Thanks for watching! I enjoyed making this one so much that I'm going to be running some passive streams of Johnny Castaway this week: www.twitch.tv/nostalgianerd
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I remember using this when it first came out. I used to distribute Shareware disks for a company and this happened to be on a disk . I was intrigued so I copied it to a floppy, took it home and ran it on my good old Monochrome PC 1640. Even in monochrome it was great!
hey brother have you ever considered making colab video with lnternet Historian? l know your channels are not alike lm just curious what could come up from that
I legitimately miss old stuff like screen savers, desktop themes, Winamp skins, all those things that excited me as a child/early teen. I do understand that most of it served no real purpose. But I feel like something was lost in this transition to the "minimal" setups of today.
Total. I'd say in some ways in deciding to be minimal they are actually worse. Windows XP and 3.1 was far more logical and informative than the steaming pile that Windows 10 is becoming. And I can't even properly customise the colours anymore as we lose more and more control.
YES, we weren't allowed to watch TV during dinner, but luckily the computer screen was facing the dinner table, so i found a loophole for mealtime entertainment
I was sitting in a police station waiting for my parents to come pick me up when I first saw this Screensaver. Best way to wait for, what I was sure at the time to be, my execution.
I’ve tried describing this to so many people over the years but no one ever knows what I’m talking about!! Man, I wish I could have this on an old computer in the corner of the room at all times! Thank you so much for this!! Seriously!
@@pedroc3948 You gotta go with the forbidden technique. Have the original aspect ratio but shrink it slightly and combine it with the DVD bouncing effect to create the ultimate mesmerizing idle screen.
I definitely remember a single time where a second Johnny appeared while a first was doing an activity, and started their own activity. After the second was done, he disappeared, but not by walking behind the palm tree. My early 90s computer was really prone to a variety of memory based glitches due to the 30 pin SIMMs being non-matching on a 386DX.
I remember people talking about the Johnny cloning glitch way back before the internet. It was one of those urban legends that propagated by word-of-mouth. Even though I've never seen it myself, from the descriptions of it I rememeber, it wasn't a ghost image or a translucent Johnny running around, but just two Johnnies doing different actions at the same time. The plane scene was extremely rare but I've seen it myself a couple of times, but that double Johnny glitch seems to be incompehensibly elusive.
@@elimalinsky7069 to be honest, I saw it happen because I'd be forced to sit in front of the computer every night to do my homework, even if I didn't need to use a computer. Which meant plenty of staring at the screensaver. My dad paid $2500 for that stupid thing, so he was gonna get his money out of it!
@@_comment not exactly but similar. the one i remember was also an animated desktop background, with ants, that you could switch into mode very much like that, where the ants would "eat" your icons and you could kill them with various tools.
@@HappyBeezerStudios I remember that one as also gun, flames, a bit like that like Doom, first person stile the game plays hand on the screen, with the guns and stuff?
Fresh out of University, my first task within the IT Department was to remove all the screensavers from users computers due to a lot of virus infected Johnny Castaway disks, and the Guinness Screensaver of the man dancing around a pint of Guinness.
To me the pinnacle of screen savers was the one you could interact with sheep in your desktop, dragging them around and dropping them over window headers.
I had that one, they were cartoon sheep and if you suddenly closed a window they were walking on, their eyes would go out on stalks and they would scream falling to the taskbar, landing on their head. It was more of a Desktop Toy than a Screensaver, there was also one with a cartoon dog as well.
When I was around 3-6 I use to ask my dad if I could watch this on his lap, apparently I would watch it for ages without caring. Amazing to see that the screensaver was actually a big thing !
I spent soooooo much time watching my dear friend Johnny Castaway...👀💯✔ The thing I hated the most is when I was sitting there watching him and I accidentally hit the mouse and shut him off...😔
My grandpa who worked for Texas Instruments and was always ahead of the tech curve had Johnny as his screen saver when I was a kid. I miss who he was before he went crazy.
@@rich2583 I’m sorry but did he say before his uncle died or went crazy? Which one did he type? Hmmm? Like wtf is even the point of communicating your thoughts if some jerk off like yourself is going to interpret it completely different from what was originally intended? God dammit I lose hope in humanity more day by day. This probably expedited that rate by a million life times. You, sir, can go to sleep knowing that you ruined another man’s day….. jackass….
This screensaver was on my family computer when I was a toddler, thought it was a game back then and constantly begged to play it. Still nostalgic for anything about castaways or desert islands.
It's amazing where Johnny Castaway ends up, he was our screensaver to our main computer in a jewellers (that I still work at) in 1997! The big boss who's now retired had never seen anything like it at the time (he never used a computer before) and found it quite funny and used to copy and hum Johnny's singing 😄 #GoodOldDays
We had this on our first desktop ever. It was a Packard Bell PC2. It was a POS. But we used to watch Johnny Castaway on it all the time. Used to crack us up so much. Whomever created this gem needs an award.
Me to as many others here it would seem could spend hours watching this poor man live his life, I remember me and me friend sitting there one day just watching with fascination trying to guess what he would do next when my dad walks in and stares at us and then asking what we where doing? why just sit there and watch the screen saver that stupid. we just said but it's fun and unpredictable and continued watching. thanks for bringing back some great childhood memories.
Did you ever get to see him rescued? I remember passing the computer and thinking he was about to be and yelling for my dad and then he ended up falling off the boat drunk or something 🤣
This was an inspired choice. Some parts of the NHS actually issued laptops with this back in the early 90's and that included the ambulance service in Yorkshire, where I was lucky enough to get to watch it repeatedly. I loved that it was botched for Windows XP but distraught when it no longer ran on modern OS. I seem to remember some TH-camr getting to meet a dev that had access to a large chunk of Sierra source-code, I keep hoping it'll turn up so it can be complied properly for x64.
I had this, along with all the Sierra titles of the time, King's Quest, Space Quest, Leisure Suit Larry, etc. Loved them all. Pure nostalgia seeing this again. Thanks for the upload!
I cried when I saw this video in youtube main page. My mother used to take me to her work when I was 6, and I spent hours in curiosity, watching one of the office computers, waiting the castaway do things that I didnt see yet.
I fondly remember Johnny. The best part about the screensaver was never knowing quite what to expect. Combine that with the wonderful animation, and you have something which is indeed the best screensaver ever made. Followed closely by the Jawas one from the Star Wars Screen Entertainment package.
@SteelRodent Good point about the Win UI! I've heard that even new monitors can suffer a little from burn-in. Dunno if it's true, as my monitor is maybe 4-5 years old and is fine.
As a screensaver it failed - But you know, did anyone really ever use screensavers to stop CRT screens from burn-in? :P More like screensavers were for the novelty of making your computer do interesting things... More of an art form than anything else. A bit like having a lava lamp sitting in the corner of the room doing its thing. Or why we like fireplaces. It's why After Dark both on the Macintosh and PC made me happy as a kid. :)
Thank you for this! I used to run classroom training courses. I would set this up on twelve PCs, and before the course started, I would sit at the back of the room and watch twelve Johnny Castaways at once. Great fun.
Before even watching this video, my dad had this screensaver back on the old 386 and I still have it installed to this day and my Windows 7 computer, which is still my main computer. Looking forward to seeing what is said about this in the video. EDIT: Now that I've watched the video, I was aware of all the different end scenes and start scenes, as well as those off scenes (back in the office) but I wasn't aware that there was any progression or story to the whole thing. Also, I did see quite a few glitches in my MANY years of using this. I have seen 2 Johnnys on screen (Clearly glitches in my case) but never in ways that they interacted with each other. I've even seen Johnny's head left floating after Johnny had walked off (with his head still attached) Basically, the graphic of the head just stayed loaded over that section and failed to update until the scene ended. It was clear this was a glitch since whenever something happened in that section of the screen, it the head just flickered a bit but overrode any other graphics that were going through that area. The rest of the screen was unaffected.
There's is no real incentive to do so. How many times do you really see a screen saver in the wild? You yourself may use one but I genuinely haven't seen someone else use one since a dentist's office in 2012. They may come back in vogue with OLED displays to protect from burn in however the need and demand for screensavers means evening making one as a side project is not as worthwhile as putting those story ideas into another media such as a game, animation or niche indie idle sim.
@@kitfagan2027 I see your point of view, and the video sort of hints at this to a degree. That being said, I took away the fact that while this was never a big money maker, people do solo projects for their own desires all the time. Hope someone will do something similar to this. It was a genius idea.
Monitors turn off (standby) these days when left in order to save energy and inturn this protects against screen burn in where required. Sadly the age of screens is long over.
@@richardcastro-parker3704 on the other hand there are always on displays for android phones and live backgrounds which are kinda mondern screen savers.
what you mean "he would have learnt his lesson by now" , Mfer Johnny would rather live on a beautiful island in the sea stress free no paperwork with hot mermaids and women and have fun antics with random encounters than work in an office everyday. Thats a win to me and he DID LEARN HIS LESSON, A lesson that working your life away is sad, hed rather be happy than worry about money.
Seriously, thanks for this video... just a flood of nostalgia. I would absolutely pay for a Windows 10 version... with the old graphic style, just updated for a larger screen... and no store
My parents got it for our family computer in the 90s and I can still hear sound clips/see scenes from this play out in my head. Seeing this title pop up was a treat!
I remember a screen saver from 94 that showed scenery from various locations and would change each month. Depending on the time of day the scenery would be day or night. The weather in the scenery would change from day to day, etc. There were also LOTS of easter eggs that would trigger on certain days and times. I wish I could remember what it was called
Really enjoyed this episode! I see a lot of folks commenting about how this should be de-compiled, won't run on modern systems, etc. Quick FYI, the engine has been re-written a few times now. The best *(cleanest code, most complete) version is a c + SDL version by Jérémie GUILLAUME. I've ported this version to a few systems and consoles (dreamcast, xbox, retroFW devices, etc), dumped all the scenes to png sequences for photo frames and e-ink panels, and generally it's quite easy to run on modern and legacy systems. You can find that (specifically the dreamcast branch) here: github.com/huntergdavis/jc_reborn/tree/dreamcast Also FYI, here's the emscripten web version I put up a few years ago. Technically this version is running dosbox + a windows 3.1 image. www.hunterdavis.com/johnnycastaway/ Here's the emscripten port of the above engine. github.com/huntergdavis/jc_reborn/tree/emscripten
I remember my dad having this on our first computer (we'd only just gotten one since he had changed careers and become a programmer). Me and my sister were mesmerised! We would sit there and watch to see what story would play out next. I still remember when we turned it on at Christmas only to find a special Christmas-themed story play out! To the 10 or 11 year old me (back in 92-93) and my one year younger sister, it was magic!
oh god, I had that screensaver for literally years. And I can't count the times where someone came to me like "your computer is making weird noises" just because Johnny decided to do some workout or voodoo dance.
Wow. My mate's Dad had this set up on his PC when I used to go to their house. I would have been about 5 (around 1993) and I was always captivated by it. Amazing.
Years ago, I obtained from somewhere a version optimized for Windows XP, which also resolved some of the issues in the original version that would occasionally crash the program. I have no idea where I found the XP version, or how either version runs on Windows 10.
What a throwback. I remember Johnny on my first 80386. Watching him for hours on end. I was 10 or 11 years old i think. Thanks for remembering me to Johnny. I think i'll download him again and install him yet again.
Ah, i remember this. It came bundled with Incredible Toons for me - quite the fun combo. I loved to come looking at the screen as soon as i'd hear the chime, to see what part of the story would come next. As for the "Ghost" i remember seeing something like this - but it was just Johnny leaving a trail of "himself" while walking. Funny but, yeah, it was a glitch.
My brother and I would love watching Johnny Castaway, even if it was mostly glancing to check on him while doing other stuff in the same room, like homework and low-effort chores. Every time the story progressed or we saw a new bit of animation, we’d alert each other “JOHNNY DID SOMETHING NEW!” We’d even tell our parents, who though it was entertaining as heck how much we loved a screensaver.
Awesome! That's my game, Johnny's Island at 24:30! I'm a huge Johnny Castaway fan. Just wished you would've presented my game in a more positive light cuz it's not really an "in-app purchase" based kinda game. It really is just an inspired game. Anyway, great video my dude.
@@Ninjetika Yeah actually it was off the store briefly but I got everything sorted out with google so it should be back now. it's called Johnny's Island
@@LaFlammeStudios I've been playing it a lot today! Gave it 5 stars on the store. I love seeing all the outcomes on failing and succeeding. Really, the only recommendation I could give, besides adding more music, is to add more idle animations and events similar to Johnny Castaway. But that's just me. Cool stuff!
@@Ninjetika Cool thanks for the rating and recommendations. I've been meaning to add more music but music isn't really my strong suit. I'll see what I can do. I've had an update on deck ready to go for the past few months but just working out the bugs. Check back with this project periodically, I have some things planned and still working on it. Email suggestions if you get any more cool ideas that might make the game better
There's actually a reference to Johnny Castaway in two later Jeff Tunnel produced games, The Incredible Machine 2 and 3 (both basically being the same game but the latter was for Windows 3.1 and 95). The computer monitors that you bounce objects off of to reveal a character have a neutral state of displaying Johnny's island.
How would I get Johnny Castaway theses days? Let alone put it on a stand alone random picture frame??? (I've literally forgotten what those are called. I just know you dump a bunch of pictures under SD card, plug it in and it works.)
Thank you so much for this! I remember spending countless minutes/hours having this on in the background being fascinated in all the different things he was doing. I loved his noises/grumbling. Distinctively remember loving that it changed for christmas day hahaha, although i thought it was more than just a tree. Either there was an update in a later version or I just remembered wrong.. and I seem to remember some fireworks for NYE?
It was only a couple of months ago I was looking at Johnny Castaway and seeing if anyone makes modern screensavers like this nowadays. Results came up blank.... Used to have it on the computers at work offshore in the North Sea and we would sit for ages watching him.
Johnny Castaway is still my fondest memory of the early home computer era. I first learned of Johnny in the early morning at my job. I had just fetched a cup of coffee and was walking through the still dark office area when I heard the grunts and sighs of Johnny echoing throughout. I began searching for the source and found a lone pc running the screen saver in the darkness. I later came back and asked the coworker what it was, I had never heard of a screen saver before. He showed me an official floppy disk of the program he had gotten in a magazine for free. He gladly copied it for me. I put it on my home Packard Bell and proceeded to watch it for 6 hour straight. Many hours were wasted at my work place in 94 as the screen saver ended up on most employees desktops, with everyone standing around, coffee in hand, watching for what Johnny would do next. I only wish I could run it on my modern work pc, I really miss him.
I loved this so much... Johnny Castaway remains the best screensaver ever made. Thanks for this trip down memory lane, it was great to relive the joys of "scrantic" - and see a few scenes I never experienced before back in the 90s... superb 👍
I remember eating dinner as a kid and looking at the johnny castaway screensaver from the dinner table. I would watch it for so long even though I thought the HEE HEE HEE HEE noise was annoying.
I totally forgot about this screensaver back in the day. Thanks for the throwback! I loved seeing what new things would show up and would literally waste an hour just waiting! Always wondering if he got rescued.... I never knew this actually had a story! So cool! Btw: I love seeing that old Sierra floppy. That label reminded me of opening my copy of Quest For Glory VGA. :)
Sorry, this is a little off topic. I saw the "Incredible Machine" go by in the video and was immediately reminded of a DOS or early Windows 3.x game from the 1990's where three differently colored balls come down from the top (one at a time at first) thru chutes and various diverters that change direction after a ball passes by. At first only one ball is in play, but as you go, balls come sooner and sooner. The object is to catch the colored balls in the appropriately colored wheelbarrow. Missed ball or wrong wheelbarrow loses a life. This game title been driving me crazy for several years. It's not marble madness - not really a marble game, closer to incredible machine. Can anyone help me remember this one?
Guess you have already checked Oxyd, Breakout/Arkanoid and some along the line. But none of them really sounds like your description. Oh, and those games are still playable, Oxyd got a great port that runs on modern systems and Breakout/Arkanoid have tons of imitators. Oh and I know where you're at. It took me years to find out the game I know from back them was Oxyd.
I had this screensaveer and i liked it but after two days or so i replaced it with another one. I did not know at that time that there was a whole story playing out. It just seemed a funmy screensaver with a guy on his island. I should have payed more attention to appreciate how great this screensaver actually was.
It occurred to me as I was watching this the level of effort that must have been put forth to make this. The animation, the coding...and how the level of effort put forth exceeds that which is put in to many things called video games now, and this was for a screensaver.
I saw that Heart of China and was like why does that look so familiar?? OHHHH because they developed Betrayal at Krondor, on of my favorite games as a kid.
I remember that as a child, they had this running in a local computer shop as a way of displaying monitors... I sat watching it as my dad waited around for his computer to be fixed. They had five or six computers displaying Johnny Castaway simultaneously, each of them doing different things, with different tide levels and events. It really blew my mind, I'd never seen anything like that before - So much variety and randomness from a single computer programme, with multiple copies of it being displayed side by side...
11:06 I think that those are not pirates or at least this part of the Johnny has always been tie down from Gulliver for me tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/GulliverTieDown
Ok back when this was a thing I literally started designing an app for your phone for him... I made graphics and was gung ho. Then, well here we are ;)
This was bundled with my first 386 PC and I remember being late for school several times because I got stuck watching Johnny's antics instead of getting ready to head out. Other kids from the class even came over to see it because as far as I know I was the only one with Johnny while others were stuck with the Starfield.
Oh wow, i remember this screensaver! We had a computer in elementary school that had it and i used to watch it for hours! It was so cool, i never saw anything like it!
@@RyoLeo well seeing as this video is about a screen saver, After dark is a pretty big screen saver with a lot of different modules. pretty easy to get it right the first time (After Dark screen saver). Nothing lewd about it.
I have tried and successfully installed this up to window 7. I have not gone with a newer version of Windows but I would think it shouldn't be too hard to install still on Windows 8/10
There is a similar program that wasn't categorized as a screen saver but was used as one by many. It was called (to the best of my memory) the "Little Computer People Project". It was a dollhouse-like cut-away of a house and there was a person that lived inside going about his daily life. The difference from Johnny was that you could interact with the character in "tiny ways" like having food delivered or playing a card game with him. If he got bored he would rap on the screen with his fist to get your attention to notice him.
Thanks for watching! I enjoyed making this one so much that I'm going to be running some passive streams of Johnny Castaway this week: www.twitch.tv/nostalgianerd
I remember using this when it first came out. I used to distribute Shareware disks for a company and this happened to be on a disk . I was intrigued so I copied it to a floppy, took it home and ran it on my good old Monochrome PC 1640. Even in monochrome it was great!
hey brother have you ever considered making colab video with lnternet Historian? l know your channels are not alike lm just curious what could come up from that
@@sergiokaminotanjo If something comes up naturally, potentially!
that's hilarious and awesome
Dude I absolutely LOVED this screen saver! Most unique one ever! Hell, with your computer knowledge and an artist you could do another one!
I legitimately miss old stuff like screen savers, desktop themes, Winamp skins, all those things that excited me as a child/early teen. I do understand that most of it served no real purpose. But I feel like something was lost in this transition to the "minimal" setups of today.
Total. I'd say in some ways in deciding to be minimal they are actually worse. Windows XP and 3.1 was far more logical and informative than the steaming pile that Windows 10 is becoming. And I can't even properly customise the colours anymore as we lose more and more control.
Oh, god, I collected so many Winamp skins... Good memories 😭❤️
The new colorful thing that kids are collecting that serves no real purpose is NFTs
You can still get a cool screensaver even today if you want to.
@@lostintheinternet2814 why do linux users immediately make themselves obvious the second someone mentions anything related to windows
I remember being a kid sitting at a dinner table, every 5 seconds looking behind me to see what he was doing. Great screensaver.
You can watch endless hours of it again if you wanted. 🙂th-cam.com/play/PLQ5PmsYIWgZK5roiP_h7b8s0v6YkB2a2e.html
YES, we weren't allowed to watch TV during dinner, but luckily the computer screen was facing the dinner table, so i found a loophole for mealtime entertainment
I sat watching Johnny for far longer than I'm willing to admit.
You are not alone.
Its all we had back then. No youtube.
@@daveycrocker4466 right? It was bad enough trying to get the 30 sec mpeg clip you spent 3 days downloading to play.
Brian AND Jeffrey Epstein agree with this
I was sitting in a police station waiting for my parents to come pick me up when I first saw this Screensaver. Best way to wait for, what I was sure at the time to be, my execution.
This was actually an early unaired pilot for Lost
What's more, Johnny Castaway has an ending that actually makes sense. 😁
Bruh
With a much better ending.
LOL
The smoke monster add-on module didn't sell that well.
This screensaver is like a Sierra point-and-click adventure game without the direct interaction.
It is _genius._
0 player point and click adventure
Popcorn-munching adventure
Your quest is to eat all the microwave popcorn without breaking your teeth on a kernel
Pointless adventure?
@@ultralowspekken So just like War Games: "Is there any way to make it play itself?" - "Yes. Number of players zero."
I never knew he got off the island, I watched this screensaver a lot as a child, I even remember the special days very clearly :)
Technically one of the special starts shows it was a dream and he was in a office watching the Screensaver too
WILLSOOOOONNNNNNNN!!!
@@RanaRandom AHHH AHH "I'm acting". Pop culture is brilliant as a whole
Your poor computer
I’ve tried describing this to so many people over the years but no one ever knows what I’m talking about!! Man, I wish I could have this on an old computer in the corner of the room at all times! Thank you so much for this!! Seriously!
You can still install this on Windows 10, I've got it, but it's clunky as all hell and you really want an old 386 to appreciate it better.
I have endless hours of it on my channel... like.... over 100 hours. Easily. :D
th-cam.com/play/PLQ5PmsYIWgZK5roiP_h7b8s0v6YkB2a2e.html
@@krashd I have it too, not clunky at all here. It just doesn't look very good on widescreen
@@pedroc3948 You gotta go with the forbidden technique. Have the original aspect ratio but shrink it slightly and combine it with the DVD bouncing effect to create the ultimate mesmerizing idle screen.
@@tinkerer3399 I like it
I definitely remember a single time where a second Johnny appeared while a first was doing an activity, and started their own activity. After the second was done, he disappeared, but not by walking behind the palm tree. My early 90s computer was really prone to a variety of memory based glitches due to the 30 pin SIMMs being non-matching on a 386DX.
I remember people talking about the Johnny cloning glitch way back before the internet. It was one of those urban legends that propagated by word-of-mouth. Even though I've never seen it myself, from the descriptions of it I rememeber, it wasn't a ghost image or a translucent Johnny running around, but just two Johnnies doing different actions at the same time. The plane scene was extremely rare but I've seen it myself a couple of times, but that double Johnny glitch seems to be incompehensibly elusive.
@@elimalinsky7069 to be honest, I saw it happen because I'd be forced to sit in front of the computer every night to do my homework, even if I didn't need to use a computer. Which meant plenty of staring at the screensaver. My dad paid $2500 for that stupid thing, so he was gonna get his money out of it!
The only screensaver you'll ever need....& maybe flying toasters.
I had both screen savers. I mostly used the castaway one, but I loved the flying toasters. There were also sheep in :)
There was a flying toilets one for the Atari ST that was the shit.
I miss the flying toasters :(
@@angry_wizard Literally...
Love your channel Kenny
anyone remember the "ant killer" desktop background? where you could use various tools to kill ants that were trying to eat your icons?
Yes! Or the Stress Relief one which was similar but without the ants. Although those are not really screensavers but rather desktop toys.
i suppose they were...
@@_comment not exactly but similar. the one i remember was also an animated desktop background, with ants, that you could switch into mode very much like that, where the ants would "eat" your icons and you could kill them with various tools.
I remember one where you had different things to destroy your desktop with, including a fmalethrower, guns, dynamite, a hammer and such things.
@@HappyBeezerStudios I remember that one as also gun, flames, a bit like that like Doom, first person stile the game plays hand on the screen, with the guns and stuff?
Fresh out of University, my first task within the IT Department was to remove all the screensavers from users computers due to a lot of virus infected Johnny Castaway disks, and the Guinness Screensaver of the man dancing around a pint of Guinness.
I imagine those were viruses that infected executable files in order to spread.
Wow.. So it turns out I've been mispronouncing Danymix my whole life. I thought it was pronounced like dyna-mix.
Me too. Like it's pet food for your triceratops or something.
To me the pinnacle of screen savers was the one you could interact with sheep in your desktop, dragging them around and dropping them over window headers.
Oh! I remember that!
Please tell me "interact with sheep" isn't a euphemism...
I had that one, they were cartoon sheep and if you suddenly closed a window they were walking on, their eyes would go out on stalks and they would scream falling to the taskbar, landing on their head.
It was more of a Desktop Toy than a Screensaver, there was also one with a cartoon dog as well.
Esheep ❤️
Sheep.exe I think I still have that somewhere.
The receptionist at my primary school had this screensaver and I thought it was so cool.
Miss the old screen savers. Especially the Tasmanian devil one that would go around eating your desktop icons.
When I was around 3-6 I use to ask my dad if I could watch this on his lap, apparently I would watch it for ages without caring. Amazing to see that the screensaver was actually a big thing !
Those aren't pirates! They're Lilliputians!
So little-people can't be pirates?
Pirateist.
pirlets
@@virtualtools_3021 pirverts
lol exactly what i was thinking
I spent soooooo much time watching my dear friend Johnny Castaway...👀💯✔ The thing I hated the most is when I was sitting there watching him and I accidentally hit the mouse and shut him off...😔
Remember we had a PC in the corner of the office just running this, was an environmental consultancy as well :)
My grandpa who worked for Texas Instruments and was always ahead of the tech curve had Johnny as his screen saver when I was a kid. I miss who he was before he went crazy.
do you mind sharing the details of how he went crazy?
@@conzmoleman he fell victim to conspiracy theories and began preparing for a race war.
@@KickstandOptional sucks :(
@@KickstandOptional is he still alive
@@rich2583 I’m sorry but did he say before his uncle died or went crazy? Which one did he type? Hmmm? Like wtf is even the point of communicating your thoughts if some jerk off like yourself is going to interpret it completely different from what was originally intended? God dammit I lose hope in humanity more day by day. This probably expedited that rate by a million life times.
You, sir, can go to sleep knowing that you ruined another man’s day….. jackass….
This screensaver was on my family computer when I was a toddler, thought it was a game back then and constantly begged to play it. Still nostalgic for anything about castaways or desert islands.
It's amazing where Johnny Castaway ends up, he was our screensaver to our main computer in a jewellers (that I still work at) in 1997! The big boss who's now retired had never seen anything like it at the time (he never used a computer before) and found it quite funny and used to copy and hum Johnny's singing 😄 #GoodOldDays
Hmm hmhmhm
Good God does this bring back great memories. Kids today can never understand how amazing stuff like this was to us in the 90's.
I have Johnny as my zoom background in meetings, ha
We had this on our first desktop ever. It was a Packard Bell PC2. It was a POS. But we used to watch Johnny Castaway on it all the time. Used to crack us up so much. Whomever created this gem needs an award.
Me to as many others here it would seem could spend hours watching this poor man live his life, I remember me and me friend sitting there one day just watching with fascination trying to guess what he would do next when my dad walks in and stares at us and then asking what we where doing? why just sit there and watch the screen saver that stupid. we just said but it's fun and unpredictable and continued watching. thanks for bringing back some great childhood memories.
Did you ever get to see him rescued? I remember passing the computer and thinking he was about to be and yelling for my dad and then he ended up falling off the boat drunk or something 🤣
@@niknic9703 nope never got that whole story thing I guess we did it all wrong 😋
It's like watching an ant farm lol
This was an inspired choice. Some parts of the NHS actually issued laptops with this back in the early 90's and that included the ambulance service in Yorkshire, where I was lucky enough to get to watch it repeatedly. I loved that it was botched for Windows XP but distraught when it no longer ran on modern OS. I seem to remember some TH-camr getting to meet a dev that had access to a large chunk of Sierra source-code, I keep hoping it'll turn up so it can be complied properly for x64.
Wallpaper Engine, you're welcome :)
My late father had this on our family computer, I remember being so captivated by it as a kid. Thanks for this video!
I had this, along with all the Sierra titles of the time, King's Quest, Space Quest, Leisure Suit Larry, etc. Loved them all. Pure nostalgia seeing this again. Thanks for the upload!
My father showed me this when I was about 10 or so. What a culture this must've been, when the IT world was young. RIP Tom.
I 100% had this as a kid and 100% forgot all about it. I even had it as that Sierra Family Fun Pack. Thanks so much for bringing back a great memory!
“Dynamix.”
Hang on, that sounds familiar. Where do I-
“...games such as The Incredible Machine...”
Ooooooh...
I cried when I saw this video in youtube main page. My mother used to take me to her work when I was 6, and I spent hours in curiosity, watching one of the office computers, waiting the castaway do things that I didnt see yet.
The best screensaver of all time! Next, I would say Totally Twisted After Dark.
Mowin' Boris!
Of course, After Dark evolved into Jackbox Games.
I fondly remember Johnny. The best part about the screensaver was never knowing quite what to expect. Combine that with the wonderful animation, and you have something which is indeed the best screensaver ever made. Followed closely by the Jawas one from the Star Wars Screen Entertainment package.
The island changes position, but does the horizon? That line looks like it would burn in given enough time.
Not to mention the sky and clouds, which I didn't see move. And the sea.
The tree breaks the horizon line, and the clouds move around, so there will be some natural variation no matter where you look.
@@Crystan The point is, it would seem that not all the pixels are changed frequently if at all, which is the point of a screen saver.
@SteelRodent Good point about the Win UI! I've heard that even new monitors can suffer a little from burn-in. Dunno if it's true, as my monitor is maybe 4-5 years old and is fine.
As a screensaver it failed - But you know, did anyone really ever use screensavers to stop CRT screens from burn-in? :P More like screensavers were for the novelty of making your computer do interesting things... More of an art form than anything else. A bit like having a lava lamp sitting in the corner of the room doing its thing. Or why we like fireplaces.
It's why After Dark both on the Macintosh and PC made me happy as a kid. :)
One of my favorites was the fish tank. You could customize your fish and had the nice bubble sound...just so peaceful
Thank you for this! I used to run classroom training courses. I would set this up on twelve PCs, and before the course started, I would sit at the back of the room and watch twelve Johnny Castaways at once. Great fun.
Before even watching this video, my dad had this screensaver back on the old 386 and I still have it installed to this day and my Windows 7 computer, which is still my main computer. Looking forward to seeing what is said about this in the video.
EDIT: Now that I've watched the video, I was aware of all the different end scenes and start scenes, as well as those off scenes (back in the office) but I wasn't aware that there was any progression or story to the whole thing.
Also, I did see quite a few glitches in my MANY years of using this. I have seen 2 Johnnys on screen (Clearly glitches in my case) but never in ways that they interacted with each other. I've even seen Johnny's head left floating after Johnny had walked off (with his head still attached) Basically, the graphic of the head just stayed loaded over that section and failed to update until the scene ended. It was clear this was a glitch since whenever something happened in that section of the screen, it the head just flickered a bit but overrode any other graphics that were going through that area. The rest of the screen was unaffected.
Omg I remember this. How has nobody since tried this? It’s a great idea: a screen saver with a story or at least several short stories.
There's is no real incentive to do so. How many times do you really see a screen saver in the wild? You yourself may use one but I genuinely haven't seen someone else use one since a dentist's office in 2012. They may come back in vogue with OLED displays to protect from burn in however the need and demand for screensavers means evening making one as a side project is not as worthwhile as putting those story ideas into another media such as a game, animation or niche indie idle sim.
@@kitfagan2027 I see your point of view, and the video sort of hints at this to a degree. That being said, I took away the fact that while this was never a big money maker, people do solo projects for their own desires all the time. Hope someone will do something similar to this. It was a genius idea.
Monitors turn off (standby) these days when left in order to save energy and inturn this protects against screen burn in where required. Sadly the age of screens is long over.
@@richardcastro-parker3704 on the other hand there are always on displays for android phones and live backgrounds which are kinda mondern screen savers.
The only story I want, is that I'm flying endlessly through space !
what you mean "he would have learnt his lesson by now" , Mfer Johnny would rather live on a beautiful island in the sea stress free no paperwork with hot mermaids and women and have fun antics with random encounters than work in an office everyday. Thats a win to me and he DID LEARN HIS LESSON, A lesson that working your life away is sad, hed rather be happy than worry about money.
Just wanted to say that I bought your book the other day. What a nice read it was. Hadn’t seen your YT channel before. Keep up the good work!
Seriously, thanks for this video... just a flood of nostalgia. I would absolutely pay for a Windows 10 version... with the old graphic style, just updated for a larger screen... and no store
My parents got it for our family computer in the 90s and I can still hear sound clips/see scenes from this play out in my head. Seeing this title pop up was a treat!
I remember a screen saver from 94 that showed scenery from various locations and would change each month. Depending on the time of day the scenery would be day or night. The weather in the scenery would change from day to day, etc. There were also LOTS of easter eggs that would trigger on certain days and times. I wish I could remember what it was called
Really enjoyed this episode! I see a lot of folks commenting about how this should be de-compiled, won't run on modern systems, etc. Quick FYI, the engine has been re-written a few times now. The best *(cleanest code, most complete) version is a c + SDL version by Jérémie GUILLAUME. I've ported this version to a few systems and consoles (dreamcast, xbox, retroFW devices, etc), dumped all the scenes to png sequences for photo frames and e-ink panels, and generally it's quite easy to run on modern and legacy systems. You can find that (specifically the dreamcast branch) here:
github.com/huntergdavis/jc_reborn/tree/dreamcast
Also FYI, here's the emscripten web version I put up a few years ago. Technically this version is running dosbox + a windows 3.1 image.
www.hunterdavis.com/johnnycastaway/
Here's the emscripten port of the above engine.
github.com/huntergdavis/jc_reborn/tree/emscripten
I remember my dad having this on our first computer (we'd only just gotten one since he had changed careers and become a programmer). Me and my sister were mesmerised! We would sit there and watch to see what story would play out next. I still remember when we turned it on at Christmas only to find a special Christmas-themed story play out! To the 10 or 11 year old me (back in 92-93) and my one year younger sister, it was magic!
Always loved this screen saver, just wished they would do a modern version!
Until then - if you wanted to watch it - th-cam.com/play/PLQ5PmsYIWgZK5roiP_h7b8s0v6YkB2a2e.html
So nostalgic, I watched this all the time as a kid
oh god, I had that screensaver for literally years. And I can't count the times where someone came to me like "your computer is making weird noises" just because Johnny decided to do some workout or voodoo dance.
Wow. My mate's Dad had this set up on his PC when I used to go to their house. I would have been about 5 (around 1993) and I was always captivated by it. Amazing.
I would so love an updated version of this.
I have many memories.
Yeah, an updated version of this would work on an OLED display since those are very vulnerable to screen burn-in.
Years ago, I obtained from somewhere a version optimized for Windows XP, which also resolved some of the issues in the original version that would occasionally crash the program. I have no idea where I found the XP version, or how either version runs on Windows 10.
What a throwback. I remember Johnny on my first 80386. Watching him for hours on end. I was 10 or 11 years old i think. Thanks for remembering me to Johnny. I think i'll download him again and install him yet again.
Ah, i remember this. It came bundled with Incredible Toons for me - quite the fun combo. I loved to come looking at the screen as soon as i'd hear the chime, to see what part of the story would come next. As for the "Ghost" i remember seeing something like this - but it was just Johnny leaving a trail of "himself" while walking. Funny but, yeah, it was a glitch.
My brother and I would love watching Johnny Castaway, even if it was mostly glancing to check on him while doing other stuff in the same room, like homework and low-effort chores. Every time the story progressed or we saw a new bit of animation, we’d alert each other “JOHNNY DID SOMETHING NEW!” We’d even tell our parents, who though it was entertaining as heck how much we loved a screensaver.
Awesome! That's my game, Johnny's Island at 24:30! I'm a huge Johnny Castaway fan. Just wished you would've presented my game in a more positive light cuz it's not really an "in-app purchase" based kinda game. It really is just an inspired game. Anyway, great video my dude.
Link your game bro
Awesome!! Looks worth trying out! Is it on Android? I couldn't find it on the Google Playstore
@@Ninjetika Yeah actually it was off the store briefly but I got everything sorted out with google so it should be back now. it's called Johnny's Island
@@LaFlammeStudios I've been playing it a lot today! Gave it 5 stars on the store. I love seeing all the outcomes on failing and succeeding. Really, the only recommendation I could give, besides adding more music, is to add more idle animations and events similar to Johnny Castaway. But that's just me. Cool stuff!
@@Ninjetika Cool thanks for the rating and recommendations. I've been meaning to add more music but music isn't really my strong suit. I'll see what I can do. I've had an update on deck ready to go for the past few months but just working out the bugs. Check back with this project periodically, I have some things planned and still working on it. Email suggestions if you get any more cool ideas that might make the game better
There's actually a reference to Johnny Castaway in two later Jeff Tunnel produced games, The Incredible Machine 2 and 3 (both basically being the same game but the latter was for Windows 3.1 and 95). The computer monitors that you bounce objects off of to reveal a character have a neutral state of displaying Johnny's island.
Omg i wanna make a standalone frame version as a gift for my step-dad now lol
How would I get Johnny Castaway theses days? Let alone put it on a stand alone random picture frame??? (I've literally forgotten what those are called. I just know you dump a bunch of pictures under SD card, plug it in and it works.)
@@Kazuma42 oh it would be a custom build. Probably some kind of pi designed to quickboot loading a vm which would be scripted to launch Johnny
I've built a NESpi so now a Johnny Castaway pi is next. Thank you
Thank you so much for this! I remember spending countless minutes/hours having this on in the background being fascinated in all the different things he was doing. I loved his noises/grumbling. Distinctively remember loving that it changed for christmas day hahaha, although i thought it was more than just a tree. Either there was an update in a later version or I just remembered wrong.. and I seem to remember some fireworks for NYE?
Nowerdays this would be called Artificial Intelligence.
It was only a couple of months ago I was looking at Johnny Castaway and seeing if anyone makes modern screensavers like this nowadays. Results came up blank.... Used to have it on the computers at work offshore in the North Sea and we would sit for ages watching him.
I’d love to see a modern Johnny castaway screen saver.
Yes, higher resolution and yet somehow still pixilated to keep the nostalgia. I would love a linux port.
It was/is the best screen saver ever. Used to love watching Johnny hang out on his island.
17:25 Damn it Nostalgia Nerd Flexing his cool ass office.
Johnny Castaway is still my fondest memory of the early home computer era. I first learned of Johnny in the early morning at my job. I had just fetched a cup of coffee and was walking through the still dark office area when I heard the grunts and sighs of Johnny echoing throughout. I began searching for the source and found a lone pc running the screen saver in the darkness. I later came back and asked the coworker what it was, I had never heard of a screen saver before. He showed me an official floppy disk of the program he had gotten in a magazine for free. He gladly copied it for me. I put it on my home Packard Bell and proceeded to watch it for 6 hour straight. Many hours were wasted at my work place in 94 as the screen saver ended up on most employees desktops, with everyone standing around, coffee in hand, watching for what Johnny would do next. I only wish I could run it on my modern work pc, I really miss him.
I loved this so much... Johnny Castaway remains the best screensaver ever made. Thanks for this trip down memory lane, it was great to relive the joys of "scrantic" - and see a few scenes I never experienced before back in the 90s... superb 👍
You can watch endless hours of it on my channel - th-cam.com/play/PLQ5PmsYIWgZK5roiP_h7b8s0v6YkB2a2e.html
I remember eating dinner as a kid and looking at the johnny castaway screensaver from the dinner table. I would watch it for so long even though I thought the HEE HEE HEE HEE noise was annoying.
I've always loved Johnny Castaway. Best screensaver ever!!!
One thing I always found funny was that his coconut tree had banana tree leaves. 🤣
I suppose you could argue "artistic license" in this case. :)
@@gordontaylor2815 😅😅😅
I totally forgot about this screensaver back in the day. Thanks for the throwback! I loved seeing what new things would show up and would literally waste an hour just waiting! Always wondering if he got rescued.... I never knew this actually had a story! So cool!
Btw: I love seeing that old Sierra floppy. That label reminded me of opening my copy of Quest For Glory VGA. :)
*A better storyline than most Netflix productions*
I remember a friend having this screensaver, it's absolute gold. Makes me miss screensavers.
Sorry, this is a little off topic. I saw the "Incredible Machine" go by in the video and was immediately reminded of a DOS or early Windows 3.x game from the 1990's where three differently colored balls come down from the top (one at a time at first) thru chutes and various diverters that change direction after a ball passes by. At first only one ball is in play, but as you go, balls come sooner and sooner. The object is to catch the colored balls in the appropriately colored wheelbarrow. Missed ball or wrong wheelbarrow loses a life. This game title been driving me crazy for several years. It's not marble madness - not really a marble game, closer to incredible machine. Can anyone help me remember this one?
Go post this question on reddit
r/tipofmytounge those sleuths can find anything.
@@arnierc4 Okay, I am giving it a try. Tried to post, but goofed up and now in a 12 minute waiting cycle to try again. Great idea! Thank you much!!
Guess you have already checked Oxyd, Breakout/Arkanoid and some along the line. But none of them really sounds like your description.
Oh, and those games are still playable, Oxyd got a great port that runs on modern systems and Breakout/Arkanoid have tons of imitators.
Oh and I know where you're at. It took me years to find out the game I know from back them was Oxyd.
I had completely forgotten about Oxyd! As I read the description, that’s what came to mind for me too!
@@robf228 So did you ever figure it out? Sounds like a fun diversion. The game, I mean, not the search. :-)
I had Screen Antics' Castaway, my favourite screensaver ever. I remember when he celebrated the Holidays
7:21 I think it's actually a portmanteau.
I had this screensaveer and i liked it but after two days or so i replaced it with another one. I did not know at that time that there was a whole story playing out. It just seemed a funmy screensaver with a guy on his island. I should have payed more attention to appreciate how great this screensaver actually was.
I also didn't know that there was a advancing story line. Never noticed the elements of a story there, but enjoyed watching him.
I remember having this screensaver on a floppy disk as a kid. Used to love watching all the different scenarios.
It occurred to me as I was watching this the level of effort that must have been put forth to make this. The animation, the coding...and how the level of effort put forth exceeds that which is put in to many things called video games now, and this was for a screensaver.
the most captivating was The Simpsons set, especially Homer mowing the lawn
I saw that Heart of China and was like why does that look so familiar?? OHHHH because they developed Betrayal at Krondor, on of my favorite games as a kid.
It's everything I never knew that I didn't know I needed to know about a screen saver that now I know... ...
Acceptable.
I remember that as a child, they had this running in a local computer shop as a way of displaying monitors... I sat watching it as my dad waited around for his computer to be fixed. They had five or six computers displaying Johnny Castaway simultaneously, each of them doing different things, with different tide levels and events.
It really blew my mind, I'd never seen anything like that before - So much variety and randomness from a single computer programme, with multiple copies of it being displayed side by side...
11:06 I think that those are not pirates or at least this part of the Johnny has always been tie down from Gulliver for me tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/GulliverTieDown
Ok back when this was a thing I literally started designing an app for your phone for him... I made graphics and was gung ho. Then, well here we are ;)
I had this on my first PC back in 1993. Loved it.
This was bundled with my first 386 PC and I remember being late for school several times because I got stuck watching Johnny's antics instead of getting ready to head out. Other kids from the class even came over to see it because as far as I know I was the only one with Johnny while others were stuck with the Starfield.
Remember Johnny Castaway? Pepperidge Farm remembers!
Back then I was running screensavers, which was the style at the time
Oh wow, i remember this screensaver! We had a computer in elementary school that had it and i used to watch it for hours! It was so cool, i never saw anything like it!
I remember back in the early 2000 when I had my first pc, stuff like this was what entertained me because I had no internet access
Man, what a retro trip. I remember I had this screen saver back in the day. So much fun revisiting it.
If there was such things like ghosts or bowls surely someone would've de-complied the screen saver file and found them in the code.
Still running this screen saver on Win 10. Almost 30 years later and I can still watch it for hours.
After dark was the screensaver that captivated me, I could sit for hours watching them.
I would google this but knowing the other meaning for “after dark” I can only imagine what would come up so I’m just gonna leave it at this
LEWD
@@RyoLeo well seeing as this video is about a screen saver, After dark is a pretty big screen saver with a lot of different modules. pretty easy to get it right the first time (After Dark screen saver). Nothing lewd about it.
@@madmax2069 surrrrre
@@RyoLeo LGR wouldn't have lewd content, and he reviewed it, so either take it or leave it, I'm done trying to convince you.
@@madmax2069 so serious its a joke
I loved this screensaver! I also remember being stunned when we upgraded from the PC speaker to a sound blaster pro card.
Fuck i forgot about this. I need this on my laptop
I have tried and successfully installed this up to window 7. I have not gone with a newer version of Windows but I would think it shouldn't be too hard to install still on Windows 8/10
@@Chepakishuionly if it's 32bit. Johnny's win16.
There is a similar program that wasn't categorized as a screen saver but was used as one by many. It was called (to the best of my memory) the "Little Computer People Project". It was a dollhouse-like cut-away of a house and there was a person that lived inside going about his daily life. The difference from Johnny was that you could interact with the character in "tiny ways" like having food delivered or playing a card game with him. If he got bored he would rap on the screen with his fist to get your attention to notice him.
Oooh, the incredible machine. Played that a lost as a student
I still have and use this screensaver! I've loved it for decades.
That was on a lot in our house when it came out. Great idea.
24:39 that is really amazing.
I think I'll make one as well. Thank you for inspiring me!