearly a decade and I had such difficulty describing it as my memory kept fading. I struggled to verbalize let alone form search engine queries to come up with any meaningful results. I even asked everybody that I know was into computers in the early 90’s and they all looked at me like I was crazy for being so obsessed with trying to find it and not just moving on. So I did and about once a year something makes me remember it and I resume my quest.

The one thing that stood out most was that it was my first vivid memory of enjoying classical music as a kid. I was about 12 when this came out. Tonight I was hanging out with my brother and we were reminiscing about computer gaming in that era and we started talking about this screensaver and we started googling it together. We gave up after a while as I made the comment, “well here is proof that you can’t find everything on the internet.” About an hour later, I made the simple search for “moonlight sonata screensaver” and a tweet came up in the search results with “Imaginaria” posted only a month ago. Bingo! I had my first result after all of this time! I had to modify my previous statement, “given enough time you can find everything on the internet.”

https://twitter.com/dot_scr/status/1347445453906968576?s=20

-klappy

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Anonymous gets the win!

Thank you very much, as I’ve not checked back here in a very long time only just seeing this now. I’ve literally searched on and off for years; like an itch I could not scratch. I really appreciate you taking the time to respond.

Dan

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I was one of the main developers on Imaginaria. The creative driving force on it was an artist named John Mason. He created the scenes and characters which also included a full motion animated fish tank. We used cell animation cut out from video we took of certain subjects. We were very limited in what computers could do at the time, 256 colors, fit the program on floppies etc. It was a joy to produce.

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I’m glad that I am not the only one who remembers and enjoys this screensaver.  My question is whethr it has ever been converted to run in 32bit or 64bit ?  I would really love to have it on my WIN10 machines!

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