Gone Home is a celebration of the little things. The objects, places, moments, and memories that make us who we are, that connect us. The things we bond over, and the things we escape into.

By now you probably know that Gone Home isn't the ghost story a lot of people thought they were going to get. There is no boogeyman waiting in the basement, no shades in the attic. Yet despite the lack of any supernatural presence, it still left me feeling haunted.

What reached out to me from Gone Home was "The Ghost of Years Past." A spectre that haunts through the medium of terrible TV shows and glossy magazine covers. A ghost that can only manifest itself thanks to how perfectly the Fullbright Company was able to capture the entirely disposable, yet utterly beloved, flotsam that characterized the era.

In 1995 I would have been only a few years behind Sam, moving out of childhood and into an adolescence steeped in the ephemera of 90's pop culture. For me, moving through the Greenbrier home was like walking through a museum, a collection of what I spent my childhood and teenaged years with. The kind of movies, TV shows, games, and music I spent so much time absorbed in. Too much time really.

I'll admit, being an isolated and somewhat unhappy kid growing up in the 90's is a cliche. But as they say, nothing feels cliche when it's happening to you. Like Sam, I found solace from an increasingly jaded and confusing world by escaping into pop culture. When I walked into the Greenbrier's living room and saw the stacks of home copied VHS tapes, the assortment of magazines scattered throughout the house, the messy collection of games in Sam's room, it was like walking back into my own childhood. Nostalgic, wistful, and a little sad.



There is a reverence in Gone Home that is quite striking. A sincere and vulnerable love for the scraps of pop culture that shaped a generation. Maybe I'm projecting, maybe I'm making assumptions, but I have to wonder if the guys and girls at the Fullbright Company had similar teenaged years to mine. How much time did they spend in their rooms, eyes trained on a flickering TV, headphones on, deflector shields up?

I think the Fullbright Company accomplished something special with Gone Home. But I also wonder how much of their hard work could go unappreciated by the younger gamers out there who might have been too young to remember that slice of time, or those who grew up a little earlier and can only remember the 90's through a beer-fogged college haze.

So why not take a trip down memory lane with someone who really knows and loves (and sometimes hates) the 90's? A pop culture tour of the Greenbrier homestead with someone who probably spent more time than what would be considered healthy learning these things firsthand?

Let's start our tour with the living room.


On the end table next to the couch rests one of the most impressive nights of television ever clipped from a T.V guide. Look at the shows and movies listed on there, it's a smorgasbord of the best and worst entertainment of the 90's. I'll just go over some of my favourites -

Family Matters - Family Matters was a sit-com about the Winslow family. It starred the cop from Die Hard who totally blasted that Swedish guy at the end of the first movie (well, at least in my head canon). Urkel the nerd was the breakout character of the series. You might remember such wonderfully nasal dialogue as "did I do that?" and "anybody have any cheeeeeese?", statements that became cultural touchstones at the height of the show's popularity. As the series progressed and Urkel's brilliant star surged ever upwards towards the heavens, the typical episode focused less on the relationships of the Winslow family and the coming of age drama of the teens, and more about what kind of radioactive chemical Urkel would spill on his crotch next. Truly the 90's were a time of serious artistic achievement.

Strange Luck – WOW, this is a deep cut. Strange Luck was a FOX show that I only remember seeing two episodes of before it was either cancelled or dumped into a graveyard time-slot - although Wikipedia assures me there are at least 17 episodes out there.

Funny, I thought two were plenty.

Strange Luck was a show about a guy who had, you guessed it, strange luck. He was constantly thrust into the middle of bizarre high-stakes situations, but always broke even due to his unnatural way with chance. He'd pull shenanigans like paying for his dinner with a scratch ticket bought off the waitress, or talking a suicide jumper off the ledge with a coin flip. Imagine trying to keep that going for 17 episodes? I wonder how many writers from the show ended up on a ledge themselves.

You know, as much as I'm making fun of it, you have to give the show some credit. 18 years later and I can still remember specific examples from the two episodes I saw (seriously, I didn't cheat that at all). So at least the show was MEMORABLY terrible instead of just piddling and mediocre. If you gotta go down, go down in a blaze of glory.

Red Dwarf – Now we're talking! A British sci-fi comedy playing off the tropes and cliches of the genre. There were multiple series of Red Dwarf and I might be getting things confused in my head, but I think at the time it would have been starring the guy who would later be the host of Robot Wars, a show were armchair mechanics would pit their homemade killer deathbots against each other. What a time to be alive.

Homicide: Life on the Street – I never watched the show, but I remember that a scene where they flashed the fat detective's ass became a common punchline on Night at the Improv for years to come. I might be confusing this with NYPD Blue now that I mention it...


America's Funniest Home Videos – Man Getting Hit by a Football to the Groin: The Series. Still going strong almost 20 years later. Stay classy America.

Labyrinth – I saw this bizarre movie over at a friend's house with his older sister. She said it was her favourite film. I still find that statement strangely ominous.

Labyrinth is a 1980's film about a young Jennifer Connelly trying to rescue her little brother from the Goblin King. It is also about David Bowie's massive crotch bulge and his (stunt double's) amazing fushigi skills. It is ALSO about Jim Henson giving children nightmares that would stay with them for the rest of their lives, thanks to some of the most disturbing puppets to ever make it into a "children's" movie.

Labyrinth is a classic from a time before CGI and watered-down kid's movies about cars that talk and grumpy trolls that learn to love. If you've never seen it, you owe yourself the treat.

- Bowie enjoyed showing off his balls... All of them.

Space: Above and Beyond – I was THRILLED to see Space: Above and Beyond listed on the TV guide clipping, if only to confirm that, yes, this was a real show, and no, it wasn't some fevered dream of my imagination.

Apparently Space: Above and Beyond is considered one of the 50 greatest sci-fi series of all time, but I've never met anyone else who watched this show outside of me, my brother, and my sweet old Grandma. It was part of our Sunday dinner tradition to sit down and watch the latest happenings of the Wildcards, a hotshot group of Space Marine/Fighter Pilots battling against a hostile alien menace known as The Chigs.

Maybe it's best left to rose-tinted glasses, but I remember Space: Above and Beyond being a surprisingly well made show for a budget sci-fi program. The show dipped into a lot of cool subplots outside of the main war storyline. There were episodes centred around a race of rebellious A.I's humans once enslaved, the violation of basic rights suffered by envitro "tanks" (cloned humans, bred as shocktroopers for the military), and the human cost of war. The show took on the ugly side of combat, like the trauma of torture, or the pain of not knowing what happened to a loved one. I remember the Christmas episode was particularly heart-tugging.

It all sounds like something me and my brother would have loved when we were 12, but looking back, I'm not sure what kept Grandma watching. Maybe she secretly yearned for a more exciting life among the stars, buzzing around in a space fighter, trying to scavenge fuel cells to keep a futuristic battletank going through hostile A.I held territory. Maybe she liked the social commentary, or the interpersonal relationships of the crew. Or maybe she just liked hanging out with her grandsons on lazy Sunday evenings.

I'm betting it was the star-fighter stuff.

The Family movie collection -


They say if you want to know a man's soul, look into his movie cabinet.

Well, OK, they don't really say that. But it sounds true to me.

In any case, I love this collection of movies. They bring back way too many memories.

First for the youngsters reading this, let me explain the phenomenon of VHS recording. Back in times long ago, before the inscrutable disks of the DVD, the convenience of the PVR, or the omnipotent reach and ubiquity of the internet, we had the humble VHS to steal shows and movies with magnetic with shows recorded off TV broadcasts, or maybe if you were daring enough and had the means, copied from the local Blockbuster's rental selection.

While recording onto a blank tape from the TV was a trivial affair, copying other VHS movies was an arcane procedure that involved hooking up two different VCRs at once. Given that Terry makes a living (if not a happy one) writing reviews for AV equipment, it makes sense that his family would keep a large treasure trove of movies. After all he would have the equipment and know-how for it.

I have to assume the Fullbright team had a lot of fun deciding what movies and TV shows to slip in the game. Just going through them gave me some massive nostalgia waves.


Left most cabinet - Starting with the cabinet on the left of the room, I love the shelf with the first season of X-Files and the JFK movie! I feel like this is where both father and daughter's interests meet. Sam, a fan of the bizarre and super-natural would naturally love the weirdness of the X-Files, but I like to think Terry would be captured by the show as well. His novel series attempts to blend sci-fi elements with government conspiracy and American history, much like the show. I think he'd probably see a little of himself in Fox Mulder, brooding away in his messy office, the sole keeper of The Truth.

And I like the idea of them watching it together. It's never explicitly said, but Sam and Terry's relationship seems strained, stilted. Terry making clumsy attempts to help his daughter with lame self-help books as she struggles to adjust to her new school. Echos of his own strained relationship with his father. On Sam's part, she never really brings him up at all in her myriad diaries, like he isn't much of a factor in her life. It would be nice if they could find some common ground through Mulder and Scully's whacky adventures with chupacabras and mysterious smoking men.

Like I said, I really love this room, but I guess I'm a little biased because this collection looks like something out of my own life. Personal favourites like Blade Runner, Robocop, and Beetlejuice all nestled comfortably next to each other. There is some nice thematic linking there, both Blade Runner and Robocop are movies that deal with what it is that makes somebody a person - when the artificial or mechanical rubs uncomfortably against the genuine and natural. Blade Runner taking the high concept art-house approach (while the movie will always be remembered for its jaw dropping cyberpunk visuals and vivid imagery, most of the key scenes in the film could be acted out on stage, usually just two people talking in a room), while Robocop disguises its subtext under a heavy layer of popcorn munching action and explosions. Alex Murphy's struggle to reclaim his humanity takes a backseat to ED-209 shooting the absolute ♥♥♥♥ out of a boardroom lackey.

- This is sure to end well.

Beetlejuice... Well it's movie where Batman torments a family of yuppies largely for ♥♥♥♥♥ and giggles. I guess it doesn't fit into the theme as well as I might have thought.

Top shelf - The Andromeda Strain was a movie based on a Michael Crichton novel, the author of Jurassic Park. If that gets your hopes up, squash them right now.

Maybe I'm just salty, maybe I was too young when I saw it, but I spent one of the most incredibly boring Saturday afternoons of my young life watching guys in puffy white outfits crouch over microscopes and talk talk talk for hours on end and I'll never forgive them for it (even if they saved the world from a supervirus).

Long before the Wayan's brothers entirely sucked the life out of the movie-spoof genre, there was Airplane!, a movie I thought of as a kind of live-action cartoon when I was a kid.

One-part a loving homage, one-part a brutal take down of the disaster-flick genre, Airplane! was a film I saw probably way too early in life and would forever leave me susceptible to absurdist humour. I think you can draw a straight line between the weird meta-contextual humour of the movie (Kareem Abdul Jabbar being recognized as himself, the NBA superstar, while playing as the co-pilot and getting agitated about it) and my later affection for show's like Animaniacs which leaned heavily on the same kind of 4th wall humour.

Moonraker is a James Bond film I never actually saw. I can't say I honestly know much about aside from three things. 1) James Bond in space. 2) The cover art makes me giggle. 3) There must have a lasergun of some kind in it - which I know only because it was a multiplayer weapon in Goldeneye for the N64. And who said videogames were a waste of time?



Right most cabinet - The next cabinet over seems to be the family's classic sci-fi film collection. The Time Machine, Fantastic Voyage, and Clash of the Titans, all notable in some way or another. The Time Machine featured one of the first usages (that I know of anyway) or time-lapse photography to simulate the hyper acceleration of years. Fantastic Voyage is where you get the entire "shrunk down into a microbe and travelling through a body" trope you've probably seen lampooned in everything from The Magic School Bus, to The Simpsons, to Sealab 2021. And Clash of the Titans featured some of the best stop-motion monster animation ever created, a special effect from an era before CGI and Andy Serkis effortlessly made mythical creatures dance on screen.

I could see this collection belonging to either Sam or Terry. Sam definitely seems to enjoy whacky sci-fi and would probably enjoy the campy cheapness of these early films, but given Terry's own bad sci-fi creations, I'd have to think he probably would love these films earnestly. Given the content of his books, maybe The Time Machine was an inspiration in his life, rather than a silly old movie to make fun of during sleep-overs.

Also on the shelf are two BELOVED movies from my childhood, Ghostbusters and Top Gun.


I saw Ghostbusters when I was six years old, around the time the sequel was released. It was, and remains, one of my favourite movies. A supernatural comedy that defined, and to some extent typecast, the actors involved for the rest of my life. I can't look at Harold Ramis without thinking of Egon Spengler, or see Rick Moranis as anyone other than Louis, or separate Bill Murray from his Dr. Venkman personality (although I might be forgiven on that front).

I straight up wanted to be Ray Stantz when I was a kid. A constant source of shame and embarrassment for my mother when I would insist on wearing Halloween jumpsuit and proton-pack to the grocery store. I'm not sure if Dan Akroyd ever thought his doofy yet loveable character would be a childhood hero, but I'll always have a soft spot for him.

Top Gun is Top Gun. You have to know it. Hell, it was a movie so popular, Canada's Wonderland still runs a roller-coaster based on it. A movie I earnestly enjoyed as a kid (fighter-jets are so cool!) and would enjoy ironically later in life (homoerotic subtext makes for amusing YouTube videos).

(As an aside, the term "punch-out Goose!" from the flat-spin scene would be used for years between me and my brother as a oh so subtle code for wanting to quickly exit an awkward conversation or situation.)

Oh, and Labyrinth makes another appearance on this shelf. And just after I got the thought of David Bowie's crotch out of my head...

TV stand - Under the TV is a tape with both The Dark Crystal and Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey. I can only imagine putting both of these trippy unsettling classics on one tape was an attempt to tear a hole into the netherrealm, a place where only disquiet and lingering fear dwells.

- Sweet dreams kids!

The Dark Crystal can be considered a kind of proto-Labyrinth, it was made by the same team after all. It is a very dark "kid's" movie starring a bevy of super creepy puppets and some amazing practical special effects. Every kid growing up in the 80's or 90's that saw it probably has a vivid memory of it; either as a beloved classic, or as that one creepy movie that made them cry into their mother's sleeve for an hour.

2001 is a sci-fi masterpiece, featuring a strangely endearing, yet ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ homicidal A.I long before GLaDOS ever entered the mix. It's famous for the slow building dread that permeates every moment of the film, its stridently inscrutable ending, and its multi-interpretive meaning that is still being discussed today. Seriously great stuff – but watching these flicks back to back on the same tape is just asking for a terrible week of sleep.

Welcome to the bar, or as I like to call it, Daddy's Sadtime Room.

I love the tone the Fullbright team struck in this room. The combination of old jazz, unsold novels, and upturned shot glasses really paints a picture of who is using this room and for what. While the entire game has a voyeuristic quality, this was one of the few rooms that made me uncomfortable, like I was actually invading someone's private space they wouldn't want me treading on.

As much as I enjoy the ambiance, there isn't too much pop culture to be mined out of here.

One little detail I loved was hidden away in the letter from Danny's mother found in the closet. Her casual reference to a Street Fighter cartridge as a "game tape" perfectly captures the stereotypical lack of awareness and understanding parents of the time had about video games. Not every parent was so out of touch, but it's easy to forget that video games were considered nothing but a kid's hobby just a few short years ago. They were brain-rotting toys for children, worse than TV. Reading the letter I get the feeling Danny's mom wishes her now teenaged son would hurry up and outgrow them.

Flash forward a few years later and we have poignant sad games about people and relationships, made by the same people who grew up playing those silly little "game tapes." What a beautiful journey.


Terry seems to enjoy old jazz records with his self-loathing and liquor. I have to admit that my personal jazz knowledge is limited. I have a good collection of Chet Baker albums (thanks to Buck 65 constantly mentioning/sampling him) but other than that, I'm pretty much an uneducated peasant in the jazz world.

Wikipedia to the rescue.


On the record player is Adrian and his Taproom Gang, headed up by Adrian Rollini. This was a jazz act way way back in the 1930's. A fairly old fashion pick even accounting for Terry's age. Everything about the song seems kinda maverick - there is an open marijuana reference slipped into the lyrics and apparently it's the only album the female singer, Joanne Jeanne Burns, ever appears on (or at least under that name in any case).

I think the choice to feature this particular record and song can be chalked up to one of two things -

1 - It could be an intentionally obscure choice to demonstrate Terry's rarefied music tastes and jazz knowledge. Maybe it implies a more worldly past where a young Terry got deep into jazz culture; an idiosyncratic and outsider genre just like the riot gurrl punk his daughter would one day join. He certainly has a huge collection of records, maybe music is a passion of his.

Or 2 - it could just be a personal favourite of somebody on the dev team. Who can say?


The poster on the wall is for the Dave Brubeck Quartet. Dave Brubeck was a prolific jazz artist, producing work from the 1940s just up to his death last year in 2012. He sounds like a pretty cool guy. He was almost expelled from his music college when it was revealed that he couldn't actually read sheet music (his skill and natural talent at playing by ear hiding the fact up until his graduating year), he fought in World War 2, and was once technically dead after a surfing accident in the 50's (clearly he got better), he produced the first jazz album to sell more than a million copies, appeared on the cover of TIME, and has an asteroid belt named after him.

Wow.

Oh yeah, there is also a "Dr. Jitters" can of pop to be found at the bar, a clear reference to Dr. Pepper. I can only imagine how much Sam and Lonnie would have hated the disastrous Dr. Pepper Ten "Men Only" ad campaign that aired recently.

Not much here except for a note from Lonnie with a cartoon Hadoken - Ryu's signature fireball - about to melt a dude's face. AS IT SHOULD BE.

Surprisingly, there are a lot of pop culture nuggets hidden away in the basement! Let's take a look.

Joyce, a Complete Understanding - If only.


- A frosty relationship at best.

This fictional book is important for establishing Terry's dad in two different ways. 1) It shows that Terry's father is an esteemed academic writer, a far cry from his plup-slinging, VCR-reviewing disappointment of a son. 2) It shows he is a complete pompous ass.

James Joyce is one of the most important and difficult writers of the 20th century. There are schools with entire classes dedicated to studying and dissecting his giant bloody masterpiece novels. The bizarre jumping narratives, the pages of stream-of-conscious lucid madness, the overly particular and specific use of language, setting, and names. Crazy stuff.

But don't worry, apparently the good Dr. Greenbriar has a "complete understanding" ready to go. Forgive me if I think he might be overselling his analysis.

True story, one summer between semesters I thought I would tackle "the big dog" and read through Ulysses on my own. I gave up about 100 pages in after I realized I had no idea what was going on. It's a VERY dense book.


Women Outlaws comic - ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥, this is a real thing! I can't describe my overwhelming joy when a Google image search of Women Outlaws returned a bevy of amazing comic covers all in the same vein as the one Sam and Lonnie use as clip art for their zine. As far as I can tell, the content of the comics was exactly as described on the cover.

Kicking Against the Patriarchy – Sam and Lonnie's own homemade Zine. I'd like to think the title is a sly reference to the Nick Cave album Kicking Against the Pricks. Of course, Ol' Nick got the title from a biblical passage, it is a known if somewhat obscure saying (Johnny Cash references the same line in the song When the Man Comes Around!) Somehow though, I'm gonna bet Sam and Lonnie would draw more inspiration from a post-punk alt-rock Icon like Nick Cave than they would the Book of Acts.


Heaven's to Betsy/Deathmobile Ad – A handmade poster to advertise the girl's punkshow. Is it just me, or does this remind anyone else of Kate Beaton's "Strong Female Characters" from Hark! A Vagrant!? Kind of a similar art style! By the by, if you aren't familiar with Beaton and her wonderful online comic, you're doing yourself a disservice – it's the funniest history lesson you'll ever snicker at.

Zine culture and Riot Grrrl music – Sadly, I was not nearly cool or quite old enough to join in on the whole Zine thing when it was still relevant (you know, before the internet). And of course I wouldn't be nearly be savvy enough to know about the Riot Grrrl movement in punk music until I got to University.

Still, I feel I should mention them since they are so important for establishing the time and setting for Sam and Lonnie's relationship.

Zines were small self-published magazines, produced with varying levels of professionalism – from series assembled at small printing presses, to stapled together Xerox pages. As one might expect, they almost always featured niche content that was going under-reported or under-served in the mainstream. With topics ranging from art, to politics, to niche-heavy-metal, and everything else between. Zines represented a kind of blowback against the dominant culture and were a way for like-minded individuals to share ideas and interests - even if they were limited to mail order black and white magazines or crumpled pages swapped around at punk shows.

Zines were instrumental in the Riot Grrrl movement, feminist punk that dealt with heavy female-centric topics such as domestic abuse, rape, and frustration against the patriarchy. All the posters and fliers in the basement feature Riot Grrrl groups and shows. I won't claim to be super familiar with a ton of Riot Grrrl stuff, outside of Bikini Kill I don't know much. I do know that the Riot Grrrl movement was super cool. A great outlet for a generation of young and frustrated girls and a new expression of feminism. It was, of course, utterly despised by the mainstream.

As a sort of underground and seemingly scary thing, Zines and punk rock have always been easy targets for mainstream media to make bogymen out of. Riot Grrrl stuff would of course get it worse than most, receiving disproportionate attention and criticism since it happened to be made by girls. Typical tabloid fear-mongering and misrepresentation, topped off with "Is your teenage daughter involved?" trawling painted the movement as a dangerous sub-culture of criminals than a reaction to a threatening and oppressive culture. What an utter crock of ♥♥♥♥.

There is a lot more to be said about Riot Grrrl and everything involved, but sadly, I'm just not to guy to do it. So with that, lets leave the basement and move onto stuff I DO know about.

Sam's room was basically the inspiration for this guide. The sheer density of references and homages here practically demands analysis.


Goodfellows School Pennant – This mash-up of the Fighting Irish logo and an owl may be a sly sideways reference to the Goodfeathers, a trio of gangster pigeons featured on the Warner Brother's cartoon Animainiacs.

The Goodfeathers themselves were a pastiche of characters from Casino, Goodfellas, and, of course, The Godfather. Bobby, Pesto, and Squirt were all based on a cartoon imagining of Robert De Nero, Joe Pesci, and Ray Liota.

Yo dawg, I heard you like parody, so I put some parody in your parody.


Groove Magazine – Groove magazine was indeed a real publication of the time that kids, who were hipper and more aware of music trends than I was, would read. I wouldn't discover bands detailed on the cover like Veruca Salt and Dinosaur Jr. until later in life. But as a surly suburbanite pre-pubescent with an already growing chip on my shoulder, I did enjoy Pearl Jam, headed up by the perpetually tortured Eddie Vedder, and nutured a growing (and tragically stereotypical) interest in hip-hop.

Of course, even a lame kid like me knew Curt Cobain. Almost two decades later and his death in '94 still seems strangely relevant. He was an icon of the time, and his sudden violent departure is just one of those "moments" that people don't forget, a defining shared event of the generation. I'm sure someone will be all mad at me for comparing it to the JFK assassination or the moon landing, so I won't. But I would. And I just did.

Gentleman magazine – As far as I know, Gentleman Magzine isn't based on any particular publication, but kind of a catch-all for Men's magazines like Playboy, Maxim, and Hustler. While not explicitly stated, the lack of warning stickers on the cover means the series is probably not a hardcore porno mag, just titillating. Something like Maxim. But we'll never know for sure since we can't flip through it. Maybe in the sequel, Gone Home 2: Snoop Harder.

The issue Sam keeps squirrelled away in her locker features Gillian Anderson and a bunch of stuff about UFOs, so not only can Sam use it to explore her sexual identity, but she can also nerd out over X-Files stuff - a double treat! Interestingly, Gillian would be voted the sexist woman in the world just a year later in the real lad-mag publication, FHM.


"I Want to Believe" Poster – the iconic poster of a blurry UFO displayed in Fox Mulder's dishevelled FBI office. It at once told you everything you needed to know about his character, while providing excellent merchandise opportunities for the X-Files brand for years to come.

The slogan was sold on everything from reproductions of the poster to coffee mugs and T-shirts. The catchphrase and image was so popular that it was used as the subtitle to the middling 2008 X-Files movie. Who would have thought releasing a movie nearly 8 years after a franchise ended would be a bad idea? (That's if you even count that lame-ass last season where Mulder only showed up twice. What a crock of ♥♥♥♥, they might as well have made a movie about the Lone Gunmen at that point. Come to think of it, Terry probably would have loved that show, John Russel would have fit right in.)



SNES Games - There are a few SNES games to be found rummaging through Sam's AV stand. While none of them are real, they certainly evoke the spirit of the 90's.

First up is an anime inspired space shooter called Super Spitfire. Not only does it reference the classic SNES obsession with slapping the word "Super" in front of every title, but the font and art style are pure-SNES nostalgia. It's like they ripped it straight out of an issue of Nintendo Power.

Journey of the Crystal seems like a Square-esq JRPG. Games like Final Fantasy III, Chrono Trigger, and (one of my personal favourites) The Secret of Mana would define the SNES for a lot of people. Arguably, it was the peak of Square's craft.

Journey of the Crystal strikes me as a double whammy of a reference, not only alluding to the popular genre of the time, but also tipping a hat to the Dark Crystal a second time. Looking at the cover, it's not hard to tell why Sam would like this game – check out the badass pink-haired lady-knight! What a lovely piece of detail to slide in there.

Adventurous the Cat Returns could be a stand-in for any number of "animal mascot with a 'tude" series from the era. Sonic, Areo The Acrobat, Zero: The Kamikaze Squirrel, Bubsy the Cat, the list goes on. The trope was so well-worn back in the 16-bit days that it was practically a sub-genre onto itself. They were almost always a side-scrolling 2D platformer, and almost invariably a disappointment - other than Sonic (a series which would ironically become synonymous with disappointment in future console generations).

For added trivia, in the credits for Gone Home, the the developers give a little shout-out their cats in the "special thanks" section, and guess who is on the list? Adventurous! You rascally devil you!


Street Fighter Moves list – Underneath Sam's AV cabinet is a little cheat-sheet listing the special moves for the "Strongest Woman in the World", Chun Li.

The phenomenon that Street Fighter 2 was for mid-90's arcades cannot be understated. Often credited for (temporarily) saving the arcade scene, Street Fighter 2 would establish and codify an entire genre. The SNES port of the game wasn't a perfect recreation of the arcade experience, but it was pretty damn close! A technological feat for the far less powerful system, and where a great many of us who lived in small towns that lacked a real arcade culture fell in love with fireballs and lightning kicks.

Of trivial note, the Genesis version was massively limited by the three button layout of the controller. You had to switch between kicks and punches with the start button, which was not only cumbersome, but came at the cost of being able to pause the game. Sega would later release a six-button controller, largely to make SF2 playable. It was a game that was so influential and popular that companies made new hardware to support it. Have we ever seen anything like that since?

Millas poster – A copy of John Millas' "Ophelia" hangs on Sam's wall. This is a famous painting depicting the drowning death of the "madwoman" Ophelia from Shakespeare's Hamlet. Hidden in the foliage is a well known memento mori, a hidden skull representing the inevitability of death.

So it's a painting of a misunderstood rebel girl with some cool skull-death imagery. Art is ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ punk. I can get why Sam likes this one.

(Well, I guess I should be honest. I had to look all that up because I'm an uncultured swine. Want me to speculate on SNES games of the era? I'm on it! Rap about Robocop and Blade Runner? You betcha! Identify an incredibly famous piece of art any grade 9 student should recognize? Welp, off to Wikipedia I go.

Sometimes I wonder if I've wasted my life on trivial things. Other times I write a guide about the minutia of pop culture references in a video game, and I KNOW I've wasted my life on trivial things.)


Mini basketball hoop – True to any 90's sitcom about teenagers, Sam has the requisite mini-hoop attached to the back of her door. These things were crazy popular when I was a kid. They were also easy shorthand in the language of TGIF sitcoms to effortlessly establish a character as cool, carefree, and maybe a little slovenly. Cheap cardboard and plastic, they were never as much fun as they seemed on TV.

Do they still sell these things? I never see them anymore. Do people even play basketball these days? When did we all grow old and lose sight of our hoop-dreams?


Magic Eye pictures – The younger players among us might not recognize the whacky abstract images hanging on Sam's cabinet. So called "Magic Eye" pictures were all the rage for a brief time during the 90's. Staring deep into those abstract images and playing with the focus of your eyes (usually making you look like a cross eyed dweeb in the process) would cause a sort of three dimensional image to pop out of the mess.

To be honest, half the time I could never make out what the damn things were supposed to be; I'd just dig on the weird illusion of depth and layers. They used to sell coffee table books that were just collections of these, like that would be a fun game to play when having friends over. "Sure, I'll just sit here while you peruse my 70-odd Magic Eye pictures."

I'm pretty sure the market fell out on these years ago. I certainly can't remember the last time I saw any in the wild.

Got Your Number board game – During the 90's there was this whole craze of vapid gimmicky board games, most of them seemingly aimed at girls. Games like Mall Madness, Girl Talk, and Party Mania taught the young women of my generation all about the importance of shopping, crushing on boys, and avoiding pimples. Yeah, it was as messed up as it sounds. At least games aimed at boys taught us practical things, like shooting people that look different than you, and the joy of joining the military... oh wait.


Got Your Number might be a expy of Dream Phone, a board game that came with a fake plastic telephone. You were supposed to listen to the phone as it relayed clues in a creepy, vaguely monotone, electronic voice about which hunky guy from the hunk-deck was your secret crush. It was a lot like Guess Who, but about 1000x creepier.

I doubt Sam and Lonnie would get much use out of it, except maybe as a object of ridicule.

Terry and Jan's room doesn't provide quite as much nostalgia as Sam's, but what can you expect, they're from an earlier generation looking in at the 90's. Still, the AV cabinet is well stocked with good movies and there are a few other cool tidbits around.


A.V Cabinet - All The Presidents Men seems like a sure-fire favourite for the conspiracy obsessed Terry. Starring Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman, ATPM is a theatrical adaptation of the true story of Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward investigating and breaking the famous Watergate scandal. It's a seriously "stranger than fiction" story involving a corrupt administration, a cover-up conspiracy, secret agent style dead-drops, and a mysterious informant known only as "Deep Throat". Whacky stuff, sounds like yet another job for John Russel.

I saw All the Presidents Men when I was very young. It probably helped sow the seeds of cynicism and distrust towards the government and republicans I've harboured to this very day. Also, much to the chagrin of my mother, it's also where I learned the term "rat♥♥♥♥"!

If you're looking for more political intrigue and spy-shenanigans with Robert Redford, I can't recommend Three Days in the Condor enough. It's a little dated, but still one of my favourite films dealing with cold-war intrigue.


Terry and Jan keep another Redford classic on hand with a copy of Butch Casidy and the Sundance Kid, the celebrated western. If you haven't seen it, I won't spoil the feelgood sunshine and rainbows ending for you!

Also in the cabinet, The Silence of the Lambs is probably my favourite horror flick of all time. Truth be told, most of my affection for the film rests on Anthony Hopkins' brilliant (and unsettling) portrayal of psychiatrist turned serial killer, Hannibal Lecter. He's just so smart, and menacing, and CREEPY! I break out this film around Halloween every year and it never fails to make me squirm.

- One of my favourite performances, Lecter is manages to be unnerving even after repeated viewings.

Silence of the Lambs is another one of those classics that you have to check out, perhaps even more urgently than some of the others I've mentioned in this guide, if only so you can enjoy the surprisingly excellent Hannibal TV series that just recently completed its first season. I was super skeptical of a TV "prequel/re-imagining" of Lecter's story, but I had to eat my words (ha) when I eneded up really enjoying it.


"I didn't kill my wife!" "I don't care." - There, now you know the most important/parodied line from The Fugitive. I don't mean to be reductive, The Fugitive is a great movie, but if we are going to talk about ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ from the 90's, you need to know what every comedian, cartoon, and late-night host took away from the movie.

Actually, that's not accurate. There were also a lot of cracks about "It wasn't me! It was the one-armed man!", which to be fair does sound kind of narmy when taken out of context.

One of the few video cassettes marked with Janice's handwriting is a taping of the May 24th episode of Inside Edition. I tried looking up what was on that episode but couldn't find it. The most interesting news item I found from that day was the conviction of Heidi Fleiss, the so-called "Hollywood Madam." She was sentenced to three years in prison for running a super high-profile call girl ring for the rich and famous.

Janice is into some hot stuff! Of course, she also recorded the considerably less salacious Jeopardy and Uncle Harvey on the same tape, so maybe I've got the wrong idea.


Earth, Wind, and Fire poster – The legendary funk/jazz/folk group EWF seem to be a favourite at the Greenbrier homestead. And hey, a benefit concert with them and Willie Nelson? Sounds like a good time to me! But this isn't the only time EWF comes up in this game.

Eagle-eyed players may also spot a letter and ticket stub downstairs near the kitchen, inviting Janice to a concert with the hunky Ranger Rick. Uh oh. I think he's making his move...


Leaves of Grass By Walt Whitman – A classic piece of American Poetry, Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass was considered obscene at the time of its original publication due to the sexual subject matter of some of the poems. But, like so many other masterpieces, history eventually vindicated Whitman's work, elevating it to an icon of American literature. Even if you aren't immediately familiar with his poems, you've probably seen references to them, such as Family Guy parodying the "O' Captain, My Captain" scene from Dead Poets Society. (Does it concern anyone else how much of my generation's knowledge stems from complicated 6 Degrees of Separation style references upon references?)

Take a little peak at the bookmark though – this sensuous read is another gift to Jan from Ranger Rick. Oh no Terry, you're gonna lose that girl.

Escape from Ghost Mansion – Found in the closet is yet another board game, this time with a spoooooky theme! I'd like to think this game is somewhere between a spooky version of Clue and the "this could only happen in the 90's" classic Nightmare, a board game that was played with the aid of a poorly acted VHS. I remember them haunting gag shops like the It Store (think of it as a proto-Spencer's Gifts) for years.

- SPOOOOOoooOOOooOOOKY!

None of the other rooms in the house have quite the concentration of pop culture treats as the ones I mentioned, but that doesn't mean we're quite done yet! There are still some nice references scattered around.


Over The Alps board game – In the very first room tucked away in the closet is an Over the Alps board game. Never played it myself, but according to a quick Google search it was published in 1930. Basically a race between players to make it from one end of the board to the other, but with a great gimmick. To play the game, the board had to be stood up in the box vertically to form a mountain! Neat!

Author Magazine – Found in the ground floor bathroom, Author Magazine is yet another real publication. Another nice touch, and more grist for Terry's tortured-writer-mill.


Honey Snaps cereal – Breakfast cereal of choice for pro-shredmasters, this kitschy mix of essential whole grains and high fructose corn syrup will give you all the energy you need for a day of gleaming the cube and getting MAXED AIR...

Alright, so Honey Snaps aren't a real cereal, but they very well could have been. The team did a great job of capturing the colours, font, and style of all the fly-by breakfast treats that came and went during the 90's.

Also, check out the food pyramid on the back of the box with the recommend intake of 6-11 bread products a day. Oh to live in a time before Atkins and the carbohydrate-devil.

Unknown Dimension Publishing – Not a direct reference, but Unknown Dimension Publishing could be a stand-in for any number of small niche presses that popped up during the 90's to provide for underserved audiences – like fans of bad sci-fi. Unknown Dimension tossed Terry a life preserver by re-publishing his John Russel series, breathing new inspiration into his life and possibly getting him out of the self-destructive funk that was poisoning his family life.

As a tiny detail, I love that Terry's letter of gratitude to UDP with his pitch for a finale to the John Russel series has a small typo in it. Poor Terry, that's exactly the kind of mistake that would gnaw at a frustrated writer.


Levine's Own – Probably the cheekiest reference in the game, this salad dressing found in the kitchen pantry is a big ol' shout-out to Bioshock Infinite and creative director, Ken Levine. Sporting an almost identical font to the Infinite logo and a farmer in a pose reminiscent of the much maligned shotgun-toting Booker cover, this is the only directly goofy reference I found in the game. Makes sense when you realize that Fullbright Company founder, Steve Gaynor, used to work for Irrational Games on Bioshock 2 and was the lead writer for its lauded expansion, Minerva's Den! Good stuff.

I really do hope this guide helps some people catch a few references they might have missed. I hope it helps some players appreciate the level of detail and research the Fullbright Team went to in order to recreate the world of 1995.

But If I'm going to be honest, I really just wanted a chance to talk about some of my favourite things. To share the joy, embarrassment, and occasional frustration that came with growing up in the pop culture milieu of the 90's. And I have a sneaking suspicion that anybody who would bother to read this entire thing probably already knew most, if not everything, I mentioned.

In that case, I at least hope this guide was entertaining, and I want to say thanks. Thanks for sharing these memories with me. Thanks for letting me exorcize these ghosts and enjoying them as much as I do.

Thanks for coming on this tour, don't forget to visit the giftshop on your way out, back into the heady future of the new millennium.