After Dark
Encyclopedia : A : AF : AFT : After Dark
- For other uses, see After Dark (disambiguation).
After the success of the original, more editions followed including More After Dark, Before Dark and editions themed around licensed properties such as Star Trek, The Simpsons and Disney characters.
As well as the included animated screen savers, it allowed third-party modules to be included since, at the time of the original release, screensaver launching functionality was not included as a part of the Macintosh or Windows operating systems.
A curious feature in this program's history is that a book was published about After Dark called Art of Darkness by Erfert Fenton (Peachpit Press, 1992).
In recent years, several After Dark modules were featured in the background of interviews for the VH1 show I Love the 90s.
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.
Flying Toasters
Of the animated modules included, the most famous is the iconic Flying Toasters which featured 1940s-style chrome toasters sporting bird-like wings, flying across the screen to Richard Wagner's Ride of the Valkyries.
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 the filing. [link]
A 3D version of the toasters featuring swarms of toasters with plane wings, rather than bird wings, is available for XScreenSaver.
The flying toasters have been referenced in television shows such as the The Simpsons, Futurama, and Rugrats.
After Dark Games and onward
Sierra Interactive and Berkeley Systems released After Dark Games for the Macintosh and Windows platforms, which contained several games based around their previously released screensavers. These games included Mowin' Maniac (a Pac-Man clone based off 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 notabaly the Flying Toaster), Zapper (a trivia game), Hula Girl (another 3D adventure game based off the "Hula Twins" module from After Dark 4.0), two word scramble games - Bad Dog 911 (based off of the "Bad Dog" modules) and Fish Shtix (based off of the "Fish" modules, mainly "Fish World"), Foggy Boxes (a connect the boxes type game based off of the "Messages 4.0" module), MooShu tiles (a Mahjong-like game featuring many After Dark characters throughout the years), and Rodger Dodger. "Rodger Dodger" had been a module several years back, but also a playable game inside the module. There is not much of it changed from the module aside from some of the music and most of the level's set-ups. Many fans liked the games, but some felt it lacked games based off of 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). Many also feel it was the last good After Dark, before Berkeley was bought out by Flipside.com, Universal, etc.In fact, it was the last time Berkeley ever touched the series. Many ex-Berkeley workers went on to do other things. Joan Blades and Wes Boyd, creators of the Flying Toaster, went on to create MoveOn.org.[link] Fans made several attempts to revive the series, including fan-made versions of several of the screensavers. An official version of After Dark was finally released for Mac OS X by Infinisys Ltd (of Japan) in May 2003.
External links
- [After Dark X] - the official version for Mac OS X by Infinisys.
- Free [Flying Toasters] screensaver for both Mac OS X and Windows XP
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